Chapter 2: The Taste of Desperation
A thousand years passed.
For mortals, an eternity. Kingdoms rose, crumbled, and turned to dust. Stories became myths. Myths became silence.
But for Aethel, floating in the lightless Rift beyond time, it was agony.
Her divine body was bound, her essence pierced by celestial chains. But her mind remained sharp. Hardened. Seething. If the gods meant to break her, they had only given her a gift.
Time.
Even imprisoned, a god is still a god. She could not act but she could perceive. Her awareness slithered through the cracks of creation like smoke under a door. She felt mortal hunger. Watched empires rot. Tasted forbidden spells cast in shadowed corners of the world.
And then she saw her chance.
She could not escape by force.
But she could escape by proxy.
She would find a vessel.
Not a hero. Not a chosen one.
Someone desperate.
Someone weak.
Someone overlooked.
She would offer them power in the form mortals could grasp.
A system.
A gift, they'd think. A ladder to strength.
In truth:
A leash.
Her seed. A hidden thread of divine corruption.
She searched.
Tyrants. Warriors. Prophets.
All too proud.
She needed someone low. Someone starving. Someone who would beg to be bound.
She found Jonathan.
Jonathan's Hell
Jonathan Havery moved through life like a ghost in his own home.
Not the tragic kind mourned by candlelight, just the inconvenient sort, the one whose shadow made people shift uncomfortably in their seats. At school, teachers forgot to call his name during roll. At the Guild Hall, zero rankers stepped over him when benches grew crowded. Even the stray dogs in the alley behind his apartment ignored him, as if sensing his irrelevance.
But Jonathan noticed everything.
He noticed how Liam's jokes grew sharper when others laughed. How Ms. Evans' sweater stretched thin at the elbows from grading papers late into the night. How his stepmother Evelyn's perfume, cloying jasmine, always thickened right before she accidentally burned his portion of dinner.
Most of all, he noticed the numbers.
The way ranked fighters carried themselves like kings. The way his grandfather's gnarled hands trembled when counting out coins for medicine. The way his mother's breath hitched exactly 4.3 seconds before a coughing fit tore through her, every single time.
Numbers didn't lie. Numbers didn't forget.
And the most damning number of all?
Zero.
His rank. His worth. His future.
The Breaking Point
That night, Evelyn set down a plate of scrambled eggs glistening with suspicious moisture.
"You look pale,"she crooned, nails tapping the chipped porcelain. "Eat."
At the stove, Chloe snickered into her orange juice.
Jonathan's fingers twitched toward his pocket, where three stale dinner rolls stolen from the Guild cafeteria lay hidden. But Arthur's warning gaze from the head of the table stilled him.
Pick your battles, boy.
So he ate.
The eggs tasted like pennies and something faintly green.
---
3:47 AM.
Jonathan's knees hit the bathroom tiles as his stomach convulsed. Acid burned his throat. Between gasps, he counted:
Seven cracked tiles in the grout.
Fourteen seconds between spasms.
One muffled cough from his mother's room down the hall.
His vision swam. The numbers slipped away.
This is it,he realized with surreal calm. I'm going to die in a bathroom that still smells like Chloe's lavender bath bombs.
A laugh bubbled up, hysterical, wet, as he slumped against the tub. All those years of being careful. Of memorizing patterns. Of making himself small.
For what?
His fist slammed into the tile. Once. Twice.
"Please,"he whispered to no one. To the universe. To any god cruel enough to listen. "I'll do anything."
The screen appeared not with a fanfare but a sigh, like it had been waiting longer than he'd been alive.
DO YOU WISH TO LIVE?
Jonathan didn't hesitate.
"Yes."
The word tore from him like a confession. Like a surrender.
Cold fire flooded his veins. The pain evaporated. For one terrifying, glorious moment, he felt seen.
And somewhere in the dark between stars, a chain shattered.
She watched.
Smiling.