It began with a whisper.
Not a sound, but a sensation. Like wind moving through a canyon that no longer existed. Arcod floated—or fell. He couldn't tell. There was no up or down. No heat. No cold. No feeling.
Then, memory returned—one last time.
The office. The task he couldn't recall. The flicker of panic. The sudden pull inward as the shard shrunk and vanished.
He remembered it all now with painful clarity. Or rather, without pain. The memory played like a projection, but it stirred nothing in him. No fear. No sorrow. Just... observation.
He was aware, yet not. Present, yet detached.
Then came the feeling of his mind folding in on itself. The black hole formed in the center of his thoughts and pulled at him until everything Arcod once was—every emotion, every attachment—was stripped away like smoke in wind. Thought unraveled. His memories scattered like glass across endless dark.
And still, something lingered.
His self.
Not a name. Not a man. Just the thread of consciousness. That thread was all he had left, drifting in an ocean of nothingness.
Time had no meaning here. It could've been a second or a millennium. He floated—no, existed—until he felt something touch the edges of his presence. It was not light. Not warmth. Just... direction.
He was being pulled again.
And with that pull came change.
His thoughts began to coalesce, forming not into memories, but into something sharper. Narrower. He was becoming a vessel—not filled, but emptied. Stripped of the burdens of humanity.
Then he felt it.
A rupture.
A crack in the void.
And just like that, the darkness spat him out.
He awoke—or at least, became aware—in a plane of nothingness. Not darkness this time. Not quite. It was more like a canvas before the first stroke of paint.
He had no body. No breath. Just presence.
And something was missing.
Emotion.
He waited for it, reaching for even the faintest flicker of feeling. Fear, curiosity, anger, hope—nothing answered.
He remembered how it used to feel. That in itself was horrifying, or should have been, if he could still feel horror. His soul—or whatever part of it had survived—felt lighter. Not freed, but reduced.
Was this what death felt like?
No. He knew instinctively that death was not this. This was... function.
He was still Arcod, in concept. But everything that made him Arcod was slipping through some unseen sieve. As if he were being refined, purified into something elemental.
Something cold.
A presence touched him then—not physical, but overwhelming. It flooded the void, towering over the remnants of his identity like a tidal wave above a grain of sand.
It wasn't a god.
It was something greater.
The Will.
Not a voice, not a mind, but a purpose. It didn't speak to him in words. It didn't explain. It imposed.
And he understood.
Balance.
Order.
Equality.
Unflinching, absolute.
That was his new command.
Not a mission he accepted. One he became.
The moment that purpose was planted into his essence, the last of Arcod's former self began to unravel. He didn't resist—he couldn't. Resistance required fear. Rebellion required anger. And both had been purged.
Still, some sliver of him mourned, if only in theory.
That sliver didn't last.
Time folded again.
When he became aware once more, he was no longer drifting.
He was present.
And this time, he saw.
Stretching before him was a realm beyond comprehension—stars that pulsed not with light, but with judgment. Planets that orbited around ideas, not gravity. Skies written in mathematical law and rivers that flowed with karmic residue. A place of raw law, unchained by any mortal perception of reality.
And at the center of it all, Arcod existed—no longer man, no longer soul, no longer even shard.
He was form without shape, will without want.
A watcher.
A balancer.
The Will.
He surveyed the expanse without feeling. His gaze swept across realms like a glacier across stone—inevitable and indifferent.
Somewhere far below, a world burned under the weight of its own greed. A powerful race hoarded all resources, starving lesser beings into dust. Crying out for salvation.
Once, Arcod might've wept.
Now, he simply observed.
A flick of awareness—so subtle, it didn't even count as a thought—pressed into that world. And balance shifted.
Resources redistributed. Fortunes crumbled. Empires collapsed. Not in rage, not in cruelty, but with mathematical precision.
The poor rose. The powerful fell. The scale evened.
Equity, exacted.
No mercy. No malice.
Just the Will.
He was no god.
No demon.
No man.
He was a machine forged from purpose. A being bound to one unshakable command.
Maintain balance, no matter the cost.
And so, Arcod—the man who once studied under streetlights and rose to corporate power—was no more.
In his place, the universe now held something colder.
Something final.
The Heaven's Will.