Elias Crowe died as he lived—alone, bitter, and forgotten.
A fisherman by trade, a nobody by reputation. His name, if ever spoken, was done so with contempt or mockery. The people of Eldmere knew him as the unluckiest soul on the coast. A man whose nets came up empty more often than not, whose boat creaked like the bones of the damned, and whose glare could curdle milk.
The sea took him without ceremony.
One misstep on slick wood, a sudden wave, and the salt-choked darkness swallowed him whole. There were no mourners, no frantic shouts of alarm. Only the cold embrace of the depths.
And then—emptiness.
Not death. Not an afterlife. Not peace. Elias found himself in the Void.
An endless, fathomless nothing.
He drifted. Time, if it existed there, stretched beyond comprehension. He thought at first it was a cruel dream. That surely, at any moment, he would wake on the soaked timbers of his boat with the taste of brine in his mouth.
But he never did.
In that emptiness, there was no sound, no light, no touch. Nothing to anchor a soul. And so Elias's mind turned inward.
He remembered. Every injustice. Every insult. Every time a hand could have reached for him and didn't. The jeers of children. The dismissive glares of merchants. The gods he had spat upon for their indifference.
Hatred bloomed.
Not a spark, but a cold, enduring fire. It smoldered in the depths of his forsaken being, growing with every passing moment. Hatred for the gods who had crafted such a cruel world. Hatred for the mortals who perpetuated it.
Millennia passed—or seconds. The Void did not care.
His mind should have shattered. It tried. It broke and reformed, jagged and unrecognizable. What remained was a singular, unrelenting will.
Destroy them.
All of them.
**
A ripple in the nothing.
A voice, ancient and sorrowful, like a distant bell tolling in the dark.
"You have suffered unjustly."
A figure appeared. Wreathed in mist and pale light, it bore the shape of a man, though its eyes held the weight of collapsing stars.
"I am Orelion, Warden of the Veil. Yours is a soul misplaced, lost between realms. An error. One that shall be amended."
Elias did not fall to his knees. He did not weep with gratitude. His lip curled.
"An error? You left me to rot in nothingness for eternity and call it an 'error'?"
Orelion's gaze did not waver. "A restitution shall be made. Three boons, to balance the scales."
Elias smiled. Not the smile of a man saved, but of one who had already decided to burn the world that wronged him.
"Then hear my demands, god."
He raised a hand, gnarled and ghost-pale in the voidlight.
"First, I wish to become a dragon—not a simple beast, but a being of limitless growth. Infinite potential. A predator of gods."
The Warden's expression tightened. "Such a form... could unmake the world."
"Not my concern."
A pause.
"So be it."
"Second," Elias continued, "grant me infinite storage. A boundless space within myself to hold all I claim, devour, and collect."
A nod.
"And lastly," Elias hissed, "bestow upon me the evolution system from a game of my old world. One where I grow stronger through conquest and slaughter. Where every foe feeds my ascension."
Orelion hesitated. "You walk a path of devastation."
Elias's grin was a wound splitting his face.
"I walk the path your gods carved for me. Now I'll drag them down it."
The god raised his hand. Power, cold and ancient, washed over Elias.
**
When next he drew breath, it was not through lungs.
The sky above was a deep, impossible violet. Twin suns burned in a perpetual twilight. Mountains soared like jagged teeth, forests shimmered with bioluminescent leaves, and rivers ran molten gold.
Elias looked down at himself.
A massive form of black obsidian scales, his claws like knives, wings vast enough to blot out the world. Magic hummed in his blood. The Void echoed within his chest.
Before his eyes, a crimson script appeared:
> EVOLUTION SYSTEM ONLINE Current Form: Abyssal Drake (Stage 1) Experience: 0/500 Inventory: Infinite
A pulse of power. A hunger unlike anything mortal.
A world far larger than the one he knew stretched before him. Kingdoms, empires, deities walking among mortals. Magic thick in the air.
Prey.
He felt it all—the terror of weak things, the wary eyes of ancient powers.
And he laughed.
Not for revenge.
For sport.
He spread his wings. The air rippled, and the land trembled. The age of gods was ending.
And Elias Crowe would be their doom.