He went to the house he had arranged years ago, prepared long in advance for the day a situation like this would inevitably arise.
From the very beginning, he had known that survival alone was not enough, one needed contingency, distance, and silence. This house was all three.
He flagged down a nearby taxi. The moment he stepped into view, conversations nearby died out. People stared. Fresh wounds were visible beneath the fabric, and his posture alone carried something unsettling.
The taxi driver hesitated, eyes flicking over him with thinly veiled discomfort, clearly weighing whether the fare was worth the trouble.
Glares followed from the street, disgust, fear, suspicion, but money overruled instinct. Without asking a single question, the driver unlocked the doors and motioned him inside.
The ride passed in strained silence.
Streetlights blurred past the window as the city slowly thinned, concrete giving way to open stretches of road and forgotten land.
Axiros remained still the entire time, staring out into nothing, ignoring the way the vehicle's motion tore at his injuries. His reflection in the glass looked barely human, hollow-eyed, bloodied, yet terrifyingly composed.
Eventually, they reached the outskirts.
The house stood far from civilization, isolated by design, hidden from casual notice and completely outside the attention of his family. He had chosen the location carefully years ago, long before any of this had happened.
It had been cheap.
Unwanted.
Feared.
Rumors clung to the place like rot. People whispered that it was haunted—that screams could be heard at night, that shadows moved without cause, that those who stayed too long never slept properly again.
Little did the former owner realize that those rumors had never been accidental.
Years back, it had been Axiros himself who seeded them.
Patiently. Methodically. A whisper here, a story there. A light left burning at odd hours. Footprints where none should exist. He had fed the owner false information slowly, letting paranoia do the rest. Neighbors began talking. Potential buyers stopped coming. Every failed attempt to sell the house drove the price lower.
Over years, skepticism turned into desperation.
By the time Axiros finally approached the owner, the man was exhausted, eager to be rid of the place at any cost. Cash changed hands. No contracts were signed. No records were kept. Axiros even offered extra, enough that the owner understood, instinctively, that silence was not optional.
The message had been clear.
Speak, and consequences would follow, unless, of course, one preferred a far more permanent form of persuasion.
Axiros paid the taxi driver with the spare change he had left. The driver barely met his eyes, handed back the receipt with shaking fingers, and drove away immediately, tires screeching as if he feared lingering too long.
Alone once more, Axiros stood before the massive iron gates.
They rose high and rusted, cold and imposing in the dim light, sealing off the property from the rest of the world. Beyond them lay solitude, secrecy, and preparation. His body was shattered, his flesh torn and bleeding, but his mind was clear.
He reached for the gate without hesitation.
This place was not refuge.
It was where the next phase would begin.
"I am here finally. Its time start my plan." He's spoke, sighing deeply
Over the following years, Axiros built a new life for himself, quietly, carefully.
With the help of a few shady but efficient dealers, he obtained a new identity. They asked no questions, and he offered no explanations. To them, it was just another transaction.
His old name faded from records, then from memory, until it no longer held any weight in the world.
For the first time in a long while, he lived without being watched.
He kept to himself, avoided unnecessary attention, and allowed time to pass naturally. The house remained his shelter, not as a fortress, but as a place where no one disturbed him.
He read constantly, not out of ambition or obsession, but curiosity. Books, articles, digital archives, lectures, histories. He absorbed this world's knowledge the way one might drink water after a long journey.
There was no urgency, no hunger for dominance, only understanding.
Within a few months, he had read everything he could find.
Science fascinated him with its patience. Philosophy reminded him that even fragile beings searched for meaning. History showed him cycles of error, hope, and recovery. For all its flaws, this world was earnest in its attempt to grow.
But all of that slowly faded into the background when he stumbled upon the world of webnovels.
At first, it was simple curiosity. Stories written by ordinary people, shared freely, read casually. Yet the more he read, the more unsettled he became.
