Marcus Valmont wheeled himself to the window, letting the afternoon light spill across his small apartment.
He had grown accustomed to watching the world through glass.
The window of his apartment overlooked a crowded street where life moved with the same careless rhythm every day. People hurried past each other on their way to work, vendors argued loudly with customers, and traffic crawled through the intersection with impatient bursts of horns. From the outside it was an ordinary piece of the city, loud and restless, filled with people chasing plans and promises that always seemed just within reach.
Marcus observed it quietly from his wheelchair.
He remembered a year earlier, he had been part of that same current of life; moving through the world with the comfortable certainty that the future was something he could shape with his own hands.
He had a stable career, a small circle of trusted friends, and a relationship he believed would eventually lead to marriage. At thirty-two, life finally seemed to be settling into something solid and predictable.
But all that crumpled into bits that fateful day....
It all began with a message he was never meant to see.....
It had appeared accidentally on his girlfriend's phone while she was in the shower, lighting the screen on the kitchen table beside him. Marcus had not intended to invade her privacy. He only glanced at the notification when it buzzed repeatedly. The sender's name belonged to someone he trusted more than almost anyone else in the world.
His best friend Daniel Hart.
Marcus had known Daniel since university. They had shared apartments, endured difficult years together, and supported each other through the uncertain beginning of their careers. Daniel was the one friend Marcus believed would always remain in his life.
The message itself was short.
"Last night was incredible babe. I can't stop thinking about you."
Marcus stared at the screen for several seconds, waiting for his mind to correct what his eyes had just read. It didn't.
When his girlfriend returned to the room and saw the phone in his hand, the silence between them stretched into something unbearable. The truth arrived without dramatic confessions or elaborate lies. Her expression alone revealed everything.
What followed was not a fight so much as the slow disintegration of something Marcus had once trusted completely. The explanations were vague, the apologies hollow. Daniel had been "there for her" during difficult moments. Their relationship had "just happened." Neither of them had planned it.
Marcus listened to the words but felt strangely detached from them, as if the conversation belonged to someone else's life. Eventually he left the apartment before the argument could escalate further.
The rain had already begun falling by the time he reached his car.
He drove without a destination, his thoughts tangled in a storm of anger, disbelief, and humiliation. Streetlights blurred through the windshield as the rain intensified, turning the highway into a river of distorted reflections. Marcus barely registered the speed of the vehicle or the distant roar of approaching traffic.
His mind replayed the same question again and again.
How long had it been happening?
A sharp curve appeared ahead on the wet road.
Marcus didn't notice it until it was too late.
The tires lost traction almost instantly. The steering wheel jerked violently in his hands as the car spun across the slick pavement. Headlights from an oncoming truck exploded into view, impossibly bright and impossibly close.
For a single frozen moment Marcus understood exactly what was about to happen.
Metal screamed.
Glass shattered.
The world vanished in a violent collision of steel and light.
When Marcus regained consciousness days later in a hospital bed, the first thing he saw was the expression on the doctor's face. It carried the careful restraint of someone preparing to deliver news that would permanently divide a life into before and after.
The damage to his spine had been severe.
The doctors spoke gently, explaining the injury, the surgeries, the uncertain future of rehabilitation. Marcus listened without interrupting, absorbing the information with the same numb detachment that had followed the crash.
By the time the explanation ended, one fact had become painfully clear.
He would never walk again.
Recovery took months. Physical therapy followed, along with endless paperwork, insurance disputes, and the quiet adjustments required to live inside a body that no longer obeyed him. During that time neither his girlfriend nor Daniel visited the hospital even once. The absence itself was explanation enough.
Eventually Marcus stopped expecting them.
A year had passed since that day.
And yet, the emptiness gnawed at him—a hollow space where hope, trust, and companionship should have been.
The wounds of betrayal have faded into something quieter and colder. Anger required energy which he no longer wished to spend. What remained was a hollow space where trust had once lived.
Now, he stared at the city beyond the glass. People walked, laughed, lived, oblivious. His dreams, his ambitions, his quiet hope to leave a mark on the world—they felt meaningless here, trapped behind the walls of his own body.
He did not know what the future held anymore.
He only knew that whatever life he once imagined for himself had ended on that rain-soaked highway.
...
Marcus shifted in his wheelchair, the ache in his back and legs momentarily distracting him from the gnawing and endless thoughts.
He sighed helplessly a small pool of tears forming in his eyes unintentionally. He shifted staring at nothing in particular when a subtle vibration shivered through the air. At first, he thought it was the old building settling. But the sensation persisted, rhythmic, unnatural—like an earthquake.
He quickly leaned slightly forward in his wheelchair, narrowing his eyes at the sky. And wheeling his wheelchair to a corner by the window preparing for an earthquake impact which was common in his region.
Suddenly, he saw the outside becoming brighter and brighter... he initially assumed it was a trick of light due to tears in his eyes but he was completely mistaken....
Suddenly came the torrents of colored light.
The sky outside seemed to waver, as if reality itself had a thin seam. Stars shimmered where none should have been; the afternoon sunlight fractured into strange, prismatic rays that danced across the walls of his apartment. Marcus blinked, leaning closer to the window. Something about the air felt wrong—thicker, heavier, as if the atmosphere itself were conscious.
Then.... a sudden pressure gripped his chest. He gasped, and his lungs burned. It wasn't the wheelchair, it wasn't his injury. This was different. He wheeled himself toward the wall, clutching the edge of the desk, struggling to draw breath that seemed to vanish.
Before he could struggle more , he saw the sky split.
