Chapter 1: Divinity

The blade entered through his chest and punched out beneath the back of his ribs, but the pain wasn’t what brought him to his knees. Blood spilled down his chest as his eyes found the woman standing beyond the God of Crafting, the same woman who had asked him to come here in the first place and the only person he would have followed somewhere like this without bothering to ask why.

The Goddess of Life wouldn’t meet his gaze, while beside her the God of Space stood with one hand raised and the shattered realm folded in on itself around them. Every path out had already been sealed, but that realization barely registered because there hadn’t been a single moment before the blade entered him when he thought he might need an escape from her.

"You too?"

Her lips parted as though she wanted to answer him, but whatever words came to her died before they reached him. Tears gathered in her eyes instead, and somehow that made it worse because it meant she understood exactly what she had done.

The God of Crafting ripped the weapon free and caught him before he could collapse, pressing a hand against his back as fingers of divine light sank into something much deeper than flesh.

His body barely mattered anymore because he could feel those fingers closing around the foundation of everything he was, and panic finally overwhelmed the pain when that foundation began to tear loose.

"No..."

His Divinity wasn’t simply power, nor was it some collection of energy he could rebuild if enough time passed. It was his authority, his place in the heavens, the thing Divinity itself had recognized as belonging to him, and within it he could feel Games, laughter, chance, deception, joy and all the countless pieces of himself he had gathered over an existence too long to measure.

The God of Crafting dragged that brilliant mass out of him with a laugh, each strand of authority leaving another hollow space behind.

"The Title of God of Games was always wasted on you."

God of Games.

The words almost sounded foreign now that the Title was leaving him, yet he felt every part of what it meant slipping away with the Divinity clenched between another god’s hands. Even the Jester’s Divinity seemed to twist as it was stolen, as though the thing itself knew it belonged to someone else.

"The Jester’s Divinity deserves something greater."

The God of Games looked past him one final time and found the Goddess of Life crying openly now, though she still made no move to stop what was happening. That was the last thing he saw before the God of Crafting raised the stolen Divinity above himself.

"I cast aside Crafting and take Creation."

The Jester’s Divinity crashed into him as his old authority shattered, and the heavens answered the declaration without hesitation. From that day forward... the God of Crafting disappeared beneath the descending light, and in his place stood the God of Creation, one of the eighteen Major Gods of Divinity.

That day the God of Games also disappeared. But this was little more than a footnote in history by comparison.

**

Jaxir startled awake with his heart beating so hard against his chest that for several seconds he thought that might actually be what killed him. He sucked in a breath that didn’t feel like enough and clawed at the sheets beneath him, his vision swimming as his body struggled to catch up with the fact that he wasn’t dying on the floor of some shattered world.

It was the dream again, the same one he had been having for weeks now, though calling it a dream had begun to feel strange when he remembered every detail so clearly.

The same people appeared every time, the same blade entered his chest, and the same woman watched from the background while something inside him twisted at the sight of her.

Jaxir stared at the ceiling until his heartbeat finally began to settle, then slowly rubbed a hand over his face.

"When did I become so pathetic?"

The stench in the room was so heavy Jaxir wondered if one could have even heard the words he spoke while their senses were so overwhelmed, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a shower, let alone the last time he had seen a ray of sunlight.

The curtains were drawn tight, food wrappers covered half the floor, and whenever he ordered anything he made sure the delivery driver pushed it through the old doggy door rather than giving him another reason to interact with someone.

It was easy to piss your life away when you had more money than you could spend in a lifetime, no parents left to hold you accountable and no real reason to leave the house.

His parents had died when he was seventeen, and his uncle hadn’t waited long afterward before taking advantage of the situation, stealing his stake in the company his parents had built from the ground up and freezing him out entirely.

Who would have known a seventeen-year-old couldn’t trust his own flesh and blood? Sure, he got more money than he knew what to do with from the transaction, along with a nice gag order and threat from his precious uncle to keep his mouth shut or lose more than he already had, but all that really left him with was money and an empty house.

Then there was Jahbri...

Jaxir’s expression tightened the moment the name entered his head and he shoved the thought away before it could go anywhere.

That was another hole he had gotten far too comfortable sitting inside, and he knew exactly how his younger, brighter, far more cheery self would have reacted if he could see what Jaxir had turned into now.

Pathetic was probably the word he would have used.

He was twenty-one years old now and didn’t even have a high school degree to his name, while most days consisted of waking up, eating whatever he could order without seeing another human being, then finding something that would keep him distracted until he could sleep again.

