The end was coming.

After an unimaginable span of time by the terms of mortals, the man known only as the Hooded King was about to meet his end. For twenty-seven millennia, he had ruled his corner of the world through pure personal might and a tyrannical will. However, his death was not to come of old age or the blade of an enemy.

No, his death was to come because of repentence.

It was ironic. The man, the creature, the monster, the tyrant who had dominated the Nine Lands for so long was dying because he realized… that he had been wrong.

He lay upon his bed, his face now visible for the first time in an age, his signature Hood laid aside. His face showed no signs of his immense age. His skin was smooth as porcelain and his eyes clear and free of cataracts. His luxurious golden mane of hair was untouched by gray, and his body was covered in well-defined muscle.

A god, known only as the Judge, stood at his bedside, looking down on him with cold eyes, for the Hooded King was the one who had defied him longest and with a ferocity that had left the god with scars upon his soul. Mortals were not supposed to contain a will capable of challenging him, and the deity was glad to see his opponent finally brought low, even if it was not by his hand.

The source of the Hooded King’s fall was the young elf maiden sitting in a leather chair by his bedside, opposite the Judge. Her eyes were full of love and compassion as she looked upon the man whose fierce will had grasped her imagination and whose stained soul had cried out to her so much for salvation.

“So you came,” The King stated simply as his unnatural orange gaze met the pitch black that filled the sockets of the Judge of the Dead. Normally, it was the Silent Reaper that came for men, not the Judge. However, the Reaper had no power over the Hooded King, even now, as he was dying. No lesser deity would dare to try to claim the soul of the man who had risen so high.

Even now, with an effort of will, the Hooded King could reclaim everything he had cast aside to allow himself to die. His powers were inherent to his soul, born from continuously reforging it in pain and the clashes of will. He was simply too powerful for lesser deities to be able to touch safely. It took an effort of will to counteract his desire to live, rendering him vulnerable to the frailties of mortality.

“Indeed. The time has come, my old enemy. I never imagined you would repent. Your defiance has always defined our reactions, your arrogance as you dominated an entire continent through your personal power alone an affront to we gods and all pious men. You have killed billions in your time on this world, and I had anticipated that one day I would be forced to acknowledge you as one of us. Why have you repented?” The god asked softly. It made no sense to him.

The Hooded King was a demigod, though still mortal. With effort, he could have usurped any number of gods and taken their place in the pantheon. Moreover, his ability to defy all the curses and hideous trials the deities of the Seventeen Realms could push onto him had slowly pushed the entirety of the pantheon into a state of resignation at their inevitable doom. It was inconceivable that such a man would willingly allow himself to die.

The King chuckled with dry amusement, “Ah, I have finally surprised you, have I? It is almost worth dying for that alone.”

His mirth faded a moment later, replaced by a weariness only a mortal who had walked the roads of true immortals could possess, “Through Yifana, I finally saw a truth I forgot in my centuries of struggle. Why did I rise up in the first place?”

The Judge blinked as he searched his impossibly vast store of knowledge of the dying and dead for that particular scrap of understanding… and was still confused even after discovering it. It baffled him that the man… no the power lying on the bed before him would bother with such a trivial concern.

“You have chosen to die because you remembered what it is to be mortal? To suffer, toil, and fear the hand of the strong? Why should this concern you? You have not been weak since those first years, even by our standards,” The Judge asked, mystified. For all that his role was to weigh the karma of the dead, he had never been mortal. He could not understand why such a realization would cause the man before him to repent of his sins.

“I forgot why I fought to rule, why I opposed the heavens. I became what I hated without ever realizing it, forgetting my reason for seeking power in the first place. I killed the innocent, oppressed hundreds of generations of those I should have protected, and I spilled my own family’s blood in the name of order. I slew my own sons when they became ambitious, and I sold the sons and daughters of millions into slavery. I held my power but I forgot that power is meaningless without reason,” He replied, his eyes full of bitter regret.

