The being known as the True Creator had once been human.
Its original name was Grisha.
Like Rowan Mercer, Grisha had lived an ordinary modern life before everything collapsed. Then something older than history itself intervened. A cosmic will. A god that no longer existed in any meaningful sense.
Grisha was cast into a primordial abyss and preserved as a contingency.
A spare key.
A resurrection plan.
When he clawed his way back into reality during the Second Epoch, he did not return empty-handed. He emerged already fused with multiple divine authorities, whole and complete, far beyond anything that should have been possible.
And he arrived in a world ruled by monsters.
The so-called ancient gods were not true deities in the modern sense. They were creatures that had absorbed fragments of shattered divinity after a primordial catastrophe annihilated the first civilization. With no guiding will left behind, countless beings mutated, ascended, and eventually crystallized into warped godlike entities.
They fell into three broad factions.
Those who still resembled humanity. Former humans twisted into immortal predators. Kings of giants. Progenitors of vampires. Sovereigns of the elves.
Those born from beasts and plants. Dragons born of imagination. Undying phoenixes. Aberrant kings of countless species.
And those who desired nothing but annihilation.
World-ending tyrants. Demon sovereigns. Living embodiments of ruin.
Among them existed one anomaly.
A demon emperor who was not insane.
Like Grisha, he had once been human.
Imagine a corpse that climbed out of its grave, evolved beyond death itself, and somehow remembered who it used to be. That was the closest comparison.
Unfortunately, sanity did not make him gentle.
If anything, it made him worse.
The ancient gods treated surviving humans as livestock. Food. Playthings. Sacrificial offerings.
Grisha did the unthinkable.
He hunted them.
Some he killed.
Some he broke and forced into submission.
He rebuilt human civilization atop their corpses.
Humanity named him the Ancient Sun.
An omniscient, omnipotent savior.
By the Third Epoch, Grisha ruled nearly everything.
He possessed five complete divine authorities and dominion over the primordial abyss itself. He stood above conventional gods, closer to an eldritch sovereign than a deity.
Eight angelic kings served beneath him.
He deciphered every known supernatural path and released their formulas to the world, drastically reducing the chance that practitioners would self-destruct while seeking power.
Then he discovered the truth.
The ancient god who had once shaped existence was not truly gone.
It was awakening inside him.
Grisha understood what that meant.
He would be overwritten.
Consumed.
Replaced.
So he began preparing a way out.
He created two successors.
One, named Amon, inherited the authority of deception and paradox.
The other, Adam, inherited pure conceptual divinity. Officially called his son. In reality, a god-shaped projection of Grisha's own divine nature.
It still wasn't enough.
So Grisha devised something more extreme.
He separated all of his negative emotions, madness, and corruption into a third self.
Sasrir.
Then he arranged his own assassination.
Sasrir contacted Grisha's most loyal angelic kings and convinced them to form a secret order devoted to "salvation."
They killed him.
After his death, Sasrir and Adam were supposed to absorb his remaining divine essence, recombine, and resurrect him free from the ancient god's influence.
Only half of the plan succeeded.
The angelic kings betrayed him.
Three devoured his corpse and seized his highest authorities for themselves.
They became the Storm Lord.
The Eternal Sun.
The God of Knowledge and Wisdom.
Sasrir managed to escape with only one authority.
He became the True Creator.
Grisha's blood flooded the oceans.
Entire continents were cursed.
Lands without sunlight.
Lands abandoned by gods.
The traitors fled west and established themselves as the "legitimate" gods of humanity.
Sasrir inherited Grisha's humanity, but none of his balance.
All of the fear.
All of the rage.
All of the despair.
With no stabilizing core, he went completely mad.
He slaughtered his own followers as often as he empowered them.
He could not leave the cursed lands.
He could not merge with Adam.
He could not heal.
A broken shadow of what had once been the greatest being in existence.
Rowan opened his eyes.
"So the original creator is dead," he murmured. "Really dead."
Not sleeping.
Not sealed.
Shattered beyond recovery.
That single revelation outweighed everything else.
It meant he no longer had to walk on eggshells.
The only reason Rowan limited himself to this world's native power system was fear. Fear that the true creator might notice him. Track him. Erase him.
That threat was gone.
The remaining seven gods still existed.
Individually, Rowan did not fear them.
Together, they were inconvenient.
If they witnessed him using foreign power, they might assume he was an extraterrestrial god and respond accordingly.
So caution remained necessary.
Converted abilities.
Localized magic.
Methods that blended into this universe.
Which suited Rowan just fine.
The conversion process itself refined his understanding.
And understanding was the foundation of conquest.
If the creator of this world was truly gone, then the world had no rightful owner.
Rowan intended to become one.
He would gather every supreme authority.
Fuse every source of origin.
Absorb the entire world into himself.
Would remnants of ancient wills try to awaken inside him?
Probably.
But by then, his other incarnations would already have devoured countless worlds and surpassed anything this universe had ever known.
A dead god's echo meant nothing.
For now, patience.
Stabilize.
Advance.
Prevent hostile wills from taking root.
There would be time later to erase them properly.
Rowan exhaled slowly.
Originally, he had only wanted knowledge about one corrupted path.
Instead, he had obtained the buried history of three entire epochs.
"And that explains it," he said softly.
"Why the Iron Front keeps clashing with the churches of the Storm Lord, the Eternal Sun, and the God of Knowledge and Wisdom."
A thin smile formed.
"This turned out to be a very profitable day."