Chương 84: Arc 5 | Dead Pacifica (God of Death)

GOD OF DEATH A Soliloquy I see everything. I feel everything. My vision crawled like spilled ink across half of North America, into the biting coasts of Alaska, then further north into the crown of Canada, then west until the Pacific Ocean yawned wide, flat and empty, and to the east until it scraped the brick-and-bony edge of Chicago itself.

When I upgraded my [Fractal Omniscience], my consciousness extended to almost two thousand miles from my Core, seeping across borders, through concrete, brick, and soil, and into cell towers and copper wires. Even dipped down into the sun-cracked border towns of Mexico and the winding spine of the Mississippi River. And everywhere I looked, there were delvers. Millions and millions of them.

They clung to the land like fleas on a mutt, unaware of my gaze and my shroud, spread across twenty-six states and three countries. All waiting to delve my domain out here in the isolated mountains of the Cascades, to this little corner of horrors, which I now called my home. My Dread tugged at them—softly at first, then insistently—an instinctive invitation they couldn't quite name, much less refuse. And at the center of that web was Oracle, my construct, my all-consuming digital wizard.

In a world made of computers, screens, and signals, he was unstoppable. His reach extended from satellites and with thousands of nanites hitchhiking across the continent as my little spies. His eyes were my own; together, we see everything. For a year, I've waited, watched, explored, eavesdropped, dove into millions of memories, and waited some more, sometimes finding a gem in a boring haystack of stories—a true voyeur of the living.

But every now and then, I caught a whiff of someone's pain and guilt in the air just right to get my attention, smelled their emotions and read their thoughts from hundreds of miles away, and I'd know: That's the one. Those were the names I marked. The ones I lured. The ones I called to delve my depths. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. To survive my night. To become worthy. To ask the question: Do I deserve a second chance?

For that was what I chose my Death Core to be: redemption for the sinners, and a power for change to those who were desperate and the innocent. Each delver was chosen, plucked by my council of archetypes, which was growing in numbers by every passing scenario. They'd choose the guilty. The grieving. The ones dragging chains of sins behind them that they thought no one else could see. The ones who needed punishment or salvation. Someone who needed a drastic transformation. A second chance. Some, their last chance.

A hope they clamored to claim for their own. And I watched them come to me, one after another. That's what they always do when The System had their hands on them. No one can resist the lure when a Death Core comes calling. And to most, I watched them struggle. Failed. Gave up. Died. For over a year, I listened to millions of lives move and breathe, suffered and hoped, prayed and lied, over and over.

I've watched their stories in the background like static on a TV screen: love confessions in parked cars from young lovers; arguments from broken families over burnt dinners; the quiet loneliness of the dying elderly in some care home, shoved there to be forgotten. I've seen men wrapped their hands around their wives' throats, and wives steadying the knife behind their husbands' backs.

I witnessed a young boy watched his mother's car split in half on the freeway from an unscathed drunk driver, killing her instantly. I've watched priests traded the salvation of heaven for the release of their own flesh, politicians pocketing bribes while promising a fantasy for their constituents, and elites taking advantage of the vulnerable desperate masses for a quick tax hike. I've seen millions beg the world for compassion and flinched away the moment it's their turn to give it back.

I've seen some goodness too, what little it was. Millions of people clamoring to do good, or at least something close to it, even as they struggled not to fall apart against the obstacles life threw at them. They created cherished memories with the ones they loved. Newborns gasping their first breath. Reunions of lost relatives. Karaoke nights. Weekly dates to prolong the spark of a long marriage. Thousands of survivors given a second chance from a long battle against cancer and other illnesses.

And plenty of triumphs over their careers, hopes, and dreams. An experience I could no longer partake in, which, in the dead of the night, I found myself missing dearly. This must be what it felt to be a god. I sat above the world, watching ants mourn their dead, get married, eat, lie, fuck, pray—all while the tide of my shadow crept closer. Every city, every voice, every heartbeat flickered like fireflies in my periphery.

Watching these people care about the little and bigger things of their very short lives was my eternity. They tell themselves they're important, that the noise they made in this vast universe marked something in history. But all of it was so infinitesimally small in the grand schemes of The System's machinations. So fleeting, unaware of me. Unaware of my shroud. Unaware of the drums beating from the mountains. Unaware of Death approaching.