"AAAAAHHHHH!"
His scream tore through the marketplace.
"I—I am sorry! I am sorry! I will not do it again! I will follow God, please don't burn me! Please! It hurts! It hurts so much! Please don't burn me! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I will never do it again!"
His voice cracked. His throat burned. His words broke apart under the fire.
A man standing at the front of the crowd spoke loudly, his voice calm and firm. "People are dying. God is angry. And only your life can please Him."
After saying this, the man knelt down. He joined his hands and began praying, completely ignoring the screams of the burning boy.
Everyone behind him did the same.
The boy cried, but the fire burned so fiercely that his tears evaporated before they could fall. The flames climbed higher, wrapping around his body, eating away at his skin, his strength, his voice.
After some time, the screams stopped.
The fire continued to burn for a while longer, but there was no sound anymore.
People slowly stood up. After praying to their god, they began walking back to their homes with calm faces and satisfied hearts. They believed they had pleased God by offering a life whose value meant nothing to them.
Why would they care?
He had refused to believe in their almighty god.
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He was lying on a cold place, he stood up shivering, He opened his eyes saw nothing but darkness
Aeren's thoughts slowly returned.
Am I in hell?
Why is it so cold?
Isn't hell supposed to burn with fire sinners?
He tried to open his eyes.
He saw nothing.
Only darkness.
If this is hell… why am I blind too? Has my punishment still not ended?
Then he remembered.
When he was burning alive, the fire had destroyed his eyes before death.
So this darkness made sense.
Before he could think further, something strange appeared.
A rectangular red screen floated in front of him. Golden letters slowly formed on it.
The screen remained in his mind, unmoving.
Aeren focused on it.
It was strange. Too clear. Too deliberate.
He had seen screens in games, in stories, in novels. They always explained things. They always helped. This one felt cold, like it did not care whether he understood or not.
Welcome to the world where God no longer exists.
The line stayed in his mind.
Aeren focused on it, trying to understand what he was seeing.
"A world where God no longer exists," he thought. "So God existed before… and now doesn't?"
He had always believed God was real.
Not loudly. Not blindly. But quietly, in a way that stayed with him even when life became cruel. Even when his parents died. Even when he was burning alive, begging for mercy.
He had believed.
"So what was I praying to?" he wondered.
The people who killed him had believed too. They believed God was angry. They believed his death would bring a miracle. They believed the sickness would end.
"But there was no one listening," Aeren realized.
His chest felt heavy.
"It's not that God abandoned them," he thought. "It's that God truly does not exist here anymore."
That thought terrified him.
Because if God never existed…
Then everything done in His name had no meaning or maybe it was just in this world.
No justice.
No forgiveness.
Only belief.
Aeren swallowed.
"They killed me for something that wasn't even there," he thought.
The screen remained silent.
Then, a second line slowly appeared.
You have been chosen to become God in this world.
"What a joke," Aeren thought. "Me and God."
There were two kinds of people in the world. People who believed in God, called theists, and people who did not, called atheists. Aeren was a theist, but not the kind who shouted prayers or forced belief on others. He never questioned whether God existed.
When someone beats a child with stick regularly child will start hating the stick too. Similarly Aeren started hating the word God itself. Now screen is telling him that he is chosen to become the God.
So, he hated God, Not because he denied it, but because of what humans had turned it into.
"Is this screen making fun of me," he thought. "Or is this just another punishment after death?"
There was no answer.
The truth was that he was not in hell.
He was in a new world.
Cold surrounded him. Frozen ground lay beneath his body, hard and merciless. Ice spread around him in every direction, wide and silent, stretching far into the distance. The air itself felt sharp, cutting into his lungs every time he breathed.
But it was not endless.
He did not know that yet.
Because he could not see.
The darkness around him was not part of this world. It was inside him. He was blind.
When he had been burned alive, his eyes had been destroyed long before his heart stopped. Death had not given them back. The red screen he saw was not floating in front of his face. It was forming directly inside his mind, clear and sharp, as if something had carved the words into his thoughts.
That realization made his chest feel tight.
"So even after dying," he thought, "I don't get my eyes back."
Only then did he feel the cold properly.
His skin was exposed.
He was naked.
No clothes. No warmth. No protection.
The frozen air touched every part of his body. His skin screamed in pain. The cold was so severe that if he remained like this, his life would fade away before he could even understand what was happening.
But before he could think a way through it another message appeared.
Divinity is accumulated through belief. Whether an act is real or coincidental is irrelevant. If humans interpret an event as divine, belief is generated.
Aeren stayed silent.
He read the words again.
And again.
"Belief…" he whispered. "Not effort. Not truth."
His chest tightened.
"So it doesn't matter what actually happens," he thought. "It only matters what people believe in."
The realization made him uneasy.
"So divinity isn't pure," he thought slowly. "It isn't holy. It's something that can be built from lies, fear, and false hope."
The screen changed.
Humans believed your death would cause a miracle.Belief generated.Divinity acquired.
He felt it then.
A pressure deep inside his chest. Not pain. Not cold. Something heavier. Something invisible settling into him.
Aeren's breath caught.
He whispered. "They believed… and that was enough."
Another line appeared.
Belief does not require truth.Only interpretation.
His body suddenly felt different.
The cold was still there. The frozen air still touched his skin. But the pain began to pull back, as if something unseen had decided he was not allowed to die yet.
The screen updated once more.
Host survival adjustment applied.Cold Resistance: Active.
Another screen appeared.
That felt worse.
The ice beneath him remained hard and unmoving. The frozen land did not welcome him. It did not react to him. It did not care whether he lived or died.
Only his body had been adjusted.
He slowly moved his fingers. They responded. He pressed his bare palm against the ice. It was still cold, still real, but it no longer burned him.
He was alive.
That thought frightened him.
"what is it?"
The screen answered without emotion.
Status: Reconstructed Body
Condition: Exposed
Vision: Lost
"Reconstructed," he muttered. "Just enough to keep suffering."
Silence followed.
Memories returned without warning.
Fire.Screams.Faces full of belief.
They had not doubted themselves even once.
That certainty terrified him more than the flames ever did.
"They really believed it," he thought. "They believed my death would bring a miracle. That killing me would cure them. That the sickness would end."
Causality Acknowledged Authority: Pending
"Pending," he repeated. "So the world hasn't decided what I'm responsible for yet."
The idea made his skin crawl.
Authority meant expectation.
Expectation meant blame.
Aeren clenched his fists.
"I didn't save anyone," he said. "I didn't cure anyone. I died screaming."
The system did not argue.
Instead, another number appeared.
Humanity Index: 100% → 99.8%
The number dropped.
Aeren felt it.
Something small slipped away. Not pain. Not memory. Something quieter.
His anger felt distant.
His fear dulled.
Even his name felt… lighter, less important.
"What did you take from me," he asked.
No answer came.
He understood it anyway.
"They didn't see me as a person," he thought. "They saw me as a cause."
And the world had accepted that view.
Aeren slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. His bare feet touched the frozen ground. Still cold. Still real. But harmless.
Blind. Naked. Alone.
And alive against his will.
"If belief keeps me alive," he thought, "then this power isn't a gift."
It was a leash.
Somewhere deep inside the system, a silent rule locked itself into place.
Belief grants survival before salvation.
Aeren sat there in the frozen land, surrounded by ice that refused to change, in a body that no longer obeyed human limits.
The miracle people prayed for had not saved them.
But, it had created him.