Yifana was supposed to have been only one in a long line of thousands of wives, a tribute from the old elven tribes who finally surrendered to his rule half a century before. However, his marriage to her had changed him, slowly but surely. Her empathic powers allowed him to see himself as he was, rather than as he saw himself. He saw himself from the point of view of his peasants, of his nobles, of his soldiers… and he realized that he had come to embody everything he had once despised in the powerful.

So, he’d chosen to die, repenting of his crimes and calling upon the Judge to decide his fate, for he could only pass on having been weighed for his karma and found wanting, even now.

The Judge blinked slowly, then spoke his verdict, a verdict that he had decided upon shortly after being summoned to his old enemy’s death bed, “Hooded King Ifzrael Karmathon, I condemn you to reincarnation and three hundred lifetimes as a slave, to live all of those lifetimes powerless under the heel of the powerful and subject to the whims of the cruel. What do you say?”

Yifana’s eyes widened in horror at the verdict, and she tried to protest… but was silenced by her husband with a ponderous rise of his hand.

“I accept,” The ancient being said, smiling peacefully as the power of the Judge’s verdict began to destroy his flesh. Willingly subjecting himself to the Judge and accepting his verdict was the only way for him to die. He was simply too powerful, too embedded in the fabric of their universe to die otherwise.

“Beloved!” Yifana threw herself at him, and his eyes widened in horror as the verdict took hold in her flesh as well.

“No! Judge, please!” He said frantically, true panic showing for the first time in millennia in those unnatural eyes.

The Judge was horrified as well. Yifana was an untainted, pure soul. To condemn her to the same fate would be an unforgivable lapse. He tried to exert his will upon his power, but the very implacability he’d been forced to weave into his verdict made it impossible to loosen its grasp on her flesh.

He realized that her death was inevitable, now. She was screaming silently, her powerful elven life energy preventing her immediate death only because she had only touched upon one part in a billion of the power he’d used on her husband.

Her soul, however, was another story. With a motion of his hand, a sword made of black mist drawn from the waters of the River of Forgetfulness appeared in his right hand… and slashed through her body without leaving a mark.

Yifana fell limp across her husband’s body, dead in an instant, her skin rapidly graying as the decaying effect of the death god’s sword took hold, rapidly destroying the dead cells. In moments, her body had collapsed into dust, even her bones gone as the supreme force of entropy contained in the divine blade destroyed it utterly.

More importantly, however, her soul was now untouched and safe from her husband’s fate. His sword had transported her soul straight to the River and on to reincarnation, one that would match the incredibly good karma she had built up by bringing the Hooded King to his knees of his own volition.

“My enemy… her soul?” The Hooded King was no spiritually frail mortal. He understood the inevitability of death, and though it pained him immensely that Yifana had died, what bothered him more is that she might share his punishment.

“She is safe from your punishment, Ifzrael. She will not remember you the next time she is reborn, but it is unlikely her soul will return to her people at any time in the near future. However, you need not fear she will be reborn into slavery. Her karma will not allow it,” He said, relief showing in his tone, making him seem almost human, despite the fact that he had never been mortal.

The ancient king sighed with relief. His extremities were already beginning to crack and crumble into metals, incredibly hard gems, and dense minerals as his soul was purged from them forcefully. The sheer physical strength of his body made true decay impossible. Instead, his incredibly dense flesh, normally made light through his power, was taking on a mineral form as it fell apart.

The Judge was a bit shocked at this. He knew the man had enhanced and tempered his body to an insane degree, but this…

The Hooded King gave him a faint smile, “Surprised? I was too, when I realized just how much flesh could be compacted and still function when infused with enough magic. I never did reach the limits, though… progress slowed but never really stopped.”

His remarks caused the Judge to shudder with fear. The volume of what was emerging as the man died was dozens of times the size of the lost body parts, quickly covering the floor in layers of super-dense detritus that most would call treasures. How could it be possible that anyone would have a strong enough soul to move such a body? Why had the Hooded King not simply taken the world entire, rather than a single, resource-poor continent?

“I am not that good of a ruler. Even at my worst, I realized that,” The ancient King admitted, “It would have been way too much work to rule the world.”

The Judge was silent for a few moments as he wondered at the man’s unexpected restraint. He wondered if he had misjudged the man’s karma, something he almost never considered.