Lately, though, Jaxir had started thinking about that more often, and he wasn’t sure if realizing how pathetic he was counted as progress or just gave him something new to feel miserable about.

"Maybe a shower?" Jaxir stared toward the bathroom for a few seconds, almost amused by how difficult such a simple decision had become. "When’s the last time I had one of those?"

He had developed a habit of speaking aloud to himself because his was often the only real voice he heard all day outside of whatever video happened to be playing. Jaxir slowly pushed himself off his bed as wrappers and half-finished chip bags crunched beneath him, moving his feet around the hardwood to clear enough space before forcing himself upright.

His vision immediately darkened, and Jaxir grabbed the edge of the bed while he waited for the room to return to stillness. His health had never been particularly good, but spending the better part of the last few years treating his body like something he was only temporarily responsible for hadn’t exactly improved matters.

DING.

The sound from the front door pulled his attention away from the bathroom, followed a moment later by something sliding across the floor. Jaxir frowned because he hadn’t ordered food, and almost no one came to the house anymore unless he had already given them a reason.

He stood there for several seconds debating whether curiosity was worth the walk before finally gathering enough motivation to move. Jaxir made his way through the house with one hand brushing against the wall for support, and he spotted the envelope before he even turned down the final stretch of hallway.

It was thick and heavy, almost like the acceptance packages colleges sent out, though Jaxir definitely wasn’t getting any of those. He bent down to pick it up, felt another wave of dizziness wash through him, then abandoned the effort halfway and simply took a seat on the tile.

The envelope opened easily enough, revealing a thin metal casing within, and Jaxir frowned as he pulled it free and clicked it open. What looked like a low-profile circuit board rested inside beside a small folded note, but the moment Jaxir saw the handwriting on its surface, everything else stopped mattering.

His mother’s handwriting.

Jaxir’s fingers trembled as he unfolded it, the familiar curves of every letter somehow hitting harder than seeing an old photograph would have. There were only a few words written across the paper.

"For Integration Phase III. Love, mom and dad."

Jaxir remained there for a long time with the note resting between his fingers, rereading it until there was no possibility he had misunderstood. Integration Phase III meant absolutely nothing to him, but he couldn’t stop staring at the words because they had come from the two who had once been the strongest pillars in his life.

Eventually, he closed the metal casing and forced himself to stand because he needed to know what this was. For some reason, that only made him more determined to take the shower he had promised himself, as though cleaning months of shit off his body would somehow make him better prepared for whatever his parents had left behind.

His vision swam the moment he reached the bathroom, and Jaxir caught himself against the wall while waiting for the darkness at the edges of his sight to disappear. This happened whenever he stood too quickly or went too long without food, so all he had to do was wait a few seconds and let his blood pressure―

BANG.

Jaxir’s forehead smashed against the edge of the bathroom door frame, and his knees buckled beneath him before he could recover. He slid down the wall with another heavy thud, darkness consuming his vision as a laugh slipped through the pain.

"Well, maybe this is it... That’s what I get for trying to take a shower, I guess."

[Integration Phase II has begun. Processing...]

Jaxir’s thoughts froze as the words appeared somewhere they shouldn’t have been, his body already suspended in an endless darkness that he couldn’t seem to wake himself from. Integration was the same word written on his parents’ note, but before he could understand what that meant, another thought rushed forward.

Divinity.

About five years ago, a virtual reality game called Divinity had hit the market and immediately became all the rage, and his parents had been a huge part of its creation, crafting all the Vestigem Cards used throughout the game to make it as realistic as possible.

That contract was part of what had catapulted the Chance Corporation to an unprecedented level of wealth, though Jaxir himself had never logged in even once because everything about the game reminded him of them.

A pulsing pain ripped through his body before that thought could go any further, and Jaxir screamed without hearing his own voice as it felt like his brain was splitting apart.

Memories flooded into him that he couldn’t remember ever living, but he knew every one of them somehow...

The God of Games.

The name felt so much more real now, so much more tangible, but with it came the memory of the woman standing beyond the man who had killed him. The Goddess of Life... The God of Space... The God of Creation...

The memories jerked him about, ripping him toward more thoughts of Jahbri, and the pain that followed made everything else disappear for a moment.

It was too similar a pain...

It was the exact same hollow twist in his chest, the same disbelief and the same hurt of looking at someone who had once meant everything to him and realizing they had chosen another path instead.

A similarity so real he felt it difficult to look at those dreams like they were truly just dreams any longer...

Those weren’t dreams...

Another wave of memories swallowed him before he could carry the thought any further, leaving only a title echoing through the darkness.

’A Jester’s Divinity...?’