Chapter 0: The Spark Beneath the Storm
The rain had no rhythm just cold needles falling from a gray, uncaring sky.
Dren sat alone beneath a cracked, graffiti-smeared bus stop, wrapped in a damp hoodie that once belonged to someone who still believed in him. The fabric clung to him like guilt. His shoes squelched every time he shifted his weight, soaked through from a day of wandering alleys and backstreets looking for food, warmth anything that felt human.
A soaked, half-torn comic book rested in his lap one of the last issues of Invincible.
He was homeless.
Unemployed for three weeks.
Hungry for two days.
His stomach groaned like a wounded animal, but he ignored it. He had become used to that low, gnawing ache. It was like background music now. A dull rhythm of suffering he no longer had the strength to protest.
How did I get myself to here?
That thought, quiet, jagged, and far too late echoed louder than the storm around him.
He leaned back against the cold, rusted bench, ignoring how the chill seeped into his spine. The city passed him by like a ghost: horns blaring in the distance, neon lights bleeding across puddles like blood from a wound, footsteps always moving away from him. No one looked. No one slowed down. He had become part of the urban camouflage invisible, unwanted.
Maybe I shouldn't have listened to that guy's teachings.
His lips tightened.
That guy.
The man from the forums.
He called himself HighGod part mystic, part lunatic, part prophet who spoke with cryptic assurance about the nature of existence. Dren had devoured his words like they were divine scripture. He watched grainy videos of Krishnamurti whispering about choiceless awareness, read Taoist riddles about empty vessels and effortless action, chased the idea of awakening like a dog chasing smoke.
He thought he was becoming something more.
He memorized the words. He practiced the silence. He shed his name, his job, his responsibilities, his relationships all in pursuit of this "Universal Way."
But all it gave him was emptiness.
No enlightenment. No secret power. No peace.
Just metaphors.
It didn't matter how many illusions he tried to dissolve, the hunger in his gut was real. The cold was real. The dirt under his nails, the blisters on his feet, the hollow ache in his chest...
None of that bowed to philosophy.
He laughed bitterly, his breath fogging in the night air.
_Maybe I'm not some hidden sage._
Maybe I'm just a fool with a waterlogged comic and no place to sleep.
He looked down at the crumpled pages in his lap. Invincible. The issue where Mark fights in the sun where he burns, bleeds, and still rises. Where he becomes more than his enemies, more than even he thought possible.
That's what Dren had always wanted.
Not enlightenment.
Not detachment.
Power.
The kind that can't be stolen in an alleyway.
The kind that fights back.
The kind that matters.
"I want his power," Dren muttered.
He meant it.
He wasn't asking the universe anymore. He was demanding it.
Lightning split the sky above, followed by a low, growling thunder.
And then without warning the heavens answered.
A flash of white. A shockwave that tore through the air with a sound like reality snapping in half.
Dren didn't even scream.
The lightning bolt hit the bus stop directly, and with it him. His body lit up like dry timber struck by divine judgment. For a fleeting instant, he felt everything: the voltage surging through his muscles, the heat, the terror, the sound of his bones humming from the force
And then, nothing.
No pain.
No cold.
No time.
Just
Silence.
Then light.
Not warm. Not cold. Not real.
Just light.
Dren opened his eyes.
He was standing.
Breathing.
But there was no ground beneath him. No ceiling above. No walls. Just a seamless, endless white space like thought had become a room. Every direction was forward. Every step was the same.
His body looked whole. Not burned. Not broken. Clean. The hoodie was gone. His skin looked smooth, his limbs unscarred. His hunger was gone, too. He wasn't full just... not lacking.
He turned in place slowly.
"What... where am I?"
There was no echo. The words just hung there.
And then, something shifted. A presence, impossible to explain, entered the space. Not from a direction, but from reality itself. Like an idea waking up.
He turned again and this time, someone was standing there.
They looked human, but only loosely. A figure made of light, smoke, and suggestion. Not old or young. Not male or female. Their face was simple, but unnervingly blank, too symmetrical, too still.
The being smiled. A little too wide. A little too long.
"So," it said, voice like velvet wrapped around steel,
"you don't like that the answer to my universe is acceptance... to what is."
It chuckled.
"You don't like being told to make peace with suffering. You don't want transcendence.
You want resistance. You want war."
Dren's nonexistent throat clenched.
The thing stepped forward, the white floor bending under its feet like liquid.
"Good. Good."
"You've given me an excuse."
Its eyes, if they were eyes glimmered with something ancient and darkly amused.
"I've been waiting for someone to reject the rules. Not just ignore them- spit on them.
Someone willing to say 'no' to the peace of surrender."
"So here's what I'm going to do."
"I'm going to send you away. To the end of everything known even to me!"
It smiled wider, as if the real joke hadn't landed yet.
"To a part of the Omniverse I don't govern. Where none of us do."
"No laws. No karma. No dharma. No cosmic lessons."
"Only chaos. Violence. Power."
Dren's breath hitched. "Wait. You're serious? Who even are you?"
"Who am I?" it said. "That's not important."
"If you have the power to reach me here again you will know."
It raised its hand.
The floor beneath Dren's feet began to crack - not with sound, but with feeling. As if reality itself was becoming _less certain.
"There are places beyond my reach: places the others won't touch. That's where I'm sending you."
"A sector of the Omniverse long forgotten. Lawless. Brutal. Unstable."
The cracks spread faster now. Jagged obsidian lines across the flawless white.
"You will be reborn there."
"Not as you were: that body was useless. But something... different. Something I've pulled from the edge of your desires. Your comic. Your rage. Your broken philosophies."
Dren's eyes widened as the ground gave way beneath him.
"Let's see how far your rebellion takes you."
"Good luck, little spark."
And then.. He fell.