Birdsong, thick and layered like falling rain, pulled Tavin out of a dreamless dark.
His eyelids felt glued together. With effort, he pried them open—and met a ceiling made of thatch and sky-colored clay. Warm, humid air pressed against his bare skin, rich with the scents of damp earth and crushed herbs. He was lying on a stone slab, covered with what looked like thick fur—dark, coarse, and musky. The slab itself had no padding, and his back ached from it. He sat up with a grunt. Everything hurt, but the pain in his left forearm blazed brightest, as if live coals had been stitched beneath the flesh.
He sat up slowly and froze.
A mirror-shard of polished bronze leaned against the far-wall. The reflection that stared back wasn't the college dropout who binge-watched shōnen anime in sweatpants. This version of Tavin looked like every gym resolution he'd ever broken: broad shoulders, tight abs, arms built for climbing mountains. Only his disheveled black hair and wide, startled eyes felt familiar.
Then there was the brand.
Violet lines spiraled across his forearm in intricate geometric loops, glowing just bright enough to pulse with each heartbeat. As he watched, ghost-text flared into view above the scarred skin:
Name: Tavin, Class:Dark Creator, Level: 1, Attribute: Embellished Dark
"Great," he muttered. "I've become a walking pop-up window."
A soft rattle at the wooden door. It opened a hand's width, and the smaller girl from last night slipped inside.
Up close, she looked maybe a year younger than he was—early twenties at most—with raven hair cut in a practical bob and sapphire eyes that flicked across him like darts. She wore a sleeveless black top and a wrap-skirt stitched with deep-purple sigils. Bare feet. Ankle bell. No weapons in sight, but she moved like she was one.
Behind her hobbled a blind woman. Older by decades, her skin a warm umber, her cataract-clouded eyes framed by delicate tattoos that matched the braziers' violet flame. She leaned heavily on the girl's arm.
The elder reached out. Tavin didn't flinch; he let her fingertips explore the new planes of his face.
Her lips trembled. "After three empty decades… the Gate opens. Your aura is unmistakable, Pōwehi."
Tavin cleared his throat. "I'm—uh—Tavin. From a place called Pennsylvania? No idea what a Pōwehi is."
The girl's stare turned cold steel. "We know your name. The prophecy etched it into our temples long before we were born." She guided the elder to a block of wood that served as a chair, then pivoted and planted herself cross-legged on the dirt floor in front of him. "I am Niah. Apprentice priestess of Skotos. This is Ema'Tari, our Matriarch."
Tavin swallowed. "Nice to meet you?"
Niah exhaled through her nose—frustration, maybe disappointment. "Thirty years. That's how long we have waited for the Darkness of Unending Creation- the Pōwehi. While we waited, the Wodr nation's god razed our cities. The survivor clans scattered to the shadows or, worse, they were forced to become slaves. We keep breathing only because this village serves as a mine, and ore buys us time."
Tavin opened his mouth, closed it again. In anime, someone would crack a joke to break the tension. But staring into Ema'Tari's unseeing eyes, humor felt obscene.
"I don't remember agreeing to be anyone's messiah," he mumbled. "I just walked through a door in my grandfather's basement."
Niah leaned forward, elbows on knees. The movement drew his gaze to the soft line where her top ended and sun-bronzed skin began—an accidental flash of fan service that made him feel both very alive and profoundly guilty.
"Listen carefully, outsider," she said, voice suddenly gentle. "You bear the Creator-brand. The Gate would not mark you if you were ordinary. Whether you want the title or not, power sleeps in your blood now. Power we need, or the Skotos will vanish before the next moon-cycle."
Tavin rubbed a hand over his face. "You want me to fight gods."
Ema'Tari's head tilted. "Not alone. No being, not even Pōwehi, can defy seven divinities without allies. You must first understand this world. Let us teach you. Let us train you. Then choose your path."
Silence settled. Outside, cicadas screeched, and somewhere distant, a waterfall roared like applause.
Tavin thought of the farmhouse, the basement door, the impossibility of going back. He thought of the prophecy, of enslaved people waiting for a miracle, and of violet flames licking skyward on a ruined pyramid.
"Okay," he said finally, voice shaky but firm. "Teach me. But call me Tavin. 'Great Darkness of Unending Creation' is a mouthful."
Niah's lips twitched—almost a smile. "Tavin, then." She rose in a fluid motion and offered a hand. "Step outside. Meet what remains of your people."
He took her hand. Static jumped between their skin—dark energy, eager and hungry.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the jungle's humidity slapped him anew, but so did the sight of the village: clay huts cradled by colossal trees, smoke curling from cooking fires, half-collapsed walls, children with wary eyes, and miners whose shovels glittered in the sun.
A thousand unspoken pleas pressed in on him.
Level 1 or not, Tavin understood one truth: their world would keep burning—unless he learned to master the darkness now branding his arm.