Lucian walked the marbled halls of Empyrealis beneath a veil of illusion, his presence cloaked beneath a divine disguise forged from fragments of fallen demi-gods and the remnants of the Eternal Shackles of Darkness. The Supreme Divine Realm sprawled around him like a mad architect's dream—no gravity, no horizon, no sky. Floating cathedrals drifted in the void, tethered by radiant ley-lines of divine energy. Colossal statues of forgotten deities loomed overhead, their eyes weeping golden ichor, while oceans of stars churned below his feet.
This was Empyrealis, the eternal city of gods—a realm of infinite scale and cruel, divine perfection.
The realm had no true sky. Instead, rings of broken planets and glittering nebulae framed the architecture above, casting a prismatic glow on the polished stone paths. Gigantic thrones carved from comet bones and black suns orbited high citadels, waiting to seat their divine masters.
Lucian kept his aura tightly sealed. To the other deities, he appeared as Val'Aen, a minor god of ancestral knowledge—a forgotten divinity recycled from a destroyed pantheon. The disguise was enough to slip by unnoticed, but even so, his every step felt like walking on a blade's edge. One flicker of true power, and the entire realm would turn on him.
He passed through the Ring of Endless Hours, a floating monastery where the God of Time's descendants bent reality with breath alone. Here, time bent like cloth. Moments stretched for eternities, and eternities vanished in seconds. The gods here dined on fragments of prophecy, sipping liquified causality as wine.
Further ahead was the Crescent of Judgment, where cruel gods gathered not for trials, but for spectacles. Mortals abducted from their worlds were paraded like toys—heroes, kings, saints—all chained in stasis and subjected to divine tests for amusement.
A great coliseum hovered at the center, where the God of Agony, Belorith, presided. Today's entertainment: a mortal forced to relive his planet's destruction a thousand times, each with slight variations to enhance the pain. The gods roared with laughter as he begged for release.
"Only a thousand iterations?" one goddess scoffed. She bore wings made of volcanic glass and a necklace of screaming mouths. "You've grown merciful, Belorith."
Belorith raised a chalice filled with blood and grinned. "Let him savor hope before we make it truly meaningless."
Lucian's fists clenched under his robe. These were not creators or shepherds. They were devourers of hope. Tyrants of infinity.
At the Gilded Bazaar, divine merchants traded not in goods, but in lives and memories. Memories of love, of childhood, of first dreams—sold, bartered, erased. Lucian saw a god slicing the mind of a mortal clean, replacing it with illusions of loyalty so he could be turned into a divine pet.
In another pavilion, a goddess known as Vaelrix of the Thousand Veils, sold bottled universes. Within each glass orb, entire civilizations lived unaware of their cage.
"I'll take the one where they worship pain," said a minor god of hunger, licking cracked lips.
Vaelrix cooed. "Ah, a connoisseur."
Lucian moved on.
The Sanctum of Chains was next—an entire cathedral constructed from the remains of titans who once opposed the divine order. Their bones hummed with cursed music, played endlessly by angels with broken wings. In its deepest vaults, lesser gods experimented on primal beings, trying to reverse-engineer creation itself.
Here, Lucian met God Lioran of Stillborn Stars, a middle deity whose portfolio included silence, exile, and forgotten prayers. He sat atop a throne of erased languages, surrounded by acolytes who had cut out their tongues.
"What brings you here, Val'Aen?" Lioran asked with a voice like snowfall over graves.
Lucian bowed slightly, hiding his contempt. "Observing. I seek understanding of our divine roles."
Lioran chuckled softly. "You seek purpose? Watch the others. You'll see. We are not gods because we create. We are gods because we define what is allowed to exist."
A thunderous bell tolled in the distance—the signal for Judgment Hour, a sacred ritual when gods would strike random worlds for heresy, amusement, or boredom. Entire realms would vanish in an instant, erased by divine whim.
Lucian watched from a terrace as a planet was shattered by divine lightning. Its people screamed, their prayers ascending to deaf ears.
One god laughed. "They thought compassion was divine."
Another whispered, "I like the sound their oceans made when they boiled."
Lucian turned away.
He wandered into the Hall of Ascension, where candidates for godhood were evaluated. Here, four thrones stood—the Seats of the God of Light's Successors. Only two were occupied at the moment, but he recognized them.
Virelion, the Dawn-Breaker – A radiant warlord wrapped in sunlight, whose blade once slew a pantheon.
Saelith, Voice of Celestial Grace – A being of crystal and choir, whose voice could unmake matter.
Lucian studied them from afar. Their auras were blinding, their divinity refined, pure—but not perfect. They still belonged to the middle strata.
He filed their strengths away.
Hours passed as Lucian continued his observation. He passed the Furnace of Virtues, where gods forged new laws by burning mortal philosophies. Near the Pools of Reflection, he saw a mortal girl who had been elevated to godhood for entertainment, now sobbing in eternal solitude as she realized her family had been erased to make room for her apotheosis.
Cruelty was not a flaw in Empyrealis.
It was law.
Final Scene: The Investigation Begins
In the farthest reaches of Empyrealis, beyond the floating moons and storming temples, two beams of light tore through the veil of space.
Virelion and Saelith emerged from their divine travel, their expressions grave. They hovered above a universe sealed by a strange dark aura—Lucian's handiwork. A barrier, forged from the remnants of the Eternal Shackles of Darkness, pulsed ominously, protecting a fragment of reality from divine interference.
"What is this... presence?" Saelith murmured, her voice a melody sung in reverse.
Virelion hovered closer, inspecting the seal. "Someone powerful killed Yagrasal. But this barrier—it's not divine in origin."
They cast rituals of detection. Waves of divine light scanned the boundary.
No name. No trace.
Whoever did this… had erased their divine signature.
Saelith looked to her companion. "Shall we break it?"
Virelion shook his head. "Not yet. This seal… it's ancient. Abyssal. Interference might trigger retaliation from forces beyond even us."
They stared into the veiled universe, unaware that Lucian had already walked into their world. Already walked among them. And already prepared for war.