Darian never expected to become what he did. He never asked for it, never sought it out. But the power came anyway, creeping into his mind slowly at first, a whisper of something that shouldn't have been possible.
He felt it before he saw it—the strange weight that settled over his soul, a gnawing hunger that spread through his veins like fire, burning away all his weaknesses.
He had been searching for meaning, after all. Just like everyone else.
The discovery started innocently enough, buried in some old text he had stumbled upon. The language was archaic, but his sharp mind pieced it together. It spoke of a ritual—one that could unlock the door to something beyond comprehension. Something older, darker. The power to reshape existence itself.
At first, Darian was skeptical. But the allure of such control, of being more than human, pulled him deeper. It promised everything he lacked. The world had always been a cage. A constricting, smothering thing that kept him small. The idea of transcending that, of becoming a god, was intoxicating.
He began the ritual in the dead of night. Alone. Just as the text described, he marked the ground with symbols no one had spoken aloud for millennia. The candles were lit, and the air grew cold, freezing his skin with a strange urgency. It wasn't the freezing kind of cold though—it was different.
Like being touched by the darkness itself. The kind of cold that crawled into your bones, stealing everything that made you human. The ritual had already begun, but Darian didn't realize it at the time.
The pain came first. Sharp. Unrelenting. His body seemed to contort, to collapse in on itself. His limbs were pulled in directions they shouldn't have been able to move. His skin burned, as though it was being peeled off, layer by layer.
Every nerve screamed in agony, begging for it to stop, but it didn't. The ritual hadn't even begun to reveal its true nature.
As the ritual's effects took hold, Darian saw something that nearly broke him. The room was no longer the room. The walls were gone. The ceiling had disappeared. Instead, he saw an endless, inky abyss.
A vast expanse of darkness that stretched further than his mind could grasp. And then, from the darkness, came a voice—more of a presence, really—so deep, so ancient, that it made his bones shake. It did not speak with words, but its intent was unmistakable.
You are mine now.
The words echoed through him, not through his ears, but through every part of his being. They burrowed into his very soul. He had no choice but to obey. And as the final part of the ritual completed, he felt it. The surge of power. Like a wave crashing into him, washing over every inch of his body, transforming him.
He was no longer Darian. He had become something else.
The transformation wasn't instant. It spread slowly, like a dark virus, mutating his mind, his body, his very perception of reality. The walls of the abyss began to bleed—no, they bled reality.
The rules of the world bent to his will. His thoughts were now the thoughts of the universe itself. Time twisted, bending and breaking, as he saw the threads of fate scattered before him. The strings of every life. He could pull at them, could tear them apart with a single thought.
He stood there for what felt like hours, or maybe days. He couldn't tell. He had transcended the need for such things. Time was irrelevant now.
But as the initial ecstasy of power faded, something darker took its place. There was no satisfaction in control. No peace. The lives of humans, of creatures that clung to the world he had abandoned, seemed so fragile, so pathetic to him now. They scurried about like insects, ignorant of their fate. They screamed, they cried, they begged for mercy—but it meant nothing. Nothing at all.
The people he had once known, the ones who had called him weak, insignificant, now appeared so small. So utterly meaningless. And the world they inhabited—it too felt so hollow, so pathetic. He could reshape it, crush it, destroy it. Why not?
Darian smiled.
It wasn't a smile of happiness. It wasn't a smile of victory. It was the smile of someone who had finally seen the truth of existence. The truth that humanity was nothing but a mistake.
And in that moment, he made his choice.
He would bring it all to an end. The gods had failed him. The humans had failed him. He would burn the world and everything on it to the ground. They would be nothing. And he would be alone. Alone in the silence of the cosmos.
He stretched his mind across the Earth. He felt everything—every heartbeat, every breath. He could see it all. The fragile lives, the twisting emotions, the pain. He could hear their thoughts, their prayers. And he reveled in it.
The humans weren't just insignificant to him now—they were an infection. A plague that needed to be purged. He would wipe it all away.
The first step was easy. He could feel the Earth beneath him, could sense its pulse, its breath. With a single thought, he twisted it. He reshaped it. A ripple spread across the surface of the planet. Entire cities crumbled. Mountains shattered. Oceans boiled.
And yet, as he did this, a strange thing began to happen.
The power, the godhood, that he had longed for—it felt distant. Cold. He had transcended humanity, but in doing so, had he become as distant from the world as it had become from him?
As the chaos unfolded, Darian stood in the center of it, watching it all unravel. But he didn't feel triumphant. The screams of the dying were hollow. The destruction—pointless. Was this what he had wanted? To be so far removed from everything that even the terror he wrought couldn't touch him?
No. It was nothing. It wasn't real.
And as he gazed out over the destruction, something began to sink into his mind. The darkness he had embraced was not a power—it was a prison. A prison of his own making. A trap. The more he tried to reach beyond it, the more it closed in. The universe he had wanted to control wasn't his to control.
It was his to destroy.
He felt the walls of his own mind closing in. The darkness wasn't just around him. It was inside him. His godhood had become a chain. He was trapped in a void of his own creation, unable to escape.
The world, now devastated, became irrelevant. The humans were gone—those who had survived the initial waves of destruction had perished soon after. There was nothing left but the empty echo of his actions, the silence stretching out like a vast emptiness.
And Darian? He could no longer feel his power. It slipped away, like water through his fingers. It had never been real. His godhood had been a lie.
He was alone.
And in that silence, as the last breath of humanity faded away, Darian realized the truth: he had destroyed everything, but it was not the world that had been obliterated. It was him. He had turned himself into a god, but in doing so, he had erased everything that had made him human. Every emotion, every connection, every reason for existence—gone.
He was the last one left, alone in the void. And it was worse than anything he had ever known.
There was no escape. There was no turning back.
Darian had wanted to become a god. He got his wish.