Adam stood upon the walls, staring into the stars. The war was over, the Savior overthrown by his own people. The casualties had been in the millions, a cost greater than any before it.

Gabon had been one of them.

He let the memories of his father run through his mind, bringing with them a lifetime of emotion. The study around him seemed to stir in response. That was new. Ever since his vision from deep in the Astral, reality had seemed… fragile. He now saw it as it truly was; a thin veil over infinity.

Gabon’s last words came to him, a family motto he had heard a million times before,

“There is no can’t, only won’t.”

For the first time he truly considered what it meant. His father had ended a war in a single sword blow, wielding the very blade now sheathed at his side. Reality could be forced to bend. So why accept it if he could change it?

For too long had mankind been at the mercy of a flawed few, proclaiming greatness to all who would hear. But Adam had discovered another truth, hidden deep within the astral.

There were no great men, only lucky men.

No man was born with greatness, it was grown and nurtured in him by his experiences and allowed to shine through his circumstances.

For too long had the people been denied the chance to become great.

He looked up at the starry sky. The stars glittered with conceptions of half finished creations feeding him ideas and concepts, lifting him up.

To stand on the shoulders of titans.

His father had told him to create something new.

And he would.

A new world order, where men were not lorded over but rather ruled.

Where all men could become great.

—-------------------------------

In the following months Adam slowly and subtly relinquished more and more power. He created public committees to accomplish tasks and introduced concepts such as voting and elections. In the free time he gained, he wrote. There are many mediums of creation, but writing is perhaps the most powerful. The ability to bridge the abstract in the astral to the minds of mortals is a world-altering ability.

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And Adam leveraged it to his full extent.

Finally, 3 months after the death of Gabon, Adam addressed the people.

“I am stepping down.” He announced, “Government shall now be in your hands. You shall elect officials and vote on laws. Create a better society.”

He turned and simply left, leaving behind a shocked society.

Simultaneously, his book, Greatness, was being handed out for free in cities all across the world, a task that had drained most of the Erduk fortune.

The book truly was a masterpiece. A intricate intertwining of disciplines, it walked the line of philosophy, sociology, psychology, political science, economics and a dozen other disciplines, woven into a single quasi-divine narrative. Understandable even to the dullest.

Upon opening the book, a single line stared back.

“partum fatum.”

Create your fate.

His words were a spark into dry tinder.

The fire that followed was glorious

Within a year, fed by a never ending stream of ideas and books from Adam, nearly every monarchy in surrounding countries had fallen in favor of forms of government proposed by Adam. Democracies and meritocracies abounded.

While Adam opposed oppression he never argued for absolute equality, merely equality of chance. The distinguished deserved differentiation for seizing that chance, for creating their fate.

Like a raging wildfire, or a holy disease, the ideology spread from country to country inspiring the people to rise up and throw off their shackles.

Adam created luck, and people emerged greater.

Upon his deathbed, Adam looked over a new world, a world where all had the chance to rise and all had the chance to fall. The sight fed his very soul, faith pouring into it like dry tinder being added to a fire, which blazed even as his body withered. God-Slayer was nowhere to be seen.

He reached out, feeling the world he had created, the words he had written.

And he relinquished his body, surrendering it to time.

Instead he pressed his own path into words, further strengthening their power to bridge the astral, tying the realms closer together.

It was not ascension in the usual way, but it was a form of ascension nonetheless.

I wondered why he of all people had been the first to achieve his own form of quasi-divinity.

Was it the power of his creation, strengthened by all that believed and acted on it? Was it the raw strength of his will? Was it the purity of his soul, inherited from Angelica herself?

I still don't know, and it haunts me.

Divinity is an act of creation, of self-wrought existence.

And creation is a divine act.

Let there be light.