I was five stops away from home when the world ended.
Not for everyone—just for me.
The subway was half-empty, humming under sickly fluorescent lights. I was half-asleep, earbuds in, listening to a podcast about serial killers with mommy issues. Then the world hiccupped. That's the best way I can describe it. One second, I was leaned against the window. The next—
Everything tore.
Reality folded inside-out like someone yanked the fabric of existence through a hole the size of a pinhead. My body felt like it was falling in every direction at once. My skin went cold, then hot, then like it wasn't there at all. I screamed. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe someone else did.
And then—darkness.
I opened my eyes to firelight and stone.
Gone was the subway. In its place was a circle of torches, flickering shadows, and robed people chanting around me. The air smelled like sulfur, ash, and something that made my nose wrinkle—burnt cinnamon? Rotten cloves?
A man in blood-red robes stepped forward, arms raised, eyes wide with fanatical joy.
"Oh Great Kaer Xal'zhur," he intoned, voice booming unnaturally. "Wielder of the Black Flame. Lord of Nine Plagues. He Who Speaks and Stars Wither. We welcome your return."
I stared at him.
Then at myself.
Then back at him.
I sat up. Or tried to. My limbs felt longer, heavier, wrong. My skin was pale. My fingers were tipped with faint black claws. My chest burned like someone had carved a glowing rune into my heart.
"What the hell," I croaked. My voice didn't sound like mine. It was deeper. Echoing, like I was speaking through a cave full of mirrors.
The robed cultists gasped. One dropped to her knees sobbing.
"He speaks!" she cried. "The language of ruin! The breath of unmaking!"
This had to be a dream.
Had to be.
I pinched my arm. It hurt.
One of the cultists stepped forward, kneeling, and offered something on his palms: a long, jagged sword made of black crystal and shifting shadows. It throbbed with a faint pulse, like it was alive.
"Your weapon, my lord," he said. "Abyssfang awaits your touch."
I stared at it. Then at him.
"Okay," I said slowly, "I think you've got the wrong guy."
The sword twitched.
So did the shadows around it.
And for a moment—just a second—something surged through me. A memory that wasn't mine. Fire raining from the sky. Screams in a hundred languages. A black throne surrounded by oceans of bones. My mouth—my real one—laughing as cities crumbled.
Then it vanished.
I clutched my head, dizzy.
There was something curved against my temples.
I touched it.
Horns. I had horns.
"Oh god," I whispered. "Oh god. Oh god."
The cultists took that as confirmation.
"He accepts the vessel!" someone shouted. "Kaer Xal'zhur lives again!"
They erupted in cheers.
I staggered to my feet. The robes they'd dressed me in shimmered faintly with silver runes that moved when I wasn't looking at them. The air tasted like power, old and bitter. My heartbeat was too strong. Like war drums pounding in my chest.
"I'm not a god," I said, breath shaking. "I'm not whoever you think I am."
The lead cultist smiled. Too wide. Too calm.
"Of course not," he said. "You are something far greater."
Then the wall exploded.
Not the door.
The wall.
A blast of golden light shattered stone like paper, and a wave of heat swept through the chamber. One of the cultists disintegrated on the spot.
A dozen figures in silver and white armor stormed in, led by a woman holding a glowing greatsword. Holy energy radiated from her like sunlight made solid.
"By order of the Seven Saints," she bellowed, "the heretic god shall be returned to his seal!"
I raised my hands.
"Wait!" I shouted. "I've been here for five minutes!"
Of course! Here's **Chapter 1, Part 2** of *The World Thinks I'm the Evil God They Sealed Away* — written in clean prose without bold, italics, or symbols:
The knights charged.
The cultists screamed and scattered like pigeons hit by a thunderclap. I had absolutely no idea what to do—until the sword moved.
Abyssfang. That was what they called it.
It flew into my hand.
I didn't reach for it. It just launched itself across the stone floor and slammed into my palm like a dog answering a whistle. And the weirdest part? It purred.
The handle pulsed. Shadowy veins crawled up my arm. The whispers in the room, once incomprehensible, started making sense.
Let them bleed.
Split the sun. Silence the light.
Feed me.
"Nope," I said, and hurled the sword at the knights.
It didn't fly like a sword should. It curved mid-air like a boomerang made of vengeance. It tore straight through a knight's shield, shattered her sword, and knocked her into the wall.
The rest hesitated.
I didn't.
I bolted.
Straight through the hole they'd blasted in the wall. Stone cracked beneath my bare feet as I ran. The ancient robes tangled around my legs, and I smacked my horn on a hanging beam on the way out. Somewhere behind me, holy magic exploded and someone shouted something about divine judgment.
The sword returned to my hand, sliding through the air like a guided missile.
I didn't ask how.
The temple—or fortress, or cultist man-cave—sat in the middle of a crumbling ruin. Moss-covered towers. Half-fallen walls. Beyond them loomed a forest, pitch black and twisted like something out of a haunted painting. Trees leaned in strange directions, and mist swirled unnaturally low to the ground.
It looked like certain death.
I ran straight for it.
Because if the knights were the good guys, and the cult thought I was their apocalypse-daddy, then maybe the creepy murder-forest was the only place I wasn't on someone's hit list.
I almost made it.
Halfway to the trees, I tripped.
I faceplanted, hard. My elbow cracked against a stone, and Abyssfang skittered across the ground ahead of me. I groaned and crawled after it.
That's when I heard the voice.
Not out loud. In my head.
Thief.
Everything stopped. The wind. The shadows. Even my heart, maybe.
"Who said that?" I whispered.
No answer.
Then the sky cracked open.
Not metaphorically. Literally. A split in the clouds tore itself wide, violet and gold and black like something painted by a blind god with anger issues. Behind the rift, something enormous stirred. Wings. Eyes. Geometry that made no sense. It looked down at me and through me, like I was a roach that stole its lunch money.
You walk in my flesh.
You wear my chains.
You have been marked.
The voice rumbled through my bones.
Then came the name.
Kaer Xal'zhur.
It boomed through my skull, vibrating behind my eyes. The name wasn't just something to call me—it was a title. A curse. A warning.
And suddenly, I understood something awful.
I wasn't just in Kaer's body.
I was sharing it.
I scrambled up and grabbed the sword. The moment I touched it, I could feel the other presence inside me smile.
Behind me, the knights were regrouping. Shouts echoed through the temple ruins.
Ahead of me, the forest pulsed. The trees leaned, beckoning. The mist writhed like it was alive.
Inside me, something ancient stretched and laughed.
This was bad.
Really, really bad.
But I ran anyway.
Into the trees.
Into the dark.
Because the only thing worse than being mistaken for an evil god… was finding out the evil god might still be home.
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