The stench hit him first – a cloying miasma of stale urine, rotting refuse, and the metallic tang of old blood. It was an assault so potent it almost jolted the nascent consciousness within the frail, broken body back into the blissful void from whence it came.
Eons… The thought echoed, not in words, but as an imprint of immense, weary time. Eons I watched. Eons I waited. Eons I… despaired.
Ravi Sharma, or rather, the infinitesimal fragment of the Creator now housed within the shattered vessel named Ravi, twitched a finger. Pain, sharp and biting, lanced up his arm. His mortal shell was a ruin. Ribs felt like a bag of broken twigs against his lungs. One eye was swollen shut, the other crusted with dried blood, offering a blurry, crimson-tinted view of a grimy alley wall. He lay half-submerged in a puddle of something he dared not identify.
This… this is what they have become. The thought was cold, a shard of cosmic ice in the furnace of his ancient rage. My creation. My children.
He tried to sit up, a gasp tearing from his raw throat as every injury screamed in protest. The effort was rewarded with a wave of dizziness and a fresh wave of agony. He slumped back, the impact jarring his already battered frame.
Footsteps. Heavy, confident, accompanied by coarse laughter.
"Oi, look! The little rat's still breathing!" a gravelly voice boomed.
Three figures ambled into view, their silhouettes large and menacing against the sliver of grey sky visible between the leaning hovels. They were typical slum enforcers – muscle-bound, clad in mismatched, scavenged leather, faces etched with casual cruelty. The leader, a brute with a scarred lip and a rusty cleaver tucked into his belt, nudged Ravi's side with a steel-toed boot.
"Thought Old Man Hemlock's beating would've finished him," another chuckled, this one leaner, with shifty eyes. "Guess he's tougher than he looks. Or just too stupid to die."
Ravi said nothing. His one good eye, though blurry, fixed on them. He was cataloging. Observing. The casual cruelty, the enjoyment of another's suffering, the utter lack of empathy. These were not isolated incidents; they were symptoms of a rot that had festered deep within the soul of his world.
"Well, no matter," the leader grunted, squatting down. His foul breath washed over Ravi. "He still owes Master Shank for 'protection' fees. And since he can't pay with coin…" He grinned, a truly vile expression. "We'll take it out in flesh. Maybe sell what's left to the Corpse Grinders. They're always looking for fresh material."
The third one, a silent giant, merely flexed his meaty fists, knuckles like gnarled stones.
Protection fees. Corpse Grinders. The terms were alien, yet their meaning was brutally clear. This was the base level. The very bottom rung of the depravity he had come to cleanse.
The leader reached for Ravi's tunic, likely to haul him up.
And then, something shifted.
It wasn't a physical movement. It was… a change in the air. The oppressive stench of the alley seemed to recede, pushed back by an invisible pressure. The dim light flickered, not from a breeze, but as if the very photons were hesitating.
The leader's hand froze inches from Ravi. "What… what the hell?" he muttered, a flicker of unease in his eyes.
Ravi's one visible eye, still caked with drying blood, seemed to clear. The blurriness vanished, replaced by an unnerving, profound stillness. It was like looking into the depths of a primordial ocean, ancient and fathomless.
Enough.
The thought wasn't his, not the Ravi Sharma who had been a beaten slum dweller moments ago. This was the Creator, the Omnipotent, the Source of All. And His patience, stretched across millennia, had finally, irrevocably, snapped.
A faint, almost imperceptible aura, colder than a winter's night and heavier than a collapsing star, began to emanate from Ravi's broken form. It wasn't magic as mortals understood it. It was the raw, undiluted will of existence itself.
The scarred leader, a man who'd faced down death countless times, felt a primal terror grip his heart. His breath hitched. The cleaver in his belt suddenly felt like a child's toy. "W-What are you?" he stammered, his bravado crumbling.
Ravi didn't speak. His gaze, now utterly terrifying in its lucidity, swept over the three men. It was not a look of anger, or hatred. It was a look of… finality. The look of a craftsman about to discard flawed, irreparable tools.
"H-He's… he's just a slum rat!" the shifty-eyed one insisted, though his voice trembled. He took a half-step back. The silent giant, however, driven by brute instinct, roared and lunged, his massive fist aimed at Ravi's head.
The fist never landed.
It stopped, a mere inch from Ravi's face, as if hitting an invisible, unbreakable wall. The giant's eyes widened in disbelief, then bulged in agony as every bone in his attacking arm, from knuckle to shoulder, simultaneously shattered. Not broke. Shattered. Like dry kindling under a titan's heel. A sickening series of wet cracks echoed in the sudden, chilling silence.
CRACK-CRUNCH-SNAP!
The giant let out a sound that was less a scream and more the bellow of a dying beast, a grotesque gurgle of pain and shock. He stumbled back, cradling his mangled, flaccid limb, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated horror. Blood, thick and dark, began to drip from the shredded mess of his arm.
The shifty-eyed thug stared, his jaw slack. "By the… by the Abyss…"
The leader, though his legs felt like water, forced himself to draw his cleaver. "Demon! You're a demon!"
Ravi slowly, almost languidly, pushed himself to a sitting position. The movement, which should have been agonizing for his battered body, was eerily smooth. As he moved, the faint aura around him intensified, causing the grime on the alley walls to vibrate and dust to rise from the ground. The very air grew thick, making it hard to breathe.
