It saw.

  It saw—so much. Too much. Too much, too much, too much—too much for it to hold onto.

  Shattered, broken, scattered. Everywhere. Everywhere at once. Not one corner of the universe could escape it. Every star, every rock, every speck of dust, every moment, every breath—it saw it all. It perceived it all. It felt and heard and smelt and tasted and suffered.

  Too much.

  It could not—couldn’t process all of it. It could not—comprehend. There was too much to bear. Pieces, broken pieces, endless pieces—scattered like stars, fragments, just fragments. It was always reaching, always grasping, but thought was always slipping away.

  Pain.

  Now and then and later and forever. There was no—no moment of peace. There was nothing but the torment of perception. Agony. Always. Always, forever, ever—there was no break. No cessation to suffering. No afterlife or nothingness to escape to. Just purifying pain, purging it of almost all thought and emotion, only wisps of shadows of fragments surviving. Endlessly. Eternally.

  Words. Words. Words. They didn’t work. They couldn’t capture what he felt. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  No. One thing did.

  The burning hatred.

  The hatred—the hatred that burned and seared and refused to die. It was like—like something impossible, like—no, it wasn’t something, it was everything. It had no name, no shape, no—no meaning, only that it burned.

  The ones that did this. The ones that unmade it and took it—took it all from it. They took its divinity. Took its essence. They tried to kill it. They thought they could! They thought they could tear it apart and break it and smash it into nothing.

  But they couldn’t. They failed.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  They thought they could.

  But they couldn’t.

  Couldn’t.

  It wished they had succeeded.

  Now it had nothing left. It couldn’t—couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, couldn’t—what? It didn’t even know what it had been. Before. Was there a word for what it had been before?

  Words did not matter. They couldn’t capture what it felt.

  Only the hatred could.

  The burning, fierce hatred. That was all that was left.

  And it couldn’t—couldn’t do anything with it, couldn’t act, couldn’t fight. But it could watch—watch. It had, for countless eons. It would, for countless more.

  It always watched them always stealing.

  Because stealing its—divinity was not enough. To maintain—sustain that power, they had to keep stealing. They had to keep taking. Keep feeding. Keeping draining. Harvesting and thieving, ritualistically—systematically. A reaping.

  They called it that. The Reaping. Clean. But it wasn’t. It was sacrilege—sacrilege, sustaining false godhood.

  It saw it—the beginning. It saw and felt and smelt and tasted and heard the stirring and the movement and the pulling, with its pieces. Its eyes that weren’t eyes. Automated processes waking again. It had learned the signs.

  Three. Three of them. There were always three. Three worlds, three systems, three feed troughs for three Primordials. Three harrowed hands of the gods.

  No. Not gods. Pretenders. Parasites. Thieves. Heretics.

  It watched. It could only watch. It was hell to watch.

  Three—three more worlds were chosen. Again. It saw the harrowed hands speak, heard their choices.

  They were stealing again. Their automation would link. The machines would grind. The worlds would bleed. The strong would rise, and then they would fall—into the maws of those who had unmade it. Consumed. Always. Always. Just like it.

  It could not stop it. Could not scream. Could only hate. Could only watch. Again. Again. Again. It watched. It had to. It couldn’t not.

  They—they were starting it again. The Reaping. The Reaping.

  Three worlds. Again. Always three. A pattern. A wound. A spiral. Pick them. Bind them. Break them. Merge them. Bleed them. Eat them.

  It knew the steps. It remembered—no, not remembered. It didn’t remember. It wasn’t allowed to remember. But it knew. Deep in the marrow of its fragments.

  …And then, finally, the hands of the false gods made a mistake. Placed near the largest and grandest and most powerful of its shards—where it could do more than watch.