Novel Full Chapter 352: The Supreme One [I]
Chapter 352: The Supreme One [I]
The heavens often sent Minor Gods to the mortal realm so they could consecrate young planets and spread their merciful grace on them.
It was their divine duty to guide fledgling civilizations toward a path of enlightenment, ensuring that the spark of intelligence did not gutter out in the winds of blasphemy and heresy.
These Gods were usually accompanied by a legion of Angels called the Seravius. They spent vast stretches of time — eons, in some extreme cases — moving from one planet to another, nurturing one species after the next.
Among these nomad deities was Vahn, one of the Gods of Craftsmanship.
He was a deity of soot and sparks, bearing seven heads and just as many pairs of arms.
While most of his fellow Gods complained about their entrusted duty, Vahn was a master of the anvil who found more beauty in the rhythmic clink-clink-clink of a hammer than in the stagnant choirs of the high heavens.
His task was to oversee the first beings of early civilizations across countless worlds and teach them the foundations of innovation and technology.
So when he was assigned to the world of Traviscaris, he did exactly what he had always done.
He taught those three-eyed mortals how to cut stone, how to fold steel, how to temper glass, and how to build things that lasted longer than their own brief heartbeats.
It was nothing he had not done before.
It was nothing he had not seen before.
Vahn had watched this cycle repeat a thousand times on a thousand different worlds across the endless cosmos.
He had seen the first flicker of fire ignite in the primitive eyes of cave-dwellers, and he had seen those same flickers grow into the blinding white light of nuclear flame.
He had seen sleek skyscrapers rise where crude rock ziggurats once stood.
He had seen every civilization believe they were unique, favored by the heavens.
But the heavens were fair to all.
And Traviscaris were no different.
To their credit, Vahn never gave them blueprints. He never gave them ideas, only a push start.
For example, if he handed them a hammer, he would not tell them whether to crush a skull with it or forge metal.
Thus, a species’ failure and success were entirely their own.
On the distant world of Xacau, he taught them the secret of the gear, and within three centuries, they automated their own extinction.
On the now destroyed plains of Aethelgard, he showed mortals how to harness the wind, and they used that knowledge to build ships that carried plagues to every corner of their globe.
So, yes.
He had truly seen it all — the spiral into greed, the inevitable misuse of the gift of technology, and the sickening way mortals turned tools of creation into instruments of suffering.
It had stopped having any effect on him long ago.
To a deity, the rise and fall of civilizations were merely specks drifting in a river of time too vast for mortal comprehension.
Or, at least, most deities thought that way.
Some, however, were truly compassionate toward mortals.
Like his closest friend, Briat’iés.
Briat’iés was an angel of the highest choir, assigned to the same sector, and he did not share Vahn’s cynicism.
Where Vahn watched mortals’ hands, Briat’iés watched their hearts. He spoke of their potential for kindness as though he genuinely believed in them.
But Vahn never saw it.
…Not until he descended upon the world of Triviscaris.
•••
The Triviscari were different from any other species Vahn had guided before.
For the first time in an eternity, the rhythmic clink-clink-clink of his hammer did not feel like a countdown to a world’s self-destruction.
Because these mortals wished only to lead peaceful lives.
They were not a war species, though they were very much capable of it. At their core, they simply wanted to appreciate the wonders of existence.
They were not hostile toward one another. They were not greedy. They did not see the tools Vahn gifted them as means to dominate their neighbors.
Instead, they used the secret of the lever to lift heavy stones for their elders’ homes. They used the art of the forge to create intricate jewelry and delicate wind chimes that sang in the mountain breeze.
They took the fire he granted them and used it to cook communal feasts, inviting the lonely and the wayward to their tables.
…Inviting him to their tables.
They truly had the potential for kindness.
Vahn found himself lingering in Triviscari workshops long after his divine duties were technically fulfilled.
And the more he lingered, the more he began to feel something he had not felt since the first time he saw a world tear itself apart.
Attachment.
He began to feel attachment.
And with that, he stopped being a nomad.
He stopped looking toward the next planet on his ledger.
He set aside his travel-worn hammer and settled into the warmth of Triviscaris, becoming the silent patron of their golden age.
…But attachment is a dangerous thing for a god.
Attachment creates blind spots.
Vahn was so consumed by the beauty of what the Triviscari were building that he failed to notice when their curiosity turned toward the forbidden.
He failed to see the moment their pursuit of better became a pursuit of forever.
The people of Triviscaris had begun to covet immortality.
The other Minor Gods and High Angels who watched over them tried to convince them that this wish of theirs could not be fulfilled.
Immortality was heresy, a crime deemed most vile by the upper echelons of heaven.
Triviscaris did not care.
Eventually, a mandate descended from the High Gods — Destroy the research. Cull the scholars. Return to the stars.
Most of the divine host obeyed with cold indifference and withdrew at once.
But Vahn stayed back.
He looked upon the cities he had helped raise, upon the families he had come to cherish, and found that he could not leave.
Neither could his closest friend, Briat’iés… though the angel had a different reason.
At that time, Vahn was too distracted to notice that Briat’iés had begun committing blasphemies of his own.
He had started to question the heavens.
And before long, he created a life… in the most literal sense.
From nothing but the substance of his longing and the silver light of his essence, he birthed a daughter.
In hindsight, Vahn wished he had been there for his friend. He would have given him counsel. He would have listened to his fears.
But by the time concern reached him, it was already too late.
Because Briat’iés had created a girl from nothing but his desire.
In doing so, he unknowingly shaped an existence that was above fate because the girl that he had created was never woven from its loom.
Thus, she could defy destiny.
And she did.
Out of the ignorant kindness of her heart, she rescued a young prince who had been doomed to die young.
It was a beautiful miracle.
But the heavens did not see it that way.
They saw a flaw in the divine order.
They saw disobedience, an anomaly that might one day become a threat.
So they came for the girl.
Briat’iés stood against them, as did the mortal king whose son had been saved. Vahn picked his side with them too, though he knew it was a losing cause.
And just as he had feared, the war that followed — the Rebellion Against the Stars — was never really a war at all.
It was an execution.
The High Gods came and casually stitched the skins of every mortal who dared defy them into the carapaces of insects, and turned their spines into the roots of weeping trees.
Vahn watched, pinned to the earth by obsidian stakes, as they took Briat’iés’ daughter and hung her in the sky before remaking her into a moon that would never stop bleeding.
In just under an hour, everything was lost.
Then the High Gods left.