A god is born: A new humanity

The sky above Paris bled ash like the aftermath of a burnt prayer.

Where once the Eiffel Tower had been a symbol of romance and art, it now stood like a rusted skeletal watching over a congregation of trembling humanity. The once-vibrant plaza below it was blanketed with soot and silence, save for the rasping breath of survivors kneeling beneath its steel bones.

And at the center of their fear stood Zero.

Cloaked in shadow and haloed by the burning sigil that hovered above the skyline, he looked almost serene. His hair — once white like fresh snowfall — now streamed long down his back, stained at the tips as though it had been dipped in blood. His crimson eyes burned brighter than the fires raging through the city. He did not look rabid, nor monstrous. He looked serene. Beautiful, even. Like a statue carved in rage, frozen at the moment of judgment.

When he spoke, the air trembled.

“I found the one who gave me life,” he said, his voice carrying across the ruined plaza like a hymn sung in a cathedral of bones. “The one who forged me in my mother’s womb… who touched me with divinity and called it science. But he rejected me.”

Zero stepped forward slowly, eyes sweeping the crowd.

“He… the only one who could have understood me… turned his back. Chose them instead.” His lip curled and for a moment smiled. “The same humans who stared at me through the glass. Who tried to bury me in darkness from the day I was born. But do not worry, I’m not interested in trivialities such as revenge…”

The humans flinched beneath his gaze. A child whimpered, her mother clutched her tightly, pressing her face into the girls’ hair as if that could shield her.

“He is no longer my concern,” Zero spoke calmly, tilting his head. “But if he interferes….” His voice turned colder. “….Then he and his fragile allies will have their justice delivered to them. Their screams will write the final verse of a dying era.”

He raised one hand — graceful, elegant, inhuman.

“You, however….You will be the first to taste salvation.”

From the shadows, they came.

Four of them, stepping into the flickering light with the grace of kings and the menace of beasts. Their movements were controlled but there was something in their stillness that spoke of predatory hunger. They were infected but not like the mindless hive they once were. No, these were something else, scarred by evolution and crowned by blood of the new god.

And leading them was Everett.

He strode beside Zero like a knight beside his sovereign, silent and unflinching. The firelight danced across his face, making his eyes gleam with something that was not quite joy… but close.

“This is the end of times,” Zero declared, his voice swelling like a storm rolling over a graveyard. “Your God has forsaken you. This planet — this corpse you call home — is rotting with plague, death and corruption. Not worth saving in its current form….”

He paused, his expression softening, almost pitying.

“….But do not fret.”

He opened his arms.

“For I will be your new god now. Only I can free you from this curse of pain and despair. And I will…. lift you beyond your suffering.”

Everett moved first.

With deliberate calm, he bit into the side of his own palm and black-red blood oozed from the wound, thick and unnatural, shining with faint iridescence. It dripped slow, heavy like the ticking of a clock that had just begun to count down the end of humanity.

He approached the first of the kneeling humans — a woman in a red dress, torn and dirtied from her desperate journey. Her eyes locked with his, paralyzed between terror and more terror.

Zero joined him, gazing down at the woman, his crimson eyes widening.

“Lady in red,” he said, voice soft but firm, “like the rest of your kind, I offer you my blood. When you drink it, you will be my kin. Your flesh… my flesh. Your blood… my blood.”

He crouched and touched her chin with one cold finger, raising her face toward the smoky sky.

“You will not want for anything again. No pain. No hunger. No loneliness. Only purpose. Only belonging.”

The woman began to cry, tears rolling down her soot-streaked cheeks— but she did not pull away.

“Do…you promise?” she whispered.

“This I promise you,” Zero said, wiping her tears gently. “This… I gift you.”

Everett held out his bleeding hand.

The woman hesitated at first, trembling then opened her mouth.

She drank.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then everything changed.

Her body snapped like a bowstring, arching backward with such violence her bones cracked in chorus. Veins erupted black beneath her skin, a spiderweb of death crawling toward her heart. Blisters formed and burst, then sealed again in moments. It was as if time was passing by her in an instant, unsure whether to destroy or immortalize her.

She screamed until her throat tore raw. And then—silence.

Her body fell limp, a discarded marionette on the ashen ground.

Still.

Silent.

Dead.

The crowd recoiled. Mothers clutched their children. Men bit their fists to keep from crying out. One boy buried his face against his mother’s side, sobbing into her ribs.

And then — she moved.

Not with the staggering hunger of the infected. She stood with grace, like a queen. Fluid. Intentional.

The woman in red lifted her head and when her eyes opened, they burned like molten garnets. Her lips curved slowly into something that resembled a smile, blood trickling from her mouth.

She looked down at her hands, flexing them as if testing reality.

No longer human.

She was something new. She knelt down before Zero, her head touching the ground.

Zero’s smile was pure triumph.

“See?” he said softly, but his voice rang like an echo. “This is the power I promise you. This is the future I offer.”

He turned to the crowd, arms wide, the fires painting his shadow across the tower like the wings of an angel cast in pitch.

“With me,” he said, “you will never sicken. You will not grow old. Your family will not starve or suffer or die alone. You will live forever — not as beasts, not as slaves, but as something greater, your realized selves. The new humanity.”

Silence swallowed the square.
And then — one man broke.

With a strangled sob, he turned and bolted.

“No—!” someone cried.

But it was already too late.

Everett looked at the woman in red.
She rose up and nodded once.

And then she blurred.

One moment she stood at Zero’s side. The next — she was behind the fleeing man, fingers crushing the back of his neck like a vice. His scream rang out, echoing against the hollow steel of the tower. She slammed him to the ground with a crack that silenced even the sobbing child. Blood sputtered across the concrete.

She stood over him, removing her hands from the man’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice clear and cold as glass. “But I finally understand what our god means. I have never felt like this before. So much power. So much clarity.”

The man groaned under her heel. Blood trickled between his teeth.

“But if you follow us,” she said softly, “you won’t have to die.”

She lifted her gaze to the others.

“My name is Elcy,” she said, her voice ringing out though the silence. “And I am proof that life is better with our savior Zero. We are no longer prey. We are the future.”

She stepped back to Zero’s side with silent grace.

The crowd stared — broken between horror and awe, some falling to their knees in trembling surrender. Others hugged each otherm their faces split between prayer and despair.

Zero raised his hand, red eyes glowing like twin eclipses.

“Now,” he said, his voice almost tender.
“Who’s next?”