Chapter 29: The First Throne
Down in the fiery, pitch-black abysses of Hell, the reaction was entirely different.
High atop the obsidian throne of Pandemonium sat Lucifer, a dangerously voluptuous Devil Queen with sweeping crimson horns, raven-black hair, and mesmerising slit-pupil eyes. As the hellfire withered to ash and the sky cracked, she didn’t shrink back in fear.
Instead, a slow, intoxicating smirk spread across Lucifer’s plush red lips. Her eyes burned with pure intrigue and intense fascination as her chest rose and fell beneath her dark silk gown.
"My, my..." Lucifer purred softly, her sultry, raspy voice echoing through the silent demonic court. She swirled her empty goblet, leaning back with a dark, tantalising glint in her eyes. "An entity capable of making the fundamental laws of reality bow down? To think such a delicious, magnificent creature exists on the mortal plane... I must meet him."
Far to the north, inside the grand, beer-soaked hall of Valhalla within Asgard, the reaction was pure adrenaline.
At the long wooden table, Thor, a stunning, muscular red-haired warrior goddess with fair skin and an athletic body clad in dark leather-stood up so fast her chair smashed into pieces. Blue lightning crackled wildly across her arms as she gripped Mjolnir, a fierce, competitive grin spreading across her face.
"Hahaha! Did you feel that, Father?!" Thor roared, her electric blue eyes flashing with battle-hungry excitement. "That’s pure dominance! I don’t care if he’s a mortal or a hidden god, I want to cross weapons with him!"
"Sit down, girl!" Odin barked, though his single eye was wide with ancient dread. "That is no opponent to challenge! You do not fight the sky when it decides to fall."
"In the sun, drenched marble plazas of Olympus, Athena-the Goddess of Wisdom, a sharp beauty with silver hair and piercing grey eyes, staggered back against a marble pillar, clutching her forehead in pain. Her divine foresight had shattered the moment it touched Seth’s aura."
"It’s impossible..." Athena gasped, sweat trickling down her neck. "My intellect can’t calculate it... It’s like trying to measure an infinite ocean with a single teacup."
Beside her, Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, leaned over the balcony, her eyes wide as a faint flush crept across her cheeks. She licked her lips, feeling the overwhelming, magnetic pull of Seth’s awakened soul. "Forget calculating it, sister... do you feel his presence? It’s divine perfection... I need to find out who he is."
In the misty, cloud-shrouded peaks of the Chinese Jade Heaven, the Jade Emperor’s court descended into absolute panic as the celestial ley lines inverted. Diviners dropped their bronze mirrors, while dragon elders coiled into defensive postures, bewildered by the complete suppression of their immortal qi.
In the shadowy, quiet underworld of the Japanese Yomi, the mother-goddess Izanami recoiled into her dark palace, surrounding herself with protective talismans, her eyes wide with paranoid terror as she felt the spiritual realm itself bow before the Capital.
Even in the desert sands of the Egyptian Duat, the jackal-goddess Anubis-, a stunning, dark-skinned beauty with glowing amber eyes, dropped her scales of balance. Her tail puffed out in instinctual alarm, her ears twitching wildly as she crouched low to the ground. "The scales... they broke! The weight of a single soul just crushed the entire realm!"
Every pantheon, every mythology, every divine queen and warrior goddess was left reeling in shock, intrigue, or terror.
Who is he?
Which domain does he belong to?
How can a mortal boy command the universe itself?
Meanwhile, far beyond the highest heavens, past the deepest abysses of Hell, and entirely outside the dimensional web of every existing mythology... lay the Absolute Void.
It was a place where time did not flow, where space held no meaning, and where the concepts of life and death had yet to be defined. It was the birthplace of the cosmos, an endless ocean of primordial darkness.
At the very center of this boundless, silent abyss, a massive, unmoving entity lay suspended in the darkness.
Its form was incomprehensible to mortal eyes-a shifting tapestry of cosmic dust, dead galaxies, and ancient stellar light. It had slumbered there for countless eons, entirely unbothered by the rise and fall of divine pantheons, the births of universes, or the deaths of gods.
Suddenly, a single golden pulse of light rippled through the Absolute Void, washing gently over the primordial entity’s immense form.
The boundless entity slowly stirred.
A pair of primordial, galaxy-swirling eyes opened within the darkness, casting an ancient glow across the void. The entity didn’t look toward Heaven, Hell, or any of the grand mythological realms. Its gaze pierced through dimensions, locking onto the small, blue planet floating quietly in a distant galaxy.
A low, gentle whisper echoed from the depths of the Absolute Void, a sound so ancient and majestic that it reverberated through the very fabric of creation.
"After eons of endless silence..."
The primordial entity smiled, its cosmic gaze softening as it watched the golden light surrounding the young man in the grey hoodie.
"...The First Throne has returned."
...
[Seth’s PoV]
I couldn’t believe what was happening to me and also around me. A fundamental change was taking place inside me, a boundless force emerging, surging, throughout my being. It felt... liberating.
For a moment, I held the force in my hand, as if the infinite layers of universe were nothing but papers before me, stacked infinite times yet remaining nothing more than a paper. I tried to see those layers and found them... fascinating. There was so much to explore in this world. I was nothing but an insignificant atom compared to all of this. Yet, I held the power greater than any of this. It wasn’t Paige, but something of my own.
What did she call it again? Ah, yes. Astral Soul.
This was the power of my Astral Soul. Am I inside it? Where even am I? Wait! Where is my body?
[Hard to say. It’s quite closer to the Creator, I guess but still so far you’ll never reach them. As for your body, obviously it doesn’t exist, dummy. You’re in the Astral World, the World of Concepts.]
The world of... concepts?