Apotheosis

After the system spoke, there was silence.

A deep yet peaceful, all-encompassing silence.

Like the entire Void was holding its breath...

A long moment passed while I struggled. Enduring the agonizing pain of the soul, my turbulent mind and the silent pain of a foreign body.

The silent seemed to stretch for an eternity until finally the Void exhaled.

And the veil of imperceptibility that clouded reality shattered.

...

The world beyond the imperceptible void was vast.

It was unlike anything I had ever seen.

A living paradox.

An infinite sprawling mass, endlessly collapsing into itself and rebirthing. It had no definite shape but it wasn't formless either. The colors that painted its canvas were unlike anything I had ever seen; I couldn't tell whether they were new combinations of colors or simply the total absence of it.

Non-Euclidean geometry...

I thought as I floated before the incomprehensible mass before me. My black hair and torn clothes flailing in the ethereal space.

For a brief moment, I wonder how I was still alive. How I could breathe or how I was still lucid even after witnessing something so bizarre.

My shaky left hand instinctively touched my core – the area where the World Energy resides in the body, the Aperture.

But my eyes never left the scene unfolding before me.

For a long moment, I simply stared, admiring the surreal beauty of it before I then heard a voice.

No, not a voice...

A presence, a notion, a paradox given form, it spoke.

Not through sound nor through language, but via the sheer gravity of awareness.

It was in that moment that I realized that I was in the presence of a god.

"So, you can gaze upon me without going mad."

For some reason, I thought I felt it gesture to the crown on my head, the Crown of Thorns.

Its words, if they could even be called that, clawed at the very fabric of my being.

I had been noticed, fully noticed. Stripped bare of any mask, any lies, any untruths, any biases, any false memories and left as I was.

As Alex.

My eyes widened as my once fractured mind, suddenly piecing itself together, connecting the shattered fragments of my original knowledge, memories, control, hunger and fate, to reform me.

To reform Alex.

Ah...am back...

My hollow eyes reignited with the familiar light of darkness and my signature grin split my face like a terrible crack. I gazed upon the Heart of the Abyss and spoke in a soft tone,

"Hello, Abyss."

The Abyss didn't respond, instead it said.

"You are not like the others."

I paused, not allowing my grin to waver before asking, "The others? You mean the Elders?"

"Indeed. Each of them had once reached me, gazed upon me but none had answered."

In that moment, I realized one thing.

This was the moment of reckoning.

The final fork in the road.

"What could they not answer?", I spoke, my voice laced with hesitance.

A long silence drew out, growing taut like a string before the Abyss spoke again,

"Tell me."

The Abyss leaned back, before continuing.

"What is the nature of being?"

I froze, starstruck.

It was a simple question, one asked by philosophers, kings, legends and even madmen. A question which has haunted humanity for so long.

A question that has gone unanswered.

And now, the Abyss wanted me to answer it.

HOO...FWOO...

I took a deep breath, calming my beating heart and the raging whirlpool of energy.

I closed my eyes, as I sorted my thoughts.

The nature of being?

In other words...

What does it mean to be?

I exhaled slowly, steadying the storm within my mind.

Then, I spoke,

"To be is to contradict."

The Abyss did not react at first.

But then the weight of its presence shifted ever so slightly, like a great and slumbering thing turning its attention fully upon me.

"Explain.", it rumbled.

My lips trembled but my voice was steady, measured.

"To exist is to defy."

My eyes gleamed as I continued,

"Life is contradiction. We are finite, yet we crave the infinite. We seek meaning, knowing none exists. We desire control, knowing we are at the mercy of forces beyond us."

"We yearn life despite the inevitability of death. We love despite the risk of pain. We believe to deny doubt."

I paused, steadying my shaky breath,

"All living things are creatures of paradox, walking contradictions, constantly at war with the truths no one wants to accept."

The Abyss did not speak, but its silence was not empty. It was waiting.

"Even you!"