“Do not think I don’t deserve this, my enemy. I will pay the price of my karma, my arrogance, and my tyranny,” The will burning in those orange eyes was utterly beyond human. It was baffling that the least of the races to inhabit the Nineteen Realms had produced such a being, such a monster.

The Judge bowed his head in respect to this, the most terrible of his enemies. As the King faded away, the last of his body becoming the treasures that would tempt generations of adventurers to seek out his tower in hopes of wealth and glory, he wondered if he should fear what would happen when the Hooded King was once again free of his karma.

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So it was that the Hooded King died and a weak slave was born on another of the Seventeen Realms, Dargadus. The being that had once been Ifzrael Karmathon did not forget his past. The River had no hold on his soul, though he passed through it again and again.

In each lifetime, he toiled endlessly for decades as a slave, never knowing freedom, often tasting the lash. He died tragic, violent deaths in his late middle age each time, cruel masters slaying him on a whim, torturing him for pleasure, and even raping him to prove their dominance.

He never once defied his masters in any of those lifetimes, openly or in secret. He was true to his promise to the Judge and honored Yifana with every breath. His inhuman will was bent to remaining mortal, to restraining his desire to defy and overcome the limits of his position in life and the frailty of his body.

Unbeknownst to him, the Judge observed each of his lives from afar, growing ever more terrified of the man as he endured trials that often went beyond the judgment passed so long ago. Fifteen thousand years and two-hundred and fifty lifetimes into his sentence, the other gods began to take an interest in this, the most terrible of souls.

For the creature that had once been the Hooded King was a soul that only grew stronger with time. His terrible will never faltered, his power only restrained because he desired it so. They began to wonder… was this even a punishment for him?

They could not take his memories. His soul was more powerful than their own, invulnerable to the effects of the River and the hand of the Silent Reaper.

They could not take his power, for it was derived entirely from his will.

They could not warp his understanding, for he saw with the eyes of his soul, making all illusion meaningless.

They could not bind or seal him away, for they feared he had surpassed them all.

It was as his final lifetime as a slave was coming to a close that they came to a singular conclusion… He must not be reborn.

This was the gods’ sin, their crime. The soul of the Hooded King, cleansed of karma, should have been freed to live his life without interference in his next lifetime. The Judge protested, the Reaper refused, and the Crone resisted.

In the end, however, they were over-ruled, and the Hooded King’s soul was put into an eternal sleep in the Frozen Realm, the only one of the Seventeen Realms to have never germinated life. Without a life to take hold in, his soul was without body and deprived of its senses. The Gods then sealed away the Frozen Realm, hoping to forget he even existed.

Unfortunately, it was then that the gods began to fail, one after another.

They had forgotten a simple reality of the realms they ruled over, the one rule given to them when they were placed there by the Maker of All… they were to fulfill their roles without transgression. In fear and hate, they had sealed away a soul that had completed its obligations and had no karma to make it worthy of further condemnation. They had cut off one of the worlds placed into their trust.

So the Maker’s curse fell on them.

The first to perish was the Holy King, the leader of the gods of Light. He withered and perished in days after being struck by a mortal woman who refused his advances.

The second to perish was Anahaia, the God of Darkness, a simple slip of the foot sending him falling into the Abyss of his own making, his powers failing him in the moment it took him to die.

So it followed, with each of the gods dying in their turn, even the slightest of mistakes or ill-conceived actions bringing about their deaths, often in a comical or humiliating fashion. In the end, all that remained were the three gods of Death, who had refused the pantheon’s demands and only bent when the others forced them.

However, even they were not protected from the curse.

The Silent Reaper lost his ability to manifest in a physical form, becoming a wraith doomed to forever watch the mortal realms without ever touching.

The Judge became bound to his podium, unable to walk the mortal realms.

Last of all, the Crone was split into millions of selves, each a barely-sentient figment whose only role was to show mercy to those who had earned it in the Underworld.

