Chapter 2: Too Early For A Meeting

The light consumed everything.

Isaac braced for impact, expecting pain, fire, something, but, lucky for him, there was nothing.

When the light faded, he found himself suspended just above the planet's surface, hovering over a vast, windswept plain. Golden grasses rippled below him like an endless ocean, bending in waves under the pressure of a coming storm. Far in the distance, mountains tore the horizon in jagged black teeth.

He floated lower without meaning to, as if he simply wanted to see closer, and his will obeyed.

Isaac glanced down—or instead, he thought downward—and found his perception sharpening until he could see each blade of grass glistening with dew. He didn't have feet, a shadow, or even a presence in the wind as far as he was aware.

"This is…" He trailed off, the words reverberating strangely in the hollow space of his mind. "...way too vivid to be a dream."

He tried to move and realized there was no "up" or "down" to him anymore. He simply was, and the world shifted as he willed it to. If he wanted to be over a lone tree half a mile away, he simply was.

Isaac blinked, at least, he thought he did. "Okay. Definitely not Kansas anymore."

Then he felt it again—that strange hum, deep under everything.

The prayers.

They were faint here, barely whispers against the background noise of rustling grass and faraway thunder, but he could feel them if he focused. He turned—or focused in a direction, hard to tell which—and locked onto the closest one.

"Please, let the rain fall this season. The crops are dying."

The voice was tired, desperate, belonging to a man somewhere far to the east.

Isaac hesitated.

He could feel where the prayer was meant to go — a distant, warm presence like the sun on his back. A god's attention, slow and unfocused, stretched too thin to hear one farmer's tiny plea.

"…What happens if I just…" He reached for it instinctively.

The prayer snapped to him like a magnet.

Shocking in its intensity, it wasn't just words, there was hunger, fear, nights spent staring at a sky that wouldn't rain.

Isaac flinched, curling inward on instinct. It was too much, too raw, as though the man's entire world had been poured straight into him.

The man's voice was clear, echoing in Isaac's head, raw with hope.

"Please! Anything. If you're there, anyone, help us."

Isaac hesitated, letting the words echo in his mind.

He could feel the man's desperation like a tightness in his own chest, the brittle exhaustion of someone watching their livelihood crumble day after day.

'…This is insane,' Isaac muttered, or thought he did. He wasn't even sure sound worked the same way here. 'I have no idea what happens if I do this. Could I… mess up? Like, rain too hard and flood the field?'

He should let go. It wasn't meant for him.

The prayer tugged at him again, quiet but insistent.

But then… wasn't that precisely what he'd asked for?

'What if there was another god?'

'What if,' Isaac said quietly.

He didn't know what he was doing, or where he was, but he wanted to answer. He focused on the grass below and thought, 'Rain.'

Something stirred.

The air shifted, a subtle change, and a single black petal drifted down from nowhere, landing on the grass.

Isaac blinked—metaphorically—as the ground darkened. From where the petal fell, a strange black flower unfurled, waxy and sharp-edged, its center gleaming faintly like polished bone. Another bloomed beside it. And another.

Within moments, a ring of them had appeared, spreading outward in perfect silence.

'...Okay, I definitely didn't ask for that.'

He stared at the sharp, gleaming petals as more sprouted around it, forming a perfect ring.

'That's not ominous at all. Definitely doesn't look like the opening scene of a horror movie.'

The clouds above thickened, darkened, and split open.

Rain poured down. It poured in silver sheets, hissing against the grass, soaking the earth. Isaac didn't move, didn't even think, as it happened, afraid he might break whatever strange balance he'd just created.

'Please don't let me have just started a monsoon…'

The prayer's voice flared with relief, spilling gratitude into him like sunlight on cold skin.

And with it came a faint, glowing thread that tugged at him—specifically into him.

It was so clear it startled him—raw relief, tears mixing with rain as he knelt in the mud, whispering thanks to the god he thought had answered.

And Isaac felt… connected.

It was a faint but glowing thread stretching from that man's heart to Isaac's own strange, formless awareness.

The world felt a little sharper. A little closer.

Like he had become just slightly more real.

Isaac hovered there in silence, torn between wonder and unease.

Because down below, the ring of black flowers he had unknowingly created remained, standing stark against the golden grass. They weren't natural—he could feel that too. They pulsed faintly, in rhythm with that new thread of connection.

"…Well," he muttered, "that's not ominous at all."

Then they turned toward him.

Not the farmer.

Something far above, beyond clouds and sky—distant, warm, and impossibly vast.

A god's attention.

Isaac froze.

'Oh shit.'

It was like being caught under a spotlight that burned straight through him, searching for the thief who had stolen a prayer out of turn.

Instinctively, he withdrew, pulling his awareness tight until he was a dim spark hiding in the planet's shadow.

The presence lingered, scanning, before passing.

Only when the pressure lifted did Isaac dare to unfurl again.

The flowers still stood, silent witnesses. The prayer-thread still pulsed, faint but steady.

Isaac let out a breath—or the thought of one—and laughed weakly.

"Right," he said, voice echoing in the void. "So, lesson learned: stealing prayers is a good way to get smited on day one."

Isaac withdrew, pulling himself higher into the sky until the plains blurred beneath him and the ring of flowers was just a dark smudge on the land. The connection to the prayer pulsed once more, a gentle tug, before fading to a quiet thrum in the back of his mind.

'…I need to figure out the rules of this place before I do anything else.'

The wind on the plain shifted below, carrying the petals of his black flowers across the grass.