The road was thin and cracked, a single thread of stone winding through green wilderness, swallowed by trees on both sides. Grass grew through the fissures, brushing the ankles of a man who didn't seem to care whether he stepped on gravel, moss, or insects. His footfalls were silent. His expression was blank.
In one hand, he held an ice cream bar—vanilla, half-melted, dripping onto his knuckles.
There were no houses nearby. No signs. No wires overhead. Just the slow murmur of wind shifting through old pine, and the occasional bird startled by nothing. Somewhere far off, water dripped—a lazy stream curving somewhere below a hill.
He walked, licked the ice cream, walked more. His eyes didn't scan the horizon. He wasn't admiring the trees. His posture wasn't wary or casual—it was neutral, like a man who'd long since run out of things to feel. His other hand stayed in his pocket, thumb slowly rubbing a coin he never used.
A beetle crawled across the cracked stone. He stepped over it without looking down.
Another bite. Cold sweetness filled his mouth. The kind of sweetness that meant nothing, yet gave the body just enough to justify continuing.
Leaves rustled, though there was no breeze. Something moved in the canopy, unseen.
He didn't look up.
At a bend in the road, a shrine sat half-buried in ivy—a wooden frame blackened by age, roof caved in, the face of the god once worshipped there long since worn smooth by rain. It leaned slightly to the left, like it was giving up slowly.
He passed it without glancing. A piece of the roof gave way with a muffled thud as he left it behind.
Behind him, the leaves stilled.
And ahead—on the empty road—something unseen waited.
He was mid-lick when it happened.
A soundless force swept past him from behind—not a gust, not a breeze, but a rush, like a shadow with weight. His body jerked sideways before his mind registered movement. The ice cream bar flew from his hand, the world tilted, and the next thing he knew, he was skidding across the gravel shoulder of the road.
There was no pain. Just sudden motion. Abrasions bloomed silently along his forearm as it dragged over broken stone, but he didn't wince.
Dust settled. Pebbles rolled into quiet.
The ice cream bar had landed several feet away, sticking upright in a patch of dirt, like a flag planted during a silent war.
He blinked. Not fast—just once. Then again.
He lay there, face half-buried in grass and grit. His cheek felt cold. One eyelid twitched at the sting of dirt.
The road ahead remained empty.
The trees swayed slightly in rhythm, indifferent.
From where he lay, he could see the sky between the branches: flat, cloudless, uninteresting.
He sat up slowly, brushing dust from his elbow with a movement more habitual than reactive. His shirt was torn at the side. He looked down at the scratch. It wasn't deep.
He looked to the ice cream. It was still intact. Small mercy.
Then, finally, he turned his head to look behind him.
There was nothing. Just the bend in the road. Just the broken shrine. Just the stillness.
His gaze lingered for three seconds. Four.
No figure. No footprints. Not even wind.
He sighed through his nose—barely audible—and pushed himself fully upright.
His back cracked once. He exhaled again.
Then he walked toward the ice cream.
He reached the ice cream without rushing. It hadn't fallen far. A few flecks of dirt clung to the sides where the bar had brushed the gravel. The white coating was starting to soften, a single drip crawling down the stick like a reluctant tear.
He squatted beside it, picked it up by the wooden handle, and inspected it lazily. The dirt was dry. He blew on it once, wiped it on the inside of his shirt sleeve.
Then he licked it.
The taste hadn't changed.
He stood again and looked around—one final, unhurried scan of the empty road. Still nothing. No wind, no sound, no explanation.
His mouth opened just slightly.
"Hm."
That was it.
No curses. No speculation. No shouting to unseen skies. Just that small, ambiguous grunt—a sound without fear or interest.
He resumed walking.
The road stretched on without incline or obstruction, vanishing into the treeline ahead like it always had. The clouds remained unmoved. Even the birds had resumed their indifferent hopping.
A few steps in, he passed his own faint skid mark on the gravel—one arm streak of dirt, one drag pattern, already fading into the dust. He didn't look at it.
He took another bite of the ice cream bar. It crunched faintly between his teeth.
Behind him, the trees resumed their rhythm.
And far above them, something vast turned its attention downward.
High above the Mortal Plane, beyond clouds, light, and measurable air, there exists no city—only structure. The High Seats stretch across a skyless, dimensionless expanse, their foundations built not of stone, but of Law itself. Every pillar is a principle. Every ceiling an unbreakable clause.
And in its heart, seated alone on a throne made of unresolved judgments, sat Kavvrael Vey, the Goddess of Destruction & Judgment.
She did not blink. She had no need.
Around her, a slow storm of script whirled—sentences in celestial ink, unfinished verdicts spiraling like satellites. Her masked face faced nothing, yet she saw everything. Seven orbs hovered in a ring behind her head, each one an all-seeing Eye of Proof. They rotated slowly, gathering incident reports from across existence.
One of them flared red.
Kavvrael tilted her head a fraction. The Eye projected an image across the black space in front of her: a mortal man, alone on a road, getting struck by an invisible force meant for gods.
He did not scream. He did not question.
He sat up, dusted himself off… and picked up his ice cream.
The law sigils that formed the edges of her throne began to shudder.
A mortal, touched by divine force without invocation, ceremony, or invocation of names… and the Law had accepted it.
Worse—it had adjusted. The permissions had reshaped in real-time to accommodate his reaction. No fear. No rejection. Just… consent.
A single word echoed through her analytical field: "Okay."
Kavvrael did not speak aloud. Her thoughts formed in sentence structure. Each divine statement must be formatted. She issued one silently now:
{IF: [Mortal Consent = Absolute] AND [Resistance = Null]}
{THEN: [Possession Clause ∆ Adjusted]}
{→ Candidate Validated: Anomaly}
{→ Initiate Avatar Protocol}
The sigils pulsed green.
She stood.
Her cloak—stitched from expired executions—rose into the void behind her, forming a shadow that stretched across planes.
Far below, the man kept walking, oblivious to the fact that he had just become the first mortal loophole in divine law.
Kavvrael began to descend—not physically, but conceptually—reaching toward the man's unguarded consciousness.
For now, she would speak to him through darkness.