I exclaimed, raising my hands, my voice growing louder,

"You embody the void, yet you exist...you are nothing, yet you are aware...if existence were simple, if being had a singular nature, then we would not question it...but... we do, because to be is to struggle against what should be..."

"But..."

I dropped my head, and took a deep breath, before meeting the Abyss with a shaky smile,

"To that end, it would mean that existence is just one big joke of a struggle."

I looked up, letting out an exhale before concluding,

"Which is why the end goal of existence is to break free from it, from its chains."

I closed my eyes and said, "To become free."

The silence that followed was not just deep—it was absolute.

The Abyss simply watched me as I floated in peaceful stillness.

For a moment, the world was engulfed by nothing but blissful silence.

And then something happened.

The presence did something incomprehensible...

Something akin to a smile.

It had expected another rote recital of meaning, another futile attempt at defining the undefined.

But instead, it had met something new, something original, something entertaining.

The Abyss was entertained.

It was amused.

"At long last."

Then suddenly, the mass moved and like a domino effect, a strange ripple spread throughout the whole space.

W-what?

Out of nowhere, five figures appeared.

The first was a man wearing a scholar's mantle and holding a cane; it was Methuselah, the Bearer of Truths.

The second was an elongated figure, draped in black and holding a watering can; it was Wyrtweard, the Keeper of Times.

The third was a giant ouroboros serpent, glowing with suffused radiance; it was the Hollow Drake.

The fourth was a revolting mass of tentacles, maws and countless decaying eyes while the fifth was an entity made from a knot of never-ending threads which all converged at its center.

I didn't know the names of the last two but I believed I had encountered them. I kept my eyes away from the serpent though.

Nevertheless, I knew who they all were.

They were the Elders of the Abyss.

I could feel the weight of their aged gazes pressing onto me, some curious, some amused and some indifferent.

But I didn't falter.

The Abyss had acknowledged me.

And so, they all remained silent.

The Abyss then spoke, addressing them,

"Elders, at long last, the moment of reckoning is upon us. After countless trials and numerous descents, we finally witness the birth of our new sovereign."

"Our prince."

The Elders lowered their heads in reverent silence while I watched in awe.

"Now, let us begin...", it paused, before turning to me,

"His Coronation."

The moment, the Abyss said that, the system suddenly spoke,

[You have completed the Secret Quest: Devil Spawn.]

[Quest Rank: Beyond Legendary - ???]

[Appraisal: Phenomenal!]

[You have been rewarded with Apotheosis.]

...

Alex was unmade.

Unraveled.

The Abyss stripped apart his flesh and bones, leaving behind the singular mass of his Aperture.

Then the entire Abyss shifted; the incomprehensible mass swirling into a small but infinitely dense mass – like the singularity of a blackhole.

The world shuddered and reality groaned.

The singular mass then invaded Alex's Aperture and through it, it took root in his soul. From his Aperture, a black fog escaped and tyrannized the node of World Energy in his core, but it didn't stifle it.

Instead, it let it breathe and let it grow, accelerating its growth rate to the point of manifesting beyond the Aperture.

Then the black fog left the Aperture and guided the leaking World Energy, using it to reform Alex's body.

It remade his organs first and then his bones, to cage them. Then from there it made his muscle structure before moving on to his skin.

His tan skin was remade, and free of any flaws, any blemish. His body was pushed to peak, likening it to one sculpted out of smooth jade.

His hair grew out of his scalp, turning into a flowing pristine white and his beautiful black eyes grew unfathomably deep.

His mind grew sharp and his soul grew tenuous but his self-remained.

He was still Alex.

When the Abyss finished its work, it leaked out as the fog and from it the Elders moved.

They each took turns, casting hexes on him before vanishing along with the black fog which had now lost its autonomy.

The Crown of Thorns nested nimbly on his head, not as a burden but as a symbol of coronation.

A coronation for the Bastard Prince of the Abyss.

The Error of the World.

Indeed.

This was the tale of how Alex became the Devil Spawn.

A tale of his struggles, his growth, his curiosity, his madness, his death.

And ultimately,

His Apotheosis.