Without the gods to restrain them, powerful figures began to arise in the Seventeen Realms, mortals who had surpassed all mortal limits through various forbidden ways once prevented by one god or another. The flesh and legacies of the dead gods were used ruthlessly by heroes and warlords, cultivators and sorcerers to rise beyond the limits they were once permitted.

The rule of might and power became all in the Seventeen Realms. Ironically, Yifana’s compassion had, in the end, resulted in a multiverse that was forever damned to suffer without its benefits.

However, even this did not last forever. After ten ages, the Maker returned to his, one of the creations he had held out the most hope for… and was devastated at what he found. In rage, he struck his creation, shattering twelve of the Nineteen, sending cracks through the seals of the Frozen Realm.

In remorse, he raised from the shattered Realms a new pantheon of twelve gods, who would once again enforce his rules upon the world. All mortals were granted an interface that would both give and restrain their abilities. Cultivation would no longer be a fast track to immortality, nor could the blood and flesh of gods stolen from their corpses be used to become a demigod.

Instead, all mortals would progress only through the strength of their own souls and will.

Looking at the gods of Death, he felt remorse for what his curse had done to them. The Reaper and the Crone had fallen into madness in the ages since their curse began. Only the Judge remained sane, though his limitations had increasingly burdened his soul as he watched his fellows crack and fall to pieces.

The Crone was beyond salvation. Her ‘mercy’ had turned into a plague of undeath in the Realms, her gift of release from suffering becoming a curse of emptiness. So he stripped her of divinity and cast her down as one of her own undead, destroying the divine nature of the undead curse in hopes that it would one day be purified.

The Reaper was slain, giving him the oblivion he so desired. A mindless, soulless automaton, simply called the Ender, was put in his place, giving final death to each in their proper time without emotion or hesitation.

The Judge was freed from his duties, another chosen for his role. Instead, the Maker asked the Judge to wander the mortal Realms, ameliorating the horrors that still plagued them. The Judge assented, willingly submitting to his master’s will, even as his every essence was torn asunder and restructured to his purpose. He became the Wandering God, Patron of Outcasts and Adventurers.

However, it was at this time that the final seal on the Frozen Realm shattered, and the soul of the Hooded King was released into the Realms once more.

The Maker took notice, for this was no normal soul. The Hooded King was a soul that surpassed any of the creations he had made, a being of such power that a single footstep could shatter continents, its gaze slay men simply by laying its eyes upon them.

Like the Judge before him, the Maker realized that the Hooded King would become the bane of all creation… unless he was convinced otherwise.

So the Maker made him an offer. Like all other souls, he would be bound by the System, his soul restrained. In exchange, he would be given the chance to rise once again, without interference from the gods.

The Hooded King, his soul forged and reforged in pain countless times over the past eon, assented to the Maker’s offer. Even now, he honored Yifana’s sacrifice in his heart of hearts. However, he asked that, if it were possible, that Yifana be allowed to find him once again, that they might have a chance to be together.

The Maker made a counter-offer, asking that the Hooded King sacrifice the terrible knowledge of his first lifetime and his lifetimes of forbearance. His epiphanies of power and inspirations would be lost, but he would have the chance to live life as a true mortal once again. His essence would be split into hundreds of parts, living their own lives. As long as any two survived, he would be mortal, his true power and understanding locked away from him. However, when only one remained, he would have to abandon his mortal flesh and allow himself to be permanently ensconced in the Realm of the Gods.

The Hooded King assented. He knew not which part of him would find Yifana once again, but he hoped that she would be able to love him once again. The Hooded King was weary of being himself, and he relished the chance to abandon it, even if it was only for the span of a single mortal lifetime.

So it was that the Maker exerted his power over the course of three centuries, slowly splitting the terrible and unimaginably dense soul of the Hooded King into pieces that would be able to fit properly within a mortal vessel, whereupon he planted each in a babe of appropriate talent and ability. However, he also made a single alteration, making several vessels that had the potential for immortality in hopes that it could be made so that the Hooded King would never be whole again.

If he had known the Maker’s plan, the King would have approved. In truth, it was an ideal situation for them both. As this happened, the Wandering God watched, his eyes full of pain and worry for the man he had once both feared as an enemy and called friend in his heart of hearts.