Many, many days passed in that infinite dark void, and still, Travis remained. His body lay motionless, his mind a tangled mess of thoughts and regrets. The silence around him was deafening, the darkness suffocating. He could feel the weight of time pressing down on him, but he couldn't escape. He was forgotten. Completely, utterly forgotten.

"Why can’t I just die?" The thought, sharp and bitter, swirled endlessly in his mind as he stared into the endless abyss before him. His eyes were wide open, fixed on the blackness, but there was nothing—nothing to hold onto, nothing to hope for. The emptiness around him was profound, more vast than anything he could comprehend. It swallowed him whole, and yet it offered no escape.

His body, too, seemed to defy the natural laws. There were no signs of hunger gnawing at him, no weariness in his limbs, not even the slow degradation of time. He was neither alive nor dead. He felt... suspended. Stuck in an unending moment. His skin felt cold and still, like the very fabric of existence had abandoned him. The world outside had moved on, but Travis remained frozen, trapped in a place where time had no meaning.

Days—weeks—months, perhaps—passed. He lost track. The only thing constant was the dark space, an endless void that stretched in every direction. It was as if he had ceased to exist, lost to a place that time could never touch. He couldn’t tell if he had been there for mere moments or an eternity. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Suddenly, a shift in the air. A presence. Travis’s eyes flickered, though he didn’t move. Then, a voice broke through the silence, sharp and commanding. "Weak one. Stand."

The voice sent a shiver through him, cold and unfamiliar. The voice of Zephyros.

Zephyros appeared before him, his towering figure bathed in an ethereal light. The God’s expression was unreadable, his eyes fixed on Travis with a faint glimmer of amusement. With a wave of his hand, Travis’s body jerked upright, forced to stand as if by invisible strings.

For a brief moment, Travis hesitated. His legs trembled, unsure, his mind reluctant to comply. His body, still weary from the weight of despair, didn’t want to move. He fought the sensation, but it was useless. The power Zephyros wielded was too much, too overwhelming.

For a second, Travis’s defiance took him by surprise. He had been so defeated, so broken, and yet, here he was, reluctant to obey. Zephyros’s lips twitched into a subtle smirk as he watched the flicker of resistance.

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"Interesting," Zephyros mused, his voice laced with curiosity and mild amusement. "You still have something left in you."

Travis, still standing against his will, felt the pressure of the God’s gaze bearing down on him. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t even bring himself to respond. But deep inside, something stirred. It wasn’t hope—no, not yet. But it was something. Something that hadn’t been there in what felt like forever.

Zephyros’s eyes gleamed with an enigmatic satisfaction as he surveyed the once-broken boy before him.

‘I would love to see how far these emotions can push him,’ Zephyros thought, his gaze locked on the still form of Travis. There was a subtle shift in the air, a flicker of something dark and calculating.

Without a word, Zephyros raised his hand, and in an instant, Travis’s body went limp, his consciousness slipping into unconsciousness. His body collapsed back into the endless void, weightless, as Zephyros carefully lifted him with a flick of his fingers.

As Zephyros held Travis in his grip, the God’s eyes narrowed with intent. His power surged through the boy, warping his very essence. The world Travis had once known, the one he was meant to step into, required a different standard—one that was beyond the weak and broken form that Travis had become.

With a simple gesture, the God altered the constitution of Travis’s body. His muscles tightened, his frame strengthened. His senses sharpened, his stamina, enhanced. Granting him the world's energy. His very soul was reshaped to match the expectations of the world he would soon enter, a world where strength was everything and weakness was nothing.

Yet he didn’t make him strong, he simply made him as strong as the weakest of the people in the world.

But Zephyros didn’t stop there. The God imbued Travis with a few essential needs—desires that would guide him, force him to confront his weakness. A hunger to prove himself. A thirst for redemption. A need to reclaim what had been stolen from him. And, most importantly, a drive to survive.

Zephyros surveyed his work with a satisfied glint in his eyes. He then turned his attention to a rift in the space around him, a swirling vortex of energy that pulsed with unnatural power.

With a careless flick of his wrist, the portal expanded, a doorway to another realm, to the Empire where Travis’s fate awaited. The portal hummed with the promise of a new beginning, or perhaps a new end.

“Now, let’s see if you can get back what you lost,” Zephyros murmured, his voice filled with both curiosity and a trace of amusement.

He wasn’t here to kill Travis. No, not anymore. Originally, he had come with the intent to erase him completely. But something about seeing Travis stand tall, despite the crushing weight of his failure, had intrigued Zephyros. The boy had been broken, shattered—but now there was a glimmer, a spark of something within him that even the God couldn’t ignore.

Zephyros studied Travis for a moment longer, then, without another word, he released him, letting the boy fall through the portal. Travis disappeared into the swirling light, his body passing into another world.

The God stood still for a moment, staring at the now-empty space. His expression softened, if only just, before he turned and vanished. The void, once again, returned to its deep, silent emptiness, leaving not a trace of the encounter behind.

Zephyros had come to end a life. Instead, he had given Travis a chance—though whether the boy could take it or not was yet to be seen.

......

In the heart of a dense forest, the ground is still save for the shallow breaths of a young man sprawled across the earth. His body lies motionless, a faint glimmer of sunlight filtering through the canopy above and casting jagged shadows across his form. This was none other than Travis, his face stained with dirt and blood, his body battered from his trials. Unconscious, yet on the verge of awakening, he lay there, unknowingly poised at the precipice of his true journey—a journey that would forge him into the Hero Killer.

TO BE CONTINUED