Kael opened his eyes.
No. Bullshit. He didn't have eyes. He had awareness. Stretched across something too fucking vast to find the edges of, like waking up inside a mountain that was also a machine that was also someone's used tissue collection that they'd jerked off into and forgot about for six fucking years.
And he was fucking dying.
Not dying like a man dies. Noble, cinematic, with last words and a sunset and some tear-jerking bullshit. Dying like fruit dies. Like meat left in a hot car in fucking July. Like that Tupperware in the back of the fridge that had achieved sentience and was now demanding rent and voting rights.
Something was off in him. Wrong in ways he could taste but not name, like trying to describe a color that smelled of burnt hair, regret, and that one time you walked into a gas station bathroom and immediately questioned God's existence.
"What the shit," Kael thought, though he no longer had a mouth to say it with. "What the actual shit."
He tried to move.
One part of him responded. A hand? No. A system. Something that processed light and heat and the crushing weight of cosmic futility. He pushed his attention into it and saw.
Stars.
Not above him. Inside him. Orbs of burning gas floating in cavities he hadn't known he owned, like finding out your appendix was actually a galaxy and it was currently going supernova in your shit.
They were dimming. Not from age. From fucking hunger. Something was literally eating the light, like cosmic moths with absolutely no manners.
"Oh, fuck me sideways with a cactus," Kael thought. "Fuck me running. Fuck me gently with a chainsaw."
He pulled back. Tried another system. Found cold stone and moving water. Rivers in his veins, which sounded poetic as shit until he realized the water smelled like infected diabetic foot left in a sauna. Sweet and thick and aggressively, personally wrong.
He found more.
A place of thought, half-corrupted, memories that weren't his bleeding through like piss in a public pool during a children's birthday party. A place of structure, calcified and crumbling like a Boomer's knees after they decided to "fix" the economy. A place of hunger. Vast, patient, where things had built nests from his dying tissue, like cosmic squatters turning his liver into a fucking Airbnb with no cleaning fees and five-star reviews for "cozy, great location, host barely notices we're here."
He understood then.
He had a body. It was infinite. And it was sick as fuck.
Panic came. Human panic. The kind that scrabbles and screams and absolutely would have shit itself if he'd had intestines anymore. He reached for power. Any power. And found it. A concept, simple as fire, burning in the space where his liver should be.
He grabbed it.
And something else grabbed back, the little bastards.
The fire was his. He felt that. But it was also theirs. The things in his rot. The little fuckers co-owned it. They used it to warm their nests, cook their food, see in his dark. Like parasitic roommates who didn't pay rent, ate all his food, and definitely used his Netflix to watch weird shit that fucked up his algorithm.
Every power has tenants.
The thought came from nowhere and everywhere. Not his thought. The body's thought. The god's thought. The thing he had become was trying to teach him its rules, and the lesson was basically: Congratulations, you're a landlord now, and your tenants are literal vermin who think you're the problem.
"Damn it all to hell," Kael cursed. "Damn these bastards. Damn this shitty infinite meat prison."
He let go of the fire.
The tenants didn't. They kept burning, warm and fat and smug as shit, while he shivered in the parts of himself they hadn't gentrified yet.
He counted them.
Not individually. There were too many, billions, trillions, numbers that stopped meaning numbers and started meaning "we're all fucked, pass the cosmic whiskey." He counted them by type. The mindless eaters. The clever builders. The ones that had started praying to the rot, worshipping the decay that birthed them like some kind of fungal megachurch with really uncomfortable pews.
One group stood out. They were few. Seven, twelve, he couldn't hold the number steady because apparently god-math was hard and fuck this shit. But they were old. They remembered when he first arrived. When the rot was fresh and he was new and screaming like a cosmic newborn with absolutely no idea how to god and no fucking manual.
They had watched him learn. Watched him fail. And they had kept secrets from the younger parasites, things only the apex predators know. Like where the good power was hidden and which parts of him were going necrotic next and how to properly fuck over a new god.
Kael tried to reach them.
They felt him coming. They smiled. Not with faces, but with intention, with the shape of their smug bastard power. And they hid.
Not from fear. From patience. They had waited eons. They could wait more. They were playing the long game, and Kael had just shown up yesterday with the cosmic equivalent of "how do I open PDF?" and "where is the any key?"
"Shit," Kael thought. "Shit, shit, shit."
He withdrew. Found a quiet place in himself, a pocket of dead space where nothing lived yet. Like the emotional void inside a middle manager who just got yelled at by his boss and has to go yell at someone else. He made it his. He thought there.
I was a man, he told himself. I had a name. Kael. I had...
He couldn't remember the rest. A room, maybe. A color. A sense that he had been small and safe and finished in ways he wasn't anymore.
The body was eating his memories. Using them to fuel the rot like some kind of existential composting system that didn't give a single damn.
"Damn it," Kael swore. "Damn these bastards to whatever hell eats gods."
