Benny woke from his slumber with his heart already racing.
The mausoleum was still dark, but something was definitely wrong. Something ominous prickled his skin, raising goosebumps across his arms and neck. A smell lingered in the air, something primal and darker than anything he'd encountered before. It wasn't decay or rot. It was something fundamental. The scent of entropy itself.
He looked around frantically. Everything seemed as it had been when he fell asleep. The darkness. The silence. The oppressive weight of the tomb pressing down on him.
But he could feel his hair standing on end. His skin felt cold despite the stale air. Sweat poured from him in rivers, soaking through his clothes.
Fear. He felt pure, undiluted fear of the unknown. Not the paranoid anxiety that had plagued him in the disposal pit. This was different. It was real and immediate.
Something was here with him.
Someone was looking at him with eyes that could pierce through him. Through his flesh, through his being, through his thoughts. Reading everything he was like an open book.
Benny let out a cry that was supposed to be courage but came out closer to panic. "Who's there! Show yourself!"
His body didn't lie, though. It was trembling uncontrollably. His voice cracked. His weapon hand shook.
---
Sitan found this utterly amusing. The fear. The bravado masking terror. The predictable mortal response to divine presence.
It was time for him to enter the stage. A proper presentation before the feast. He almost giggled out loud but restrained himself. He wanted to preserve the tension. Build it properly. Make the eventual breaking all the more satisfying.
*Oh, I can feel it tingling inside me,* Sitan thought, anticipation building like hunger. *This will be delicious.*
A few seconds later, the entire chamber trembled. Not from an earthquake. From something far worse. As if a giant foot had stepped down and shaken reality itself awake.
The closed tomb began to move. Stone grinding against stone with a sound that shouldn't exist, that hurts to hear on some fundamental level.
Benny ran back toward the door, driven by pure survival instinct. He felt the sudden chill of death brush over him like a physical presence. Cold fingers trailing across his soul.
His hand reached for the door handle. The door he'd entered through. The door that had closed behind him.
And it simply vanished. As if it had never existed in the first place. The wall became a smooth stone now, unbroken, seamless. No door. No exit. No escape.
A low grumbling sound came from behind him. A voice speaking in a tongue he didn't know. Words that predated human language, that existed before mortals learned to communicate.
Whatever had come out of that tomb was here now. Alive in the darkness. Watching him.
He slowly turned around to find the source of the voice, every instinct screaming at him to run even though there was nowhere to go.
The voice was a mixture of different sounds layered impossibly on top of each other. It was neither man nor woman. It wasn't human at all. It felt divine and demonic simultaneously. Like the voice of the universe itself speaking directly into his mind.
Yet he couldn't understand it. The words were gibberish, nonsense syllables that hurt to hear.
Until the power within him activated. The World System translated the incomprehensible into something manageable, breaking down divine speech into mortal comprehension.
He didn't even notice his eyes beginning to bleed. His nose. His ears. His mouth. Blood running down his face from the strain of perceiving something his mortal mind wasn't designed to process. That's how focused he was on the entity he could barely recognize.
---
Sitan had crafted his appearance carefully for this entrance. He could manipulate himself into whatever existence he wished, and for now, for this performance, he wanted to create horror.
He made himself tall. Impossibly tall. A womanly figure, but disfigured with beastly appendages. Long white hair covering where a face should be. And there was no face. Just a blank space beneath that hair. But somehow, it felt like there were red glowing eyes staring from that emptiness.
This was how he wanted the mortal to perceive him. A psychological game. An attack on sanity before the real test began.
"Ahhhhh... meat. I smell meat..."
The words came out distorted, hungry, eager.
Benny froze completely. Struck motionless by the voice alone. His body refused to obey his commands. His mind screamed to run but his legs wouldn't move.
He grabbed for his weapon on instinct, fingers closing around the grip. But he couldn't draw it. Couldn't move his arm. Didn't understand why his body had become a prison.
The entity moved all over the chamber, flickering between positions too fast to track. Disorienting him. Breaking his sense of space and direction.
Then suddenly, without transition, it was directly in front of him.
Looking at him. Touching his face with appendages that felt wrong, that had too many joints, that bent in directions that shouldn't exist. Crawling all over him, studying him. What seemed to be saliva dripped onto his skin, burning slightly.