It was a big crack, a blinding tear in the fabric of the world. More blinding light poured through, white and brilliant, consuming buildings, streets, oceans, forests—everything he had ever known. Marcus felt the floor vanish beneath him. His apartment, the wheelchair.... all dissolved in that all consuming light.
He could feel himself being lifted, pulling away from the Earth that had shaped every memory he carried.
Before he could register all that was happening, a great and immense pressure knocked him off and he felt his consciousness drifting away.
And then..... darkness and endless silence...
...
Marcus did not know how long he was unconscious..
When his vision returned, it was unlike anything he had ever seen. Light and darkness intertwined, Stars stretched infinitely, scattered across a void that seemed alive, glowing planets suspended in the darkness. Marcus's first awareness was the small orb floating before him—radiating a faint, humming light.
In his confusion, a voice....—vast, ancient, clear, and impossibly calm—resonated within his mind.
[The Universal Will welcomes you to the Origin Universe].
[Congratulations! You have been chosen to awaken as a god.]
Marcus's chest suddenly tightened. For a brief moment he remained completely still, unsure whether what he had heard was real or simply the result of his mind struggling to process the impossible situation he had just experienced.
Then a sudden surge of thoughts crashed through him.
Panic came first. His heart pounded as he looked around the endless cosmic void, instinctively searching for something familiar, something human. Earth was gone. The city was gone. Even the ground beneath his feet had vanished. All that remained was the silent ocean of stars stretching infinitely in every direction.
But alongside the fear, something else rose just as quickly.
Excitement.!
After becoming a cripple he had a lot of free time, Marcus had spent it browsing the internet, reading fantasy and science-fiction stories. Transmigration novels, game-like worlds, cultivation universes where ordinary people awakened extraordinary power. In those stories the protagonist would die or be summoned to another world and begin a completely new life, often with abilities that defied all logic.
Transmigration.!
The word surfaced almost immediately in his thoughts.
The memory struck him so clearly that he almost laughed.
Could this be the same thing?
The thought felt absurd, yet the circumstances surrounding him made ordinary explanations impossible. The sky had torn apart. The Earth had dissolved into light. A voice calling itself the Universal Will had spoken directly inside his mind. No hallucination could possibly recreate something on this scale.
"Don't tell me…" he muttered under his breath.
His heart pounded harder with every passing second. Fear remained, but it was no longer the suffocating kind that froze his thoughts. Instead it mixed with a growing anticipation he had not felt in years.
If this really was something like the stories he had read…
If humanity had truly been transported somewhere beyond Earth…
Then the future that once seemed closed to him might suddenly be wide open again.
The mysterious voice continued, indifferent to the storm of thoughts racing through his mind.
[All human beings above the age of sixteen (human years) have a chance for ascension.].[Those below the age threshold will be cared for separately.].
[The elderly and disabled will be restored to youth and full vitality.].
...
Immediately, Marcus felt it. A tingling, a warmth coursing through his body. His spine straightened, strength returned to muscles that had lain dormant for over a year, and for the first time in months, he could move freely. He rolled his shoulders experimentally, flexing his fingers. The wheelchair was gone. His body was whole again.
For a moment he simply stood there, staring at his own body as if it belonged to someone else. Then he bent his knees, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and clenched his fists tightly.
The movements felt natural and effortless.
A short breath escaped his lungs, followed by an unsteady laugh.
"So it's real…"
He laughed quietly, a mixture of disbelief and relief. For a moment, all the betrayal, all the pain, all the emptiness faded. He was alive. He was whole again. Yet beneath the joy lingered a shadow of fear—if the Universal Will could swallow the Earth whole, what kind of power did this place hold? What terrifying beings had made this possible?
The voice continued.
[Each human will be assigned a planet at random; it is your first divine domain].
[By dripping a drop of your blood upon it, you bind yourself to the planet. This will be the start of your godhood.].
Marcus's eyes darted to the small orb hovering before him. It was a miniature planet. Its surface shimmered faintly, swirling with color and potential. He hesitated, unsure of what to do.
Swallowing his fear, Marcus extended his hand. A small cut on his fingertip bled easily, and a single drop fell through the void. It hovered, suspended, then struck the surface of the miniature planet.
The moment the drop touched, a shockwave of light erupted, engulfing him. The orb flared violently, and Marcus felt himself being pulled forward and drawn inside the planet.
When the brightness dimmed, he realized he was no longer outside, floating in space. He stood at the center of a barren planet, instinctively he knew it was almost five square kilometers. Dust swirled around him in lazy eddies. Mountains rose jagged and lifeless. Rivers were absent, skies dull and gray.
And yet… he could feel it. Every grain of rock, every ounce of air, every invisible current of energy thrumming through the planet—it was all responsive to him. His awareness stretched beyond his body. He could see it all, control it all. The entire world lay open before him, pliable under his thought, waiting for him to shape it. He was seeing it from a god's perspective, the scale and scope of power overwhelming and intoxicating.
For a moment, he froze. He had been given absolute dominion over this planet, yet he did not know where to begin.
Just as he was wondering, torrents of information flooded his mind. Not in words, not in images, but in understanding itself—as if every principle, every law, every secret of creation had been buried in him all along, and he was only now remembering.
The flow was relentless. He knew how energy moved, how land could form, how life could awaken. He knew how faith would flow from beings he had yet to meet, how bloodlines could be shaped, how the very rules of his domain could bend to his will.
He staggered back slightly, overwhelmed. It was knowledge and instinct intertwined, impossible to separate, yet perfectly clear. It was as if the universe itself had whispered its secrets directly into his mind, trusting him with the raw mechanics of godhood.
He began outlining the important information first.....
........