What felt like an eternity to humans was merely seconds to a god. Time operated differently for immortal beings. Minutes became meaningless. Hours were blinks. Centuries passed like breaths.
This reawakened god was no longer Bathala. That had been his name before the fall, inscribed in prayers and hymns, spoken with reverence by millions of worshippers who no longer existed. Now he was called Sitan. An evil being who had become the antithesis of everything he once stood for.
His story was written on the surface of his coffin, carved in ancient script that no mortal could read anymore. The tale of his corruption. His questioning of the divine. His eventual fall from divine grace and His imprisonment.
He had fallen and been sealed in the lowest heaven of Centuury. In a tomb designed specifically to contain him and his divine power. Chains made of concepts rather than metal. Walls built from prayers meant to keep darkness out, now keeping darkness in.
But Sitan had not been idle during his imprisonment. He had absorbed everything dark that existed in this space. The darkness of hearts that had died here. The darkness of the world itself seeps through the cracks in reality. The fundamental absence of light that existed before creation and would exist after its end.
And through that absorption, he'd started to realize something profound. Something the other gods refused to acknowledge.
Darkness was more powerful than light. Far more powerful and more ancient than they were.
It was abundant. It encapsulated everything in this dimension and the next. The entire cosmos was fundamentally dark, with only tiny points of light scattered across the infinite void. Stars that mortals called beautiful, but which were ultimately insignificant in the face of the overwhelming darkness that surrounded them.
The darkness itself was the canvas. Light was merely the paint.
He could now understand why those who tapped into darkness were so much more powerful than those who served the light. The light was too few. Too finite. Too fragile. It would never dominate the heavens or those beneath them because light was fundamentally a temporary aberration.
Eventually, everything would return to nothing. Back to the start of time where nothing existed. Back to the darkness that these other gods, the High God, God King or the First God and every deity that came after, tried desperately to reject.
They created light to fill the void. But it was never enough. It would never be enough. Light was a losing battle against the inevitable entropy of existence.
Sitan laughed at this realization. A sound that would have driven mortals mad if they could hear it. Even imprisoned here for questioning the divine order, for speaking truths that the other gods refused to acknowledge, he had won in the most fundamental way.
He laughed because he knew that even gods had their ends. Just as he had fallen, so too would they eventually fall. And for countless lifetimes, he'd accumulated all the darkness of this place where he was imprisoned and entombed. Building power. Growing stronger. Waiting for the opportunity to escape.
---
From time to time, mortal souls had stumbled into his tomb. Into his prison. Drawn by curiosity or desperation or simply bad luck.
He did not devour them immediately. That would be wasteful. Instead, he gave them a chance. Or rather, he gave them the illusion of a chance, which amused him far more than simple consumption.
No one had passed his tests before. Not one. And he'd consumed countless souls over the millennia. Especially the juicy-looking ones, the souls with potential and power, the ones that provided the most sustenance when he finally broke them.
The spirits trapped in the walls, the ones who had watched Benny walk through the passage, they were the remnants of those failed tests. Souls he'd consumed but not fully digested, kept partially aware as another layer of his cruel game.
And he'd given them hope too. False hope, but hope nonetheless. He'd told them they could escape if they captured the next mortal to enter this place. If they possessed a living body and used it to walk free.
But that too was an elaborate lie, a construction designed to give them the illusion of salvation. A salvation that would never come.
There were restrictions, of course. Rules that made the game more interesting. First and foremost, they couldn't enter a mortal's body if that mortal still possessed hope. Second, the mortal had to take the test Sitan prepared. And the moment that mortal showed true weakness, genuine surrender to despair, only then could the spirits claim them.
It was an elaborate cruelty. A system designed to maximize suffering and entertainment. The spirits thought they were hunting the mortals. The mortals thought they were escaping. But both were merely pieces in Sitan's game, moving according to rules only he fully understood.