Sitan was literally salivating at the scenario unfolding before him. The prospect of eating a proper feast for the first time in ages. A soul with actual power. A meal worth savoring.
---
Benny's power surged suddenly. The Will of the Weak activated without conscious command, dispelling whatever illusion or paralysis magic had been holding him.
He could move again.
He slashed his sword wildly toward the entity, putting all his strength behind the strike. "What are you! Who are you! Don't come near me!"
The desperation in his voice was obvious. He knew at this point that he could die at any moment. That this thing could kill him as easily as breathing. Those panicked words might be his last.
Insidious laughter filled the mausoleum. It came from the entity's faceless face, echoing from impossible directions.
"Hehehehe... human. You came here without knowing whose house you entered. And now you ask me two questions at once? Simply unbelievable. You are the first to do such a thing in the entire existence of time."
The words only left Benny more confused. But he didn't linger on them. Didn't try to understand. He had to act. Had to do something, anything, even if it was foolish rather than brave.
With all his strength, all his might, all the courage he could scrape together from the bottom of his soul, he shouted a war cry. Trying to dispel his fears through sheer volume.
He charged at the figure. It was better to deal the first blow now while this thing was mocking him. Strike before it could strike. Attack before it could kill him.
But Sitan simply stood there. Unmoving. Unbothered.
Then the empty face contorted into something demonic. A thing of pure horror that no mortal eyes should witness. And it spoke with amusement clear in every syllable.
"Hasty, hasty human. You couldn't even enjoy the show I prepared for you."
Sitan slowly began to peel off the form he'd constructed. Like shedding skin. Like emerging from a cocoon. The womanly figure ripped to shreds, falling away in pieces that dissolved into shadow.
What came out was worse. So much worse.
A giant. Truly horrific. It spanned the entire ceiling, some two hundred feet high. It was slow but also felt impossibly quick, as if time itself distorted around this divine presence.
Then Sitan took another form. One known to many before his fall. His face as Bathala. Truly beautiful. Ethereal. Heavenly. Divine in the purest sense.
But all of it was a facade. A mask worn by something that had long ago shredded such images of itself.
"Ah, it has been a while since I took such a form," Sitan said, his voice now smooth and pleasant. Almost kind.
The entire chamber filled with divine light. Blinding but somehow not painful. Benny stood frozen, unable to continue whatever measly attack he'd been about to launch. His weapon hung uselessly in his hand.
It was at this moment that he realized the truth. He was in the presence of a god. A cosmic entity beyond his understanding or ability to fight.
Although he didn't pray to any deity, didn't believe in such things, he couldn't deny what stood before him now. This was divine. This was real.
Before he could speak, Sitan interrupted his thoughts. "What you are thinking is true."
As if he'd read Benny's mind before the fear-stricken man could form words.
"Now, to answer your questions. I am what you think I am. I come in many names, but those are not for you to know. I would like to toy with you more, but there are rules imposed here. A game to be played between you and me. To see if you are worthy."
Sitan's voice became formal, almost businesslike. "If you pass, I shall grant your desires. Whatever you wish, as long as it is bound by the rules of this world. But before that, I hope you will entertain me, human."
The divine figure gestured broadly. "Do you accept the game? Or do you want to continue where we left off?"
The implication was clear. The game, or a battle he couldn't possibly win.
Behind all the blinding light, the eye of a devil watched. Making proposals that seemed generous but would clearly take far more than they gave.
---
Benny's mind raced through a hundred possible scenarios. Should he accept? Should he gamble his life in an unwinnable battle?
A minute passed. Then another. Then more. Time stretched as he tried to think of a way out, any way out.
Of course, time for Sitan was trivial. But even immortals could be impatient when hungry.
"Make up your mind, mortal. You do not have the lifespan to spare deliberating. Your pitiful life is too short to waste on indecision."
Unknown to Sitan, Benny was also immortal. At least within the labyrinth. But Benny didn't know this fact either. He didn't understand his power any more than the god did.
In the end, with no other option presenting itself, Benny had to accept the gamble. "I accept. As long as you hold your end of the bargain."
A sinister grin appeared on Sitan's face. It could almost be seen beneath the divine light he'd wrapped himself in.
"Perfect."
The game had begun. And Benny had no idea what he'd just agreed to.