Death was not supposed to feel like this.
Leo expected darkness.
He expected silence.
He expected nothing.
Instead, he felt warmth—soft, trembling warmth that wrapped around his consciousness like a fragile cocoon. A rhythmic sound echoed near him, slow and steady, like the beating of a heart far larger than his own.
Thump… thump… thump…
Pain came next.
Not the glorious pain of battle, not the burning agony of broken bones or torn flesh that he had endured for a hundred years of endless war—but a dull, suffocating pain. Small lungs struggling to breathe. Weak muscles twitching without control. A throat that cried without command.
Leo tried to open his eyes.
Light stabbed him.
A sharp, blinding white filled his vision, and instinctively, he screamed.
But the scream that came out was not the roar of the Supreme Being who had once shaken dimensions.
It was the cry of a newborn.
A Second Birth
"He's alive… thank the heavens, he's alive…"
A woman's voice trembled nearby—exhausted, cracked, yet filled with relief so deep it hurt to hear.
Leo's thoughts scattered like fragments of shattered glass.
Alive?
He?
Voices echoed around him, unfamiliar, rough, and human.
"Barely breathing when he came out."
"The child is small… too small."
"We don't have medicine."
"If fate is kind, he'll live."
Fate.
Leo almost laughed, but his body refused to obey.
Slowly, painfully, awareness returned.
His body—this body—was weak. Pathetic. Every movement felt delayed, dulled, as if he were wrapped in chains made of flesh. His once-infinite senses, capable of spanning galaxies, were gone. No cosmic awareness. No time vision. No dimensional perception.
Only the heat of human skin… and hunger.
Leo realized the truth with shocking clarity.
He had not survived.
He had been reborn.
A Poor Family, A Broken World
Days passed. Or maybe weeks. Time felt strange, heavy, compressed.
Leo lay inside a tiny hut made of mud and metal scraps. The roof leaked when it rained. Cold wind slipped through the cracks at night. There was no technology, no comfort—only struggle.
The woman who held him was thin, her hands rough from labor.
His mother.
She named him Leo, unaware of the weight that name carried across destroyed universes.
His father was a quiet man with tired eyes, working endlessly just to feed the family. Their clothes were torn. Their food scarce. Yet every night, they held the child carefully, as if afraid he might disappear.
Leo watched.
He listened.
He learned.
Earth.
This was Earth—but not the Earth he remembered from ancient records within the universe. Something was terribly wrong.
The sky was different.
Even from inside the hut, Leo could sense it. The air carried tension. Fear. Ancient scars that had never healed. Some nights, the sky glowed faintly red or violet, as though reality itself was bruised.
And sometimes…
The ground shook.
Echoes Of A Forgotten Power
As months passed, Leo grew. Slowly.
Too slowly.
His body remained weaker than other children his age. He often fell sick. His parents worried constantly, whispering prayers to gods who no longer answered.
Yet inside Leo's fragile body, something slept.
He felt it.
A pressure, deep within his chest—not painful, but heavy, like a sealed door made of divine metal. Behind it was something vast. Something ancient.
The blood.
The unknowable drop of cosmic blood that had entered his mouth at the moment of the locket's destruction—blood born from a godlike existence, comparable to Mahashiva, the destroyer and creator.
It had not disappeared.
It had merged.
But Leo could not control it.
Not yet.
Every time his emotions surged—fear, anger, desperation—the pressure would respond. His heartbeat would echo unnaturally. The air around him would vibrate for a split second.
Once, when a wooden beam fell toward his sleeping mother, the beam cracked midair.
No one noticed.
Except Leo.
The World's Truth Revealed
When Leo was five years old, the truth of Earth revealed itself.
It began with screams.
The sky darkened unnaturally in the middle of the day. Clouds twisted into spirals, and the ground shook so violently that huts collapsed like sandcastles.
Leo's mother grabbed him, running barefoot through dust and fire.
From the horizon, something massive emerged.
A monster.
Its body was a grotesque fusion of flesh and shadow, taller than mountains, eyes glowing like dying stars. Soldiers—armed with strange weapons glowing with runes—fought desperately against it.
Leo saw humans wielding power.
Magic. Martial force. Energy techniques that bent natural laws.
And still… it wasn't enough.
People died by the hundreds in minutes.
Leo felt it then—a resonance between himself and the creature.
Not familiarity.
But recognition.
This world was no longer ruled by humanity alone.
A World Divided By Power
Later, through whispers, broken news devices, and fearful conversations, Leo learned the truth.
Two hundred years ago, the great descent happened.
Portals tore open across Earth.
Monsters. Demons. Supreme Beings from other dimensions invaded. Some conquered. Some ruled. Some enslaved. Some simply destroyed.
Three-fourths of Earth's land was gone.
Civilization reorganized itself around power.
Strength defined status.
Talent defined survival.
Weakness meant extinction.
Cities became fortresses.
Nations became factions.
Humans who awakened abilities were called Evolved, Awakened, or Blessed.
Those who didn't…
Were prey.
Leo's family lived at the edge of one such safe zone—poor, unprotected, replaceable.
And Leo?
He was officially useless.
The Silent Promise
That night, as his parents slept, Leo stared at the broken sky through a hole in the roof.
Stars looked unfamiliar. Constellations shifted strangely. Even time itself felt unstable.
His tiny fist clenched.
Inside him, the sleeping pressure stirred.
"I failed once," Leo whispered in his mind, the voice of his former self echoing faintly.
He remembered betrayal.
He remembered endless war.
He remembered sacrificing everything to stop absolute destruction.
He had lost everything.
But now…
He had been given another beginning.
"This time," he vowed silently, "I won't fight for power."
The pressure responded.
"This time," his heartbeat grew heavier, deeper, almost divine, "I will become power."
Outside, far beyond human sight, something ancient shifted—as if the universe itself had noticed his promise.
The sleeping god within Leo did not awaken.
But it opened one eye.