---
And now he had been awakened once more from his slumber, looking down at this particular mortal soul. A very juicy one at that.
This one was interesting. Blessed with intervention from a third party. Not quite a god, significantly weaker, but operating on similar principles. Just working with different fundamentals. Fundamentals that reign the natural laws of the world.
Sitan had heard of them before. They called themselves the System. Or more accurately, the World System. Administrators and managers who implemented the gods' influence across the mortal realms.
They existed because the gods couldn't directly interfere with mortals. The divine power was too overwhelming. A mortal receiving a god's blessing without mediation would simply burn out, their soul unable to contain that much raw divinity. They would die screaming, consumed from within.
So the gods had found a workaround. A medium. A third party to the arrangement.
The System served as a buffer, translating divine will into something mortals could actually use. Powers. Skills. Functions that operated on the rules and logic of the natural world rather than pure divine caprice.
This System spanned across multiple planets, what the gods called the low heavens. Across galaxies. Across multiple dimensions and universes. A vast infrastructure managing the divine entertainment that the gods called their "game."
Sitan found it amusing. The gods pretended they were above such things, that they operated on principles higher than mortal comprehension. But in the end, they were just playing with toys. Creating rules and watching mortals struggle against them. No different than children torturing insects.
And this mortal before him, this Benny, had been given System access. A power called "The Will of the Weak." How ironic. How perfectly suited to Sitan's purposes.
---
He laughed again, his eyes glowing brighter red. His devilish features became more pronounced behind the darkness that veiled his true form. A form that wasn't anything that existed naturally in this world or the next.
If he wished, he could transform into something mortals would recognize. A massive serpent, perhaps. An abomination combining the worst aspects of many creatures. Something that triggered primal fear in every living thing that saw it.
But for now, he remained in the shadows. Waiting. Watching. Planning.
This mortal was different from the others who'd stumbled into his prison. He carried something unusual. A stubbornness. A cowardice that paradoxically pushed him forward instead of holding him back. He'd survived things that should have killed him. He'd walked paths that should have broken him.
And most importantly, he still possessed hope. Fragile hope, barely a flicker, but enough to protect him from the spirits in the walls. Enough to keep him technically alive in Sitan's game.
That would change, of course. Sitan would make sure of it. He would test this mortal. Break him slowly. Strip away that hope piece by piece until nothing remained but despair and the willingness to accept any bargain, no matter how damning.
Then, when the mortal was properly broken, Sitan would offer him a deal. Power in exchange for service. Strength in exchange for corruption. Survival in exchange for becoming a vessel for darkness to spread through the world once more.
The mortal would accept. They always did. When faced with death or damnation, mortals invariably chose damnation. They convinced themselves they could control it, could resist the corruption that comes with it, that they could use the power for good even if it came from evil.
Oh how, they were always wrong. But by the time they realized it, it was far too late.
---
Now Sitan only needed to wait for this mortal to awaken from his slumber.
The test was already prepared. The game pieces were in position. The rules were set. All that remained was for the mortal to open his eyes and realize the nightmare he'd walked into.
Sitan's smile widened in the darkness. His red eyes pulsed with anticipation.
This would be entertaining. This mortal had potential. He might last longer than the others. He might provide more amusement before he finally broke.
And when he did break, when he finally accepted Sitan's offer and became a vessel for corruption, he would be the perfect tool for spreading darkness back into a world that thought it had been cleansed of such evil.
The fallen god settled back, patient as only immortals could be. Time meant nothing to him. Whether the mortal woke in minutes or hours or days made no difference.
The outcome was already decided. It was always decided. Mortals were so predictable in their weakness, in their desperate clinging to life no matter the cost.
This one would be no different. The power he'd been given, this "Will of the Weak," would make him resist longer than most. But it would also make his fall more spectacular when it finally came.
And Sitan would be there to catch him. To mold him. To use him.
The chamber waited in darkness and silence.
The test will begin soon.