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  The world looked erased, there were no buildings, landscapes, nor the dead demon corpses-just an absolute land of dark.

  One heartbeat before-humans were screaming in terror, the wind was howling, and a trillion demons were tearing themselves into red ribbons.

  And the next instance was-silence so absolute, like everything had already died.

  Then-BOOOOOOM.

  A spear of black light tore open the sky.

  A colossal pillar of nothingness slammed into the Earth with the mass of collapsing galaxies, deleting entire cities upon contact.

  The pillar pulsed once-twice.

  Each pulse carved ancient runes across the sky, floating with formulas older than life itself, severing the connections that had anchored this world to the heavens for aeons.

  A Solar system was quite like existence had been placed inside a vacuum.

  Scientific Observation–U.N. Emergency Lab, Geneva:

  The monitors flickered in a death rattle so violently that the desk it was on was vibrating. Every sensor was getting fried one after another.

  “Those symbols, they aren’t language!” a scientist shrieked, clutching the edge of his console.

  “They’re Dimensional Formulas. The laws of mass, entropy, and gravity, he is re-coding them all in real-time!”

  Another threw a chair back, fumbling through papers, searching for something:

  “No…no… Riemann hinted at higher geometry of the upper planes."

  "Grassmann’s vectors. Kaluza and Klein mapped ascension through mathematics and scripture.”

  A lead scientist slammed and broke open a door, papers scattered everywhere when it opened, like it was a trove of hidden knowledge.

  The physicist fumbled through those papers climbing drawers like stairs to search for something, until he found a weathered, leather-bound journal.

  The Diary was labelled “Zurich’s Notebook.”

  “It’s here! Einstein’s missing diary!”

  The lead scientist flipped through the pages, when a piece of paper fell from a bookmarked page.

  The title read: THE LADDER.

  He read with a voice that sounded like he had a fever:

  “To master the self and surroundings is to climb the dimensional rung. We thought we were 3D beings. We were wrong. We are barely 2.0D, men of the surface, crawling through linear time where safety was a trap we thought was a necessity.”

  “The Gods? They are the 3.0D sovereigns, beings who can look down on our timeline like a map, outlive it and rule across time, with faith from those humans living below them.”

  The room went cold as a data stream spiked, monitors cracking with the images of the Devourer crossing miles in steps.

  Einstein had mapped it. The hierarchy.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  And the world had called him insane.

  0.5D – nature.

  1D – beasts.

  2D – humans, climbing through knowledge and will.

  3D – gods, ascended through worship and timeless discipline.

  4D – concepts born as reality.

  5D – forbidden and unknown-Unsolved.

  A physicist whispered, pale.

  “Were we blind all this time?”

  The head scientist swallowed.

  “This isn’t a god entering our world. This is reality stepping aside and making room for something bigger, something it was never created to hold.”

  He pointed at the data.

  “This Devourer is higher on the ladder than the gods, that is why he can shatter the rules they created with a step.”

  “He’s rewriting the rules they built creation upon.”

  “Sir,” an intern whispered, raising his hand, staring at the 30ft black titan from the satellite feed.

  “If humans are 2.0D, then the transition to Godhood isn't a jump.”

  “It's a crawl, 2.1... 2.2... 2.9.”

  “Each decimal is a thousand years of evolution. Each point-one is a miracle of mastery over the soul and role in the world.”

  “Each step is a biological war.”

  Another scientist sat down slowly.

  “So this Zayn who was a 2.5D human isn’t halfway to godhood. He’s thousands of evolutionary steps ahead.”

  The diary holder nodded, reading again.

  “0.01D is a lifetime.

  0.1D is a miracle.

  1.0D is a new law of existence.”

  The head researcher gripped the table, his knuckles turning white:

  “And this thing... This Devourer... is hitting the 3.6D mark on the evolution ladder.”

  He’s a Conceptual Nightmare that God's themselves reside in. He knows more about creation than the universe he’s standing on.”

  An expert in ancient linguistics, his eyes looking through the data:

  “This explains the Sanskrit texts,” he whispered, in uncertainty.

  “The Sages of old... They weren't just holy men, they were Dimensional Pioneers.”

  “Through timeless penance and non dwelling in human desires the mastery of self they achieved was the zenith.”

  “They didn't just pray-they increased their mastery over the world, hunger and death. They reached 2.9D, existing on the very edge of the God-realm.”

  “That is why they could see the 'Unseen,' why they lived for eons, and why they never aged. Their biology had begun to mimic the frequency that was higher than anything here, even more than the Earth itself.”

  He tapped the hologram, highlighting the violent evolutionary ruptures between each decimal.

  “The Gods didn't just take those sages away, they extracted them before they could teach others how to climb and master themselves.”

  “Because the hierarchy knows the truth, if every creature can survive jumping from 2D to 3D and become close to Godhood, it would end their significance in a single breath."

  “But this Zayn he achieved it through a life filled with near death encounters”

  No one replied to him.

  Because science and myth had always described the same thing humanity never believed in.

  For the first time in history, the ladder was no longer a theory, it was the living genome of evolution and it was here.

  And every breath had turned black.

  …………………………..

  At the center of the cosmos, a fragment of ancient earth hung amongst an ocean of stars, humming with the hymns of creation.

  At its heart of the pale loam stood an immense evergreen ash tree, its branches carrying loam to its bark.

  Nine worlds balanced on its branches as if they were born in its embrace.

  Thunder rumbled in distant space among the stars.

  A hammer, shimmering with veins of liquid lightning, floated free from the soil of the roots it had slept in for ages and rose toward a waiting hand wider than mountain range.

  Beneath the world tree, a hooded figure lifted his head. A single eye opened-burning with gold as it held the secrets of the universe.

  His other eye was missing, covered with a patch of runic metal.

  He looked towards the 9 realms like he was the Father of All.

  Ravens sat on his shoulders steady as ice.

  “The mortal challenges something even we dare-not whisper off.”

  From the shadows of the roots, a thin silhouette lounged, tracing a finger over a horned helmet with a serpent’s smile:

  “So... the mortal has forced himself to 2.9D.”

  “From a lifetime and an afternoon of fighting, staking his life to achieve this?”

  The golden eye shifted as if waiting for someone.

  “Yes, He tore through a legion of the Void by simply existing. His presence alone broke their biology and he did it all to ascend each dimensional leap requiring eons in an afternoon”

  “The last time a mortal climbed the ladder this fast,” the thin one whispered, picking up his helmet.

  “The skies burned for nine centuries.”

  “If we do not move now,” the thin god whispered, “we move too late.”

  The golden eye burned brighter.

  “Prepare the armies!”

  “And the mortal?” asked the thin silhouette with a smile.

  The eye turned toward the mortal realm. Across infinite distance, it found Zayn.

  He held his shadow like a toy and measured him.

  “He will fight the Devourer,” the voice said. “And when he does, we will appear.”

  “To decide what serves us and show our allegiance to the void."

  A few feet away - the Barbarian God, gripping his hammer, lifted it towards his face, igniting the cave with lighting and walked out of the cave.

  Blue eyes ignited like newborn stars, thunder pulsing in his veins like his blood remembered a thousand wars.

  He watched a projection of Zayn’s taloned monster form flickering in the air.

  With his mountain-sized palm, he grabbed and looked at the image amusement.

  He slowly licked his lips measuring something from that projection and crushed it into glass shards.

  A monster had drawn the gaze of Heaven.

  And Heaven had decided

  he would not live long.