The room was the definition of infinite—its walls spun from stardust, its ceiling a void without end. In truth, it was shaped from pure divinity, bent into form by a will older than time. The air hummed with power barely supressed, thick enough to kill lesser beings. It smelled of lightning, ice, and the iron tang of fate being rewritten.

  A hundred seats, equidistant and absolute, formed a circle around a single raised dais. Ultimas needed no symbol of authority. His presence alone carved hierarchies into reality.

  Upon that dais stood the Chief God.

  Ultimas, the God of Creation.

  His form defied scale. Even in this boundless space, he seemed too large, too oppressive—like the concept of existence had wrapped itself in sone semblance of flesh. Around him, the gathered gods sat in nervous expectation. Some burned with fire, others shimmered like glass or shadow, each a being of impossible power. The God of War sat with his sword across his knees, its edge weeping starlight. The Goddess of Night pooled in her seat like spilled ink, while the Trickster flicked a coin with two heads between his knuckles, half-grinning at some private joke.

  But none spoke.

  His presence silenced even them.

  “You have all arrived,” Ultimas said.

  His voice was calm, yet vast. It echoed through the bones of creation, the kind of sound that would erase a mere mortal’s mind on contact. Somewhere in the void beyond, a dying star flared and went dark in time with his words.

  “Today, I will explain the final terms of the Divine Challenge.”

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  At that, a ripple moved through the assembly. Not movement. Just tension—like air before a lightning strike. The coin froze mid-air above the Trickster’s hand.

  “Each of you will be assigned a Champion,” he continued. “A soul brought here from another world as part of an exchange. A world called Earth. These souls will retain fragments of memory… but nothing dangerous. Anything that could unbalance the realm has been stripped away.”

  A bookish god with eyes like spinning cogs exhaled in relief. His neighbour—a skeletal figure wreathed in plague moths—leaned over to whisper, ‘Careful, Archivist. Even neutered, mortals bite.’

  Scrolls made of light shimmered into place before the gods. The words burned with Ultimas’ will, searing obedience into their divine minds.

  “You may each grant your Champion one breath of divinity—a seed of power that grows only through their choices. But mark this: I will taste the intent behind every gift.” Nods passed around the circle. A few gods—those with a reputation for chaos—scowled but said nothing. The Goddess of Light hesitated, her fingers lingering over the scroll as if reading between its lines. The Goddess of Love frowned at a rule.

  Ultimas raised one hand. The gesture split reality, revealing a vision: a hundred glowing threads spreading across a world map, converging upon a towering obsidian spire.

  “The goal,” he said, “is simple.”

  A pause. Heavy.

  “To be the last Champion standing… or to slay the Strongest Mortal.”

  The map trembled. One thread—thicker, darker than the rest—pulsed like a vein.

  The silence that followed was dense as stone. Then, slowly, the gods began to rise, their seats fading into nothing as they prepared to return to their private realms and start their machinations.

  But just before even the first of them could vanish, Ultimas spoke again—quietly this time, but with gravity enough to stop the divine.

  “One last thing.”

  They froze.

  The vision of the map shattered. In its place loomed a single figure, hooded and faceless, standing knee-deep in a river of blood.

  He said one thing, something that could shatter whatever plans were beginning to form in the God’s heads.

  “Only after 18 years...” he began, and the river in the vision surged higher, “...may the knives come out.”