"Praise be to you!"
The chant was a guttural, rhythmic roar that hammered against Leo's consciousness.
"Oh, Great Lord of the Sun!"
"Source of all life!"
"Master of all things!"
A tribe of primitives, their faces smeared with ochre and clay, danced in a frenzied circle around a crude stone pillar. Carved into its surface was a single, radiant symbol: the sun. Their steps were alien, their bodies clad in rough animal hides, yet their devotion was a palpable force, a wave of raw belief washing over him.
Leo, or the being that was now Leo, stared out at the scene and felt his new, non-physical mind reel.
Who am I? Where am I? What the hell am I supposed to do?
The questions echoed in a void where his memories should have been. As a diligent, overworked programmer from a world he vaguely recalled as Earth, his last clear thought was of a company trip to Japan. A reward for landing a major contract. His colleagues had been chattering excitedly about exploring the nightlife of Ginza. But for Leo, the world had developed a glitch.
A tiny, black vortex, invisible and intangible to everyone else, had appeared in his field of vision. It followed him, a persistent tear in reality. Fearing a brain tumor or a psychotic break, he'd excused himself, rushed back to the hotel, and locked the door. With a trembling hand, he had reached out to touch the anomaly.
Darkness had swallowed him whole.
Now, this. A primeval forest of staggering scale, with trees so immense it would take a dozen men to encircle their trunks. And these dancing, chanting primitives. The most bizarre part? He understood their language as if it were his own.
This isn't a hallucination. I've… I've crossed over. The thought, borrowed from a thousand fantasy novels he'd consumed in his youth, felt both absurd and terrifyingly real.
The primitives sensed his awareness. Their frenzy escalated into a euphoric clamor.
"The great god has descended!"
"Bring forth the offering!"
God? Me? Leo was still grappling with this when they dragged a man forward. He was dressed in a fine, albeit torn, white tunic. His hair was blond, his eyes blue, and a blood-soaked bandage was wrapped around his head. The moment the man saw the stone pillar, his civilized composure shattered.
"No, don't kill me!" he shrieked, his words a strange, yet understandable, dialect. "You can't! I am a Baron! I have money, so much money! I'll give you anything!"
He struggled, but the hands gripping him were like iron vices. An old, withered tribesman stepped forward, raising a crude iron dagger. With a swift, brutal motion, he plunged it into the baron's chest.
Crimson blood gushed forth, flowing in rivulets down the stone pillar, staining its base a deeper shade of red. The man's eyes widened in a final, silent scream as he collapsed. A translucent, bewildered soul detached from the corpse and drifted towards Leo's point of perception within the pillar.
So, souls are real.
Driven by a strange mix of curiosity and instinct, Leo extended a formless appendage of his will, trying to grasp the shimmering soul. The moment he made contact, the baron's dazed spirit snapped into focus. It saw not a pillar, but a vast, black-red sun, and within it, a shadowy figure reaching for him.
"Great Amon-Et, Lord of the Dawn!" the soul screamed in pure terror. "A heresy god seeks to devour me! Save your faithful servant! I do not wish to be consumed by a False God! I wish to enter your Kingdom!"
The soul thrashed wildly. Startled, Leo tried to pull back, but it was too late. The spirit dissolved like melting ice, transforming into a sliver of red light that shot directly into him.
Fragments of a life that was not his own exploded in his mind.
The unfortunate sacrifice was Baron Fane of House Ebert, from the city of Gantz in the northern Violet Kingdom. A nobleman in name only, his fortunes had long since crumbled, leaving him with nothing but a title and two sellswords he'd lured with empty promises of knighthood. Three days ago, a vast, uncharted forest had materialized out of thin air next to Gantz. The Archmage Tingarth had declared it free of magical beasts and named it the Endless Forest.
Seeing a treasure trove ripe for plunder, Fane had ventured in, dreaming of gold and glory. Instead, he'd found this tribe. His men died fighting; he was captured for a higher, more terrible purpose.
False God? He means… me. Another memory fragment surfaced. For thousands of years, this tribe had worshipped the sun, their blood sacrifices and prayers coalescing around this stone pillar. Their faith had slowly, painstakingly given birth to a nascent god. Had he been given a few more centuries, this god would have developed its own consciousness. But Leo's sudden arrival through the vortex had been a hostile takeover. He had usurped the god's place, becoming the very being they worshipped.
I'm a god. A jolt of exhilaration shot through him, immediately followed by a wave of panic. Fane's memories were clear on this point: gods like him, born of mortal worship and blood rites on the mortal plane, were labeled False Gods. They were abominations, heresies without a divine realm of their own. The seven Primordial Gods born at the dawn of time, and the New Gods who had ascended over millennia, held a unified stance on his kind.
Discovery meant annihilation.
"My situation is... not great," Leo muttered to his non-existent self. "I'm a rat in a world of divine exterminators." He decided then and there to lay low, to nurture his power within the confines of the Endless Forest. He wouldn't show his face to the wider world until he was a True God, or something close to it.
His gaze drifted upwards, past the canopy, to the sky of this new world. Two blazing red suns hung there. A pang of homesickness struck him. I wonder if I can ever go back to Earth.
The thought had barely formed when the familiar black vortex bloomed within his consciousness. The portal!
He reached out with his will and touched it. The world dissolved into blackness again. When his eyes fluttered open, he was staring at the bland, beige ceiling of his hotel room in Japan.
"It's a two-way door," he whispered, a grin spreading across his face. He scrambled out of bed and rushed to the mirror. The face staring back was his own: a young man with a neat haircut and a clean-shaven, ordinary face. He was human again.
And yet, he could feel something more. The vortex now resided not in front of him, but within his mind. With a simple act of will, a miniature black-red sun materialized behind him, casting an eerie, crimson glow across the small room.
"I'm back in my body," Leo breathed, his reflection's eyes wide with a terrifying, thrilling realization. "But I kept the powers of a god."