Ashborn’s voice cracked the air like a thunderclap, but it wasn’t the words that hit hardest—it was the weight behind them. Like iron chains wrapped around his soul, pulling his entire consciousness to a halt. His breath caught. His chest stiffened. That single question rooted itself in his nerves like a parasite and sent his fear scrambling in every direction.
"I—I am—" he stammered, but before he could come up with anything remotely useful, Ashborn’s voice cut through his words.
"Who are you to speak of Father, you worthless scum?"
Ashborn’s disgust practically oozed from his tone. "He feeds you for publicity," he added with a scoff. "Don’t get cocky."
And just like that, the sword disappeared back into its sheath with a metallic shhhk. Avin barely had time to register the movement when Ashborn’s eyes flickered with a strange green hue. There was no chant, no ritual—just a breath, and then he felt it. The sharp sting at his throat was gone. Skin mended. Blood dried. The injury erased like it never happened.
"I’m not supposed to drink during Abyss explorations..." Ashborn muttered to himself, more than to Avin. "Father gets very upset. Drinking makes you... unfocused."
His tone drifted, thoughts clearly trailing elsewhere. Then, without another word, he turned and left the room.
Avin sat there, rigid and still, only daring to breathe when the echo of footsteps faded beyond the hall. His fingers curled into the fabric of his bed sheets as he exhaled—a long, aching sigh of relief.
He hadn’t been found out. Not entirely. Not yet.
He leaned forward and rubbed his face, trying to summarize what the hell just happened.
"Okay..." he muttered under his breath, trying to mentally catalogue the chaos.
"Fell into this world. Got skewered by a magical scorpion. Got healed by some high-level freak. Saw my own body doing voodoo. Almost got killed for eavesdropping... again."
His body jolted upright like it was spring-loaded. He scrambled over to the dressing table, knelt, and pulled open the box beneath it—the same one where Avin, the original, used to stash his things.
"Not exactly National Treasure level secrecy," he muttered, raising a brow at how easily accessible it was. "So obvious it’s actually smart? I dunno."
Inside the box was the book. Heavy. Plain. But it felt wrong. Not just ominous—repellent. Like his body didn’t want to touch it. Still, curiosity beat instinct. He opened it.
The pages were blank. He stared in disbelief. "Oh, come on—"
But before he could curse it out properly, the book jerked out of his hands like it had a mind of its own. A burst of force knocked him backwards onto the floor.
The book trembled, then shook violently. Strange characters—runes, glyphs, symbols that didn’t belong in any human language—started floating off its pages. They hovered in the air, writhing like living things. Then, without warning, they shot toward him and plunged into his head.
The pain was instant and merciless.
Clawed at his temples.
Rolled, twisted, flailed—like something was trying to drill into his skull and explode from the inside.
No pain. Nothing except the tremble in his limbs, the fire in his lungs, and the exhaustion smeared across every part of his body. He collapsed on the floor, arms spread wide, his breath shallow and ragged.
"...This is hell," he panted.
He lay there a moment longer, allowing the numbness to sink in. "This is absolute hell."
But with the quiet came clarity. His thoughts—previously scattered—began to align. Information, memories, facts he never knew, suddenly surfaced. Things Avin knew. Things no outsider should’ve had access to.
He slowly pushed himself upright and leaned against the bedframe, eyes still wide.
"Okay... so let me try to summarize this and see if it makes sense to me.
Apparently, in this world, children were granted historical knowledge through a kind of ceremony—a rite of passage called the God Covenant Initiation. A sacred bond that didn’t just connect them to their ancestors, but to the deity their bloodline had been bound to.
This explained the entire structure.
The four regions of the world, fragmented by the passage of time and the swelling of oceans.
The Northern Lands—where he was now—were revered as the land of the gods. A place where humans and deities engaged in a mutual transaction: power for prayer.
Each family had its Prime Deity, a god specific to their lineage. The family name wasn’t just an identity—it was a testament. A signature of the god they were bound to.
They were tied to a Time Deity. And not just tied, but favored—if the status reflected anything, that is. The deeper your connection, the more power flowed from the god to you. In return, your worth to the family increased.
The family heads, the family member with the highest status, thus the most favor from their Family deity were as powerful as demigods—beings capable of annihilating entire subcontinents. But depending on a person’s strength, they can form more covenants with other deity, depending on your Family deity’s views towards that other god.
Oh! And beings that dot have any god’s favor, any type of being at all without a god’s favor after a while becomes these creatures, they call abyss creatures... so that explains the whole abyss thing
Well, this seems pretty straightforward and not in the slightest bit complicated at all... right?"
He smiles and inhales a big load of air into his lungs
releasing it as a – "FUCK"
"Gods, status, demigods, all this shit is too much information"
He exhaled sharply, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"Okay... cool. No pressure."
But one name wouldn’t leave his mind.
Avin believed in them. God of all gods. A mythical force buried in whispers and madness. A figure supposedly reachable through some ritual.
" Avin tried it, didn’t he?" That was the vision he saw—candles, sigils, chanting.
"So what did that mean? That the Primordial was fake? Or maybe it wasn’t from this world—just like him?... Ahh, whatever"
He got to his feet, legs still a bit unsteady.
"Guess it’s my turn now."
He looked back into the box. The tools were there.
The moment he laid eyes on them, the memory kicked in with frightening clarity. Every motion, every placement, every breath Avin had taken in that vision—he remembered it all. Like the ritual had already carved itself into his mind.
And so naturally, he decided to perform this ritual, having no idea what it meant, what it would do to him
That’s how long it took.
He moved on instinct, not hesitation—like an actor in a play he didn’t audition for but somehow knew every line of. Each item was placed exactly where it had to be: eight candles forming a distorted circle—jagged edges rather than perfect symmetry. Red ink poured into the creases of carved lines that felt older than this body, this building, maybe even this world.When the final symbol had been marked in front of him, he sat.
Cross-legged. Centered in the chaos.
Then began the chant. "O magne, ostende mihi praesentiam tuam."
The phrase scraped his throat with every syllable, like something jagged was being pulled out from inside him. Yet he spoke it. Once. Twice. Five times in all. Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on N()velFire.net
The flames of the candles flickered in unnatural directions, casting shadows that didn’t move with him. For a moment, it felt like the room had started tilting sideways.
Then everything stopped.
No more warmth. No more sound. No more light.
Total and suffocating.
He looks up in confusion... "Power outag-"