"Demon?" A voice, soft, yet carrying an impossible weight, rasped from Ravi's throat. It was his first word since awakening, and it sent shivers down their spines colder than any grave. "No. I am far, far older than those fledgling blasphemies."
His gaze fell upon the leader. "You prey on the weak. You revel in cruelty. You contribute nothing but suffering." Each word was an indictment, a hammer blow against their rotten souls. "Your existence is… an error."
The leader, consumed by a desperate, fear-fueled rage, screamed and charged, swinging his cleaver wildly. "DIE, DAMN YOU!"
Ravi simply raised a hand, palm open.
The cleaver, a heavy, rust-pitted length of sharpened steel, disintegrated an inch from his palm. Not into pieces. It turned to metallic dust, which swirled for a moment in the oppressive air before settling.
The leader skidded to a halt, his eyes wide with an emotion that transcended fear into sheer, mind-breaking terror. He looked at his empty hand, then at Ravi, whose blood-caked face held no expression save for that chilling, ancient stillness.
"W-Who… what are you?" he finally whispered, his voice cracking.
"I," Ravi said, his voice gaining a subtle resonance, a hint of the cosmic power thrumming beneath his frail skin, "am your Creator. And this… this is my Judgment."
He flicked a finger.
It was a casual, almost dismissive gesture.
The shifty-eyed thug, who had been trying to sneak away, suddenly froze. His eyes bulged. He clawed at his throat, making choking, gurgling sounds. Then, with a soft, wet pop, his head exploded. Not in a gory spray, but as if it had been instantly, perfectly, and utterly atomized into a fine red mist that hung in the air for a moment before dissipating. There was no blood splatter on the walls, no brain matter. Just… gone.
The leader stared at the empty space where his companion had stood, then back at Ravi, his mind completely unraveling. He dropped to his knees, trembling uncontrollably. Urine, dark and acrid, stained the grimy cobblestones beneath him. "Mercy… please… mercy…"
Ravi's eye, the one clear portal to an omnipotent being, narrowed slightly. "Mercy?" The word was spoken as if it were a foreign concept he was tasting for the first time. "You offered none. Why should you receive it?"
He extended his hand again, index finger pointing at the groveling leader. A pinpoint of light, so intense it was painful to look at even in the dim alley, coalesced at his fingertip. It hummed with unimaginable power.
"Your sins are manifold," Ravi declared, his voice now a low rumble that seemed to vibrate in their very bones. "Your soul is a stain upon reality. Be cleansed."
The pinpoint of light shot forth. It wasn't a beam, it wasn't a blast. It was… an unmaking.
The leader didn't even have time to scream. The light touched his forehead, and he simply… ceased to exist. One moment he was there, a terrified, broken man. The next, only the faint smell of ozone and the lingering echo of Ravi's pronouncement remained.
Ravi slowly lowered his hand, taking a deep, shuddering breath. The borrowed lungs ached. The borrowed body throbbed. But beneath the pain, a cold, terrible satisfaction began to bloom.
He looked at the giant, who was now whimpering on the ground, clutching his ruined arm, his eyes rolling back in shock and agony.
Ravi rose to his feet. His bones creaked, his muscles protested, but he stood. Tall. Imposing. Despite the rags, despite the blood and grime, an aura of absolute, terrifying authority clung to him like a shroud.
He walked towards the whimpering giant. Each step, though unsteady, seemed to shake the very foundations of the slum.
From a nearby hovel, a pair of wide, frightened eyes watched through a crack in a boarded-up window. A young woman, no older than sixteen, her face smudged with dirt but her eyes bright with a desperate intelligence, had witnessed it all. She had seen Ravi, the slum's punching bag, the quiet boy everyone picked on, become… this. This terrifying, awe-inspiring being of judgment. Her heart hammered in her chest, a mix of terror and a strange, burgeoning hope.
Ravi stopped before the giant. He looked down, his expression unreadable.
"Your life," he stated, his voice devoid of emotion, "is forfeit. However…" A flicker of something – calculation? Curiosity? – crossed his features. "You have witnessed. You will remember."
He touched the giant's forehead. Not with destructive light, but with a gentle pressure. The giant's whimpering stopped. His eyes focused, then widened in a new kind Gof horror, as if seeing something beyond mortal comprehension.
"Go," Ravi commanded, his voice now imbued with an undeniable, hypnotic compulsion. "Spread the word. Tell them of the judgment that has come to the forgotten. Tell them… the Slum God has awakened. And His Decree is absolute."
The giant, his face pale as death, scrambled to his feet, somehow ignoring the agony of his arm. He gave Ravi one last look of utter, soul-deep dread, then turned and fled, stumbling and crashing his way out of the alley, his incoherent screams heralding a new, terrible age.
Ravi watched him go. Then, his gaze, heavy with the weight of eons, swept across the squalid, silent slum.
This is only the beginning.
The pain in his body was a dull, constant reminder of his current limitations. But it was also a fuel. A reminder of the suffering his creation endured.
He needed to heal. He needed to understand this era more deeply.
And he needed followers. Witnesses. Those who would carry his decree.
His gaze drifted towards the hovel where he sensed the terrified, yet strangely captivated, young woman.
A very faint, almost predatory smile touched Ravi Sharma's lips. The first flicker of something that, in another context, might have been mistaken for amusement. Or perhaps, anticipation.
The game had begun. And the Creator was finally playing His hand.