Many of the tales were horrifying in quiet, familiar ways, lives torn apart by fate, endless cycles of suffering, protagonists forced to endure losses that never truly healed.
They were similar to his own experiences, though softened, diluted, stripped of the true weight of eternity. Still, the resemblance was impossible to ignore.
Then he found one story that stopped him entirely.
The plot mirrored one of his past lives almost perfectly. The betrayals, the helplessness, the slow erosion of hope, it was all there.
This was the life he had tried hardest to forget, the one whose memories he had buried deeper than any other. Seeing it reflected back at him, even in fiction, felt like reopening a wound that had never truly closed.
He read it to the end.
When he finished, his hands were shaking.
Tears fell before he realized what was happening. Silent at first, then unstoppable.
The man who had stood unmoved at his mother's execution, who had endured unimaginable suffering without breaking, now cried alone in a quiet room over a story on a screen.
It wasn't the novel that broke him.
It was the pain from that life, long suppressed, long denied, finally finding a way to surface.
"I failed you, Valeria, Luther, everybody. I failed to save you all. The only ones who trusted me." He told as if it was longing whisper as tears fled down his cheek in masses.
It took him a while to set himself upright, once again. But he continued with his reading. He read thousands in a single day. His reading capacities had far exceeded what is human.
He came across a novel infamous for its horror, one that made readers cry and shake in suspense.
To Axiros, it was almost amusing. The fear felt exaggerated, childish compared to what he had lived through. He read on without reaction.
But near the end, the story changed.
The danger escalated beyond spectacle, twisting into something deeper and more unsettling. Concepts broke down. The threat surpassed what he believed human imagination capable of reaching.
Eventually, the entire main cast died, with only the protagonist remaining who being depressed, committed suicide, completely destroying creation in the process
When he finished, he paused.
Not afraid, but impressed.
He was surprised, but wasn't deterred as he had faced far, far, far worser things.
He commented on the post, something he had never done.
"I can do way better. This novel is child's play." He commented. This earned him backlash from the readers, immensely. After a period of time even the author 'Null' reacted to the post, commenting,
"Is that so, then we shall see, human spawn."
Axiros didn't brush it off, the last parts of the comment caught his eye. Whatever this author was, he wasn't human. That he concluded. His way of writing, talking, everything fit together perfectly to be non-human.
He ignored it for now as he had greater things to do.
He read until there was nothing left to read.
From heavily classified files to the most mundane scraps of common knowledge, everything was absorbed, catalogued, understood. Nothing escaped his attention, no matter how trivial or obscure.
The sum of this world's information settled neatly into his mind, complete and exhaustive.
And yet, to Axiros, it was insignificant.
All of it together, every discovery, every secret, every truth humanity believed profound, was smaller than an atom when compared to the knowledge he already possessed. A grain of sand weighed against an endless void.
This world believed it knew much.
Axiros knew just how little it truly was.
---
"It's time to set things in motion. I am done with everything here." He said.
He spent several hours doing what this world would have taken centuries to achieve.
Using nothing more than crude materials and limited infrastructure, Axiros created scraps of technology so advanced that they shattered conventional understanding. Devices that could dismantle matter at the molecular level.
Frameworks that redefined efficiency, energy transfer, and material stability. To him, they were incomplete prototypes, rough sketches at best.
To the world, they were miracles.
He released the designs under his fabricated identity, carefully designed, stripped of anything that would reveal how much further they could go. Even so, the impact was immediate and overwhelming.
Academic circles erupted. Industries stalled as paradigms collapsed overnight. What had once been considered theoretical fantasy was now demonstrably real.
Fame followed swiftly.
Within weeks, his name was everywhere. Within months, it carried weight rivaling institutions. Hundreds of companies reached out, corporations, conglomerates, entities with influence stretching across nations, all offering staggering sums.
Billions, not for ownership, but simply for his support. For his presence. For the chance to stand near whatever mind had produced such impossible ideas.
They believed they were witnessing the peak of human innovation.
He knew they were only seeing the dust shaken loose from something far greater.
