Ingredients of Divinity

"What if I define history itself?"

The thought slithered through Damián's mind like a serpent made of stars. His pupils dilated with awe, a silence louder than thunder roaring inside his chest.

"What if I become the God of the universe… and the outer ones too?"

He stared blankly at the ceiling beams above him, old wood creaking with time, his mind already drawing borders between the real and the false.

A single phrase echoed over and over in his head:

"I could be God."

He could rewrite laws, split existence in half, turn blasphemy into doctrine and dreams into geography.

He could end the era of lies.

He could burn the concept of death itself.

Then, like a blade slicing through divine delusion, came Axir's voice.

"If you want this so badly…"

The old man stood up, his joints whispering secrets to the wind.

"…then let's go get it."

Damián blinked.

"What… what do we even need?"

Axir didn't answer with words.

He turned, walked toward a dusty shoe rack shoved in the corner of the room — its presence so mundane it became invisible.

He bent slowly, reached under a ragged pair of old brown leather shoes, and pulled out something tucked deep inside the innersole.

A folded sheet of parchment.

As Axir unfolded it, dust flared into the air, glinting gold in the lantern's flame like the memories of forgotten worlds. His eyes scanned it once, then twice. Then he read it aloud with solemn clarity.

"We need Encephalartos woodii bark…"

"…three gallons of blood from a Vaquita…"

"…black powder of obsidian…"

"…the purest mountain water…"

"…and your blood and your saliva."

The words hung in the air like an executioner's axe.

Damián's heart skipped. "The Vaquita?" he said, his voice cracking with disbelief.

"That's the rarest marine creature on the planet—maybe extinct. You know we're never finding any of this, right? This is suicide. Can't we use another method? Like… fusing?"

Axir didn't flinch.

He laughed.

But it wasn't warm. It was the sound of someone who had watched thousands dream, and thousands fail.

"No one would fuse with you."

He said it without cruelty, but with absolute certainty, as if declaring the color of the sky.

Then he turned, walked toward a nearby hook nailed into the wall. Hanging on it was an old jacket — frayed, patchy, stitched with time itself. Its colors bled from deep ocean blue, to void-black, to ashen white like clouds mourning a sun.

He tossed it at Damián with a motion too sharp for his age.

"Wear that."

He paused.

"We have a hell of a journey ahead."