He made a decision. Simple. Desperate. Human. And pissed.
He would not finish.
He would not let this body digest him into just another god-corpse, another infinite patient rotting quietly while parasites fought over the remains like seagulls on a dumpster behind a fish market in fucking August.
Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck this whole damn situation.
He would act. He would change things. Even if he didn't understand the rules yet. Even if every action fed the things eating him. Especially if it pissed them off. He'd be the worst meal they'd ever had. He'd give them indigestion.
He reached out. Past his own borders. Past the stars inside his flesh. Into the spaces between, where other worlds turned.
Found one.
It was dying. Its sun sputtering like a fluorescent tube in a gas station bathroom that someone had definitely shit on the floor of. Its people huddled in caves, waiting for the dark and probably complaining about the WiFi and the damn draft.
Kael almost pulled back. They were too fragile. He had felt his own weight now. He would crush them without meaning to, like stepping on a hamster while trying to save it, then slipping and falling into the hamster cage and breaking everything.
But one of them looked up.
Not at the sky. At him. At the place where his attention touched their world. A child, maybe. Or a priest. Or some unlucky bastard sensitive enough to feel the infinite pressing against their dying light.
They spoke.
Kael didn't understand the words. But he understood the shape of them. A question. No. An offer.
Save us, they said. And we will save you back.
He almost laughed. They couldn't save him. They were dust. They were hours from extinction, cosmic mayflies with delusions of grandeur and absolutely no plan.
But they could try. The damn fools could try.
That was enough. That was the deal he needed. Not power. Not wisdom. Just effort. Just beings who would enter him and fight and maybe die but fucking try while they did it. Guts over glory. Spite over sense.
Kael made them a door.
It was crude as shit. He didn't know how to shape his own flesh yet. The door was more wound than gateway, a tear in reality that wept his essence into their world like a god's infected discharge, like a cosmic cyst popping.
They didn't run. They walked through. Forty of them. Then a hundred. Then more than he could track because apparently he also couldn't god-count for shit.
He felt them inside him. Small and hot and alive in ways the parasites weren't. Like walking antibiotics with attitude problems. They brought weapons. They brought hate. They brought the will to survive that only the dying truly own, that "fuck you, I exist, and I'll damn well keep existing just to spite you" energy.
Kael tried to guide them. Point them at the nearest infection. A nest of the mindless eaters, soft and bloated and unready for war because they'd gotten too comfortable being parasites, the lazy shits, the damn freeloading bastards.
The door closed behind the last of them.
He waited.
They fought. He felt it as pressure, as heat, as the strange sensation of his own immune response waking up and going "oh, we're fighting now? Cool, cool, let me get my shoes, damn it, where are my shoes?" They killed some eaters. They lost some of their own. The survivors took pieces of his power. Unintentionally, just by surviving contact with his essence, like getting glitter on you at a craft store except the glitter is godhood and the craft store is a dying cosmic horror.
They found the door again. Twenty-three left. They stepped through. Back to their world.
They had won nothing. Their sun still died. Their caves still chilled. They were still absolutely, cosmically, completely boned.
But they had power now. Twenty-three small gods, carrying pieces of him. Enough to light their caves. Enough to fight over. Enough to build something that might outlast the dark, or at least make the dark pay for every damn inch in blood and bastard curses.
And Kael had learned something.
He could open doors. He could aim visitors. He could pay them with the only currency he owned. Himself, the cosmic equivalent of "will work for food, literally, please, I'm desperate, damn it."
It wasn't a solution. It was a stay of execution. The rot still spread. The seven or twelve old ones still waited, probably doing crossword puzzles in his pancreas or whatever, the smug ancient bastards. The body still digested his memories, one by one, making him more god and less Kael every hour. Like gradually being replaced by a shitty AI version of himself that couldn't even swear properly.
But he had done something. Damn it, he'd done something.
He found another world. Another door. Another deal.
This time, he made rules. Limits. Structured entry. Controlled exposure. Terms and conditions, because apparently he was Terms of Service now, and damn if he wasn't going to be the most vindictive, petty Terms of Service in cosmic history.
This time, fewer died.
This time, he remembered to breathe. Or whatever gods did instead, probably some kind of cosmic photosynthesis bullshit. And the door stayed open long enough for retreat.
He was building something.
He didn't know what. He didn't know if it would save him or just make his death more interesting, like redecorating the Titanic as it went down with really nice curtains that no one would appreciate because they'd all be fucking drowning.
But for the first time since waking, Kael felt something other than panic.
He felt hope. Spiteful, desperate, angry hope.
And somewhere deep in his rot, the old ones felt it too. They stirred in their nests. They shared secrets they had hoarded for eons, probably laughing their non-existent asses off, the damn bastards.
They whispered:
He doesn't know yet.
None of them ever know.
Until the end.
The poor, dumb, hopeful bastard.