Reborn as A God

A flash. Weightlessness. Then silence.

When I opened my eyes… I was back. The divine pillars of my heavenly palace soared above me. Pools of starlight rippled at my feet. Everything was as I left it. I stood in the center of the grand hall, whole again. My body was unmarred, freshly forged. No pain. No blood.

I looked at my hands.

"...Well. That went well."

Then I exhaled and let my back hit the cold divine floor. Above me, the stars burned, and I whispered to no one:

"This world is far more twisted than I thought."

Even as I stood in my heavenly palace, whole again, unharmed, something pulsed inside me. Arcana. Still there. Still burning in my chest, like a second heart had been stitched into my being. But it felt… different. Denser. Wilder. Like it had tasted something ancient, and liked it.

I focused, trying to move it, control it like before. The moment I did, it collided With something else. Something older. Me, divine essence. The very threads of what made me. Then boom, not an explosion of flame but of force.

It burst within my being like a nova star, a kaleidoscope of silver-gold threads unraveling and reforming around my soul. I gasped sharply, desperate like I'd been submerged in black water and suddenly yanked to the surface.

And just like that, it was done.The Arcana had changed. No... it had fused with my divine essence. Transmuted into new divine essence. How this happened I didn't yet understand.

I stood up fast, breath steadying. My gaze dropped to my hands. They shimmered faintly, still human in form, but the light beneath my skin was no longer just celestial.

"What the hell just happened?" I whispered aloud.

Then I looked up, above me, the ceiling of my divine sanctum parted like fog, revealing the microcosm of my multiverse, layered, and the realms were orbiting one another. My sight tunneled, zooming in on the mortal world.

To him, that man. He was still at the altar, but he had changed. His robes were torn now, barely clinging to his slender frame. His hair had turned stark white, hanging past his shoulders. His skin shimmered faintly, almost like polished marble and I could see it, threads of divine essence swirling faintly within him.

And Arcana. So much Arcana. Spiraling inside him like a living vortex.

"Apotheosis," I murmured.

My hands curled into fists. "Apotheosis."

Then I blinked. I materialized in the forest clearing, still dressed in red toga of divinity.

The moment my feet touched earth, the world shuddered. Birds scattered in a frenzy. The trees groaned. The altar cracked. Arcana hissed around us like frightened snakes.

I frowned.

"…Quiet."

And the world obeyed. Stillness swept the grove. The wind halted mid-gust. Even the light from the sun seemed to still, dimmed by my command. I raised my left hand, pointing it straight at the man before the altar.

"You."

He turned, sensing the shift. His eyes widened.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice cold, echoing just slightly with divine resonance.

His mouth opened slowly. Suspicion bloomed in his expression like black mold. "What… are you?"

I snapped my fingers.

Golden bands of divine energy snapped out from my hand like living chains, swirling around him, binding him from shoulder to toe. He was dragged forward, slowly until he hovered just feet from me, squirming like a fly in honey.

His face twisted in horror.

"A G—God?" he choked. "No, you're… you're something else. You're… too powerful to be a god."

I smirked. "I am the god actually, but whatever."

His mouth trembled. "What are you going to do to me?"

"That depends entirely on what the hell you were doing here," I said.

He froze.

"I-I was harvesting… the divinity that leaks from creation. It seeps from death, from ritual… from pain. I found a way to catch it before it returns to the stars."

I stepped closer, narrowing my eyes. "You're harvesting divinity?"

"I swear, it's the truth!" he cried, eyes darting. "It's written in the lost doctrines of one of the great sects, deep within the Holy Empire. A secret only passed down to high initiates!"

I stopped cold. Holy Empire, a secret sect.

High priest… what have you been letting your zealots study behind the cathedral walls? My jaw tightened.

"I can't let you become a god," I said softly.

"No! Please! I can still—"

I pressed my hand gently to his chest.

And then, without force, I pulled.

Arcane and divine energy twisted inside him. He screamed, body convulsing as golden light flooded out through his pores, spilling into my hand, absorbed like water down a drain. When it was done, I let go. He crumbled onto his knees, the light inside him gone. His skin withered. His hair turned to ash. His face hollowed in seconds as time slammed back into him like a tide.

"No… no!" he shrieked, staring at his trembling hands as they aged rapidly. Skin cracked. Fingernails fell off. Teeth yellowed in his open mouth.

I watched, blinking. "...Oops."

The man collapsed, a pile of tattered bone and dried flesh. I turned away from him, brushing dust from my palm.

"You shouldn't have dabbled in heretical arts," I muttered. "Even children know not to chase the sun with wax wings."

I closed my eyes and moved the arcana within me once again making it interact with the divine essence. Another explosion with in me erupted and the divine essence swelled. The whole earth seemed to shake and the world around me became restless, the wind picked up, animals ran and a distant volcanic mountains seemed to want to erupt. I isolated the space I was in and everything became calm again. After a while the arcana depleted. My divine essence had erupted 2 times and my body made cracking sounds as if it was expanding beyond it's means. 

the cracking stopped and my body seemed to have changed slightly. My hair had changed to a grey sheen and every movement i made caused the isolated space to tremble slightly. I reconstructed Adam's body and possessed it again.

I raised my gaze to the north. Far beyond the forest, over hills and rivers, the spires of the Holy Empire's capital pierced the horizon. I could feel it already, thousands of souls praying and sacrificing. Some to me and some to the other gods, but the most eye catching of them all were those being directed towards foreign entities I didn't know. I closed the divine essence away and became powerless again.

I narrowed my eyes.

"That's where this starts."

To be continued