Do the gods make our lives meaningless—or did we, by blindly following their will?
This question would become the defining factor in Nolan's life.
Ash fell like snowflakes around Nolan as he knelt on the cracked stone path, his hands trembling over the dirt, nails digging into the ground. The flames devoured what was once his home, roaring louder than his breathless sobs. His eyes, wide and glassy, refused to blink, as if blinking meant losing them again, though they had already been consumed by the flames—his mother and sister.
The heat pressed against his skin, but he didn't flinch. Smoke clawed down his throat, but he didn't cough. The world had narrowed to fire, and grief, and the figure was floating just above the blaze, a god.
His Crimson hair, long and wild, fluttered unnaturally against the windless air. His pale skin glowed faintly under the orange light of the flames. Draped in clean black clothes, his eyes held no malice. Worse—they held nothing at all, just empty, looking at the flames below.
He raised his hand in a slow motion, flames covered the hand, and with a simple snap, the flames spread all around his body. He vanished into the flames, leaving only the bright flames behind.
Nolan stayed on his knees, he watched as what used to be his home crumble. And as it crumbled, his heart went with it. He stayed there alone, no one to help put out the flames, no one to comfort him.
But this was normal on Arckam. There was nothing like help amongst the humans; there was only survival. Arckam was a cruel world run by gods, an experiment ground for them to abuse their power.
It was a vile world where survival was all that mattered, by whatever means possible. To humans, this was horror—a life of pain and torture—but to the gods, it was entertainment, it was pleasure, as they toyed with the lives of the humans.
[.....]
Nolan never thought that he would be a victim of the cruelty of Arckam. His mother had made sure to take him and his little sister away to a corner of the world where gods hardly ever came to.
He grew here at the edge of a small town until he was sixteen. Never in that time had there been any occurrences of gods coming near them.
Yet all of a sudden, that changed. He had been on his way back from a day of hard labour in the town when he saw the dark smoke that blotted the sky coming from the direction of his home.
His heart sank as he rushed over there, but he had been too late. His home was burnt down, his mother and sister burnt with it.
And the reason for this? It was a god, floating above the flames, with no emotions, with no care.
[...]
He stared at the flames, slowly pushing himself off the ground. He took a step in the direction of the flames, his feet heavy, but he dragged them along.
"I watched you burn, mum. I couldn't run into the flames to save you and Anna. I watched you burn," Nolan said. Tears poured from his eyes endlessly. He kept walking until he was dangerously close to the house. The heat had become extremely harsh and stung his skin badly.
He knelt down on the ground again, his knees hit the blazing hot floor, but he didn't flinch. He stared into the flames, its bright light reflected in his eyes.
"Gods, they use us like toys and throw us away? Why? What did we ever do to them? Do we not matter? Does my mother and sister not matter?
Their lives were all I had in this empty world, this cruel world that sought to take everything from people. We didn't want anything more, we were content, then why, why?" he screamed, his voice echoing in the distance.
The emotionless face of the god that did this flashed in his mind, the face of someone who didn't care about what he did, like the lives he took didn't matter in any way.
Nolan felt like a bomb had exploded within him. His rage spiked, his anger at the fact that his mother and sister's lives didn't matter to that god in the slightest made his heart ache so much.
His eyes were dyed red in rage, and all he could hear in his head was, "kill him, kill the gods, kill them all, watch them burn."
Those words repeated over and over, and with every time it repeated, his rage increased. He balled his hands into fists and began punching the hard ground, trying to place his aggression somewhere.
His fist slammed against the ground without holding back, his knuckles were covered in blood. The crimson liquid stained the ground, yet he didn't stop.
Then suddenly, a light whisper came. It was very light, yet it couldn't be missed.
"You want the power to go against the gods? To have your vengeance?"
Nolan's fist stopped midair when he heard the voice, scared that he was now hearing things.
"I can offer you what you need to defeat the gods, the power to take your revenge. All you have to do is accept it," the voice spoke again.
"The power to defeat gods? The power to kill that god?" Nolan asked. For some reason, he didn't question the fact that he was speaking to a voice. Maybe it was because that voice spoke about killing gods.
"I can give you what you want. You can have the power you desperately need to take down the gods," the voice spoke again.
"Kill the gods, kill the gods. I want to kill them all. I want my revenge. I want to take the head of the god that took my home away. I want that power," Nolan said. His rage stopped him from thinking about what could go wrong with the situation. He accepted the power without thought.
Suddenly, a black smoke-like substance shot out of the ground beneath him and forced itself into his nose, mouth, and eyes. When the smoke completely got into Nolan, he fell to the ground unconscious.