The survivors sat in stunned silence, their emotions caught between awe, grief, and disbelief. Their god—their planet, their protector, their creator—was speaking to them not as an all-knowing being, but as someone who had once been just like them.
A person.
A child.
He leaned against a smooth obsidian pillar, his breathing slow, his form still weak from his premature awakening. His eyes, though, burned with an infinite history.
"I wasn't always this way," he admitted. "I wasn't born a god, a planet, or a dimensional being."
He exhaled.
"I was… human."
The crowd stiffened. A Folqi elder, their eyes shimmering with their ability to see through deception, squinted at him. But there was no lie.
A human.
"From where?" one of the Opoove asked cautiously.
He looked up. "A planet called Earth, in Universe 99999-2134."
Silence.
None of them had ever heard of such a place.
He closed his eyes. "My universe was torn apart in a war. Not just a planetary war—a war between four universes. I was young—twelve years old. And by the time I awakened my powers…" His voice grew quiet.
"…it was already over."
A few gasps rippled through the crowd.
"You were… the last?" a Xerzes muttered.
He nodded.
"The last human. The last anything. I was alone in a dead universe, one that had nothing left to offer but silence."
Some survivors lowered their heads, recognizing his pain. They had just lost their home too.
"But I was powerful," he continued, his tone shifting. "And young. So I did something I didn't fully understand at the time—I absorbed my universe into my dimension."
Gasps.
"You… took in an entire universe?" one of the Opoove repeated in disbelief.
He nodded.
"It wasn't my first." His eyes darkened. "I already had a universe in here upon awakening."
The crowd fell dead silent.
Two universes… within him.
"But even with two universes inside me, I was just a kid with too much power and no idea how to use it." His voice turned distant.
"So I sought out masters."