Several months passed, and Axiros amassed wealth on a scale few could comprehend. Trillions flowed in as nations competed for his ideas, each desperate to claim even a fragment of what he offered.
Governments signed contracts in haste, leaders justified the expense as necessity, progress, survival.
Axiros didn't ask what they intended to do with it.
He didn't care.
Whether his technologies healed the world or tore it apart was not his concern. He had seen enough worlds end to know that destruction did not require his help. If humanity chose that path, it would have found a way regardless.
To him, it was simply an exchange, knowledge for resources.
Nothing more.
And as the world argued over how to use what he had given them, Axiros remained distant, untouched by their ambitions, already thinking far beyond the fate of a single planet.
His reach had spread far beyond his continent. He could impeach a president of a country with a snap of his fingers. He could decide who ruled what and which parts of the world.
Everything was within his grasp.
Without revealing his true identity, Axiros became the peak of human capability on the planet. Power, wealth, and influence bent quietly to his will, all from behind the scenes.
The world never knew who truly stood above it.
---
Axiros lay seated on the couch, on his phone, supposedly reading a newly released novel.
"Sir, the task you gave us has been fulfilled. All the information given has been leaked. The head has been captured and is currently held within our headquarters. Do you want us lead the way?" A man came, dressed in fine clothes, a servant of Axiros.
"Oh, fantastic. Of course, Jacob, lead the way, my man." He said as he got up from his couch, straightened his sleeves and headed towards the door.
They got in a car, and headed towards their headquarters. The journey was long and way was ragged.
Their headquarters was in a remote area, operating in the highest secrecy.
No soul wandered there. Even satellites didn't have surveillance here, and only god knows why and from whose influence?
Axiros was led into a high security room, guraded by several of his men. They bowed and let him in, recognising him as their leader.
Each of the men present were specially handpicked by him.
He entered a dark isolated room. A man laid in the center tied and stark naked.
"What's up, 'father'." He smirked. His tone was dripping with sarcasm. He sat on the stool directly opposite to him.
"What the fuck? Who the fuck are you? I demand you release me this moment." The man groaned and ordered.
"Why such a hurry, father? We have plenty of time to talk." He said like psychopath.
"Who are you?" He asked once again, his voice demanding.
"The son of the one who you disposed of, remember. Or do you need me to jog your memory?" He said, still smirking.
"Oooh. You are that bitch's son. Who was that? Emily. Yes, Emily. Truly a pain in the ass. Glad I got rid of her." He told and tried to smirk.
Before he could, a blow landed on his face and groin. He helped in immense pain.
"Now let's try that again. Who am I?" Axiros asked.
"Youu, son of a bitch." He groaned and yelped.
Another series of blows landed, leaving his jaw broken and left his hip destroyed.
"No, so-n, you are Emily's son. I remember, ple-ase stop." He said in a voice coming out incoherently.
"That's right, you son of a bitch." Axiros told.
He didn't stop, he kept landing a punch after another. He stopped only when he saw the limp, mangled body of John.
He stood up, and left, shaking his wrist, in an attempt to shake the blood of his hand.
"Clean the mess up." He ordered his men coldly.
"Jacob, you will be my representative, my impersona, from now on. You will take over my seat. My job here is done. I have rosen to the utmost peak of this world." He told, summoning Jacob.
"Sir, but-"
"No buts Jacob. I will retire at the peak of my power, leaving everything to you. Don't worry about the legal work, I have already handled everything. I have nothing left in this world." He interjected before Jacob could protest.
"As you wish, sir. I will not stain your legacy." He said, deeply bowing.
Axiros left without another word.
He returned home, alone.
He opened a drawer and held pills within his hand. A single one of those was enough to kill hudreds of humans.
"It's time to go now." He sighed as he stalled all the pills in a single go.
The world slowly turned black. A testament to the fight his body was still putting. He had truly reached the peak a human can.
His soul once again drifted, leaving this reality.