Side Story — Pillar of Flame

The seat of God was a location that looked like it should have been located high in the heavens, all the way above the clouds. It was a world for God and God alone, only visited by his direct creations, the Eight Sacred Treasures, and for those who God had ‘accidentally’ killed before their time.

God sat upon his throne and was doing his usual work. That work consisted of simply managing this world. That was all he was meant to do. It didn’t matter how many lives were born where, or how many lives were lost where, and it didn’t matter how much suffering or tragedy existed.

All he was there to do was manage the world. He didn’t care in the slightest whether or not anything wonderful happened in the world he oversaw. He simply managed it from his literally divine vantage point. It was, quite literally, just what he did as work. There was no joy, there was no sorrow; it was just labor.

But, something happened that threatened to upend that simplicity.

“...Whoa!”

God’s hand stopped in mid-sentence, leaving his immaculate handwriting unfinished. In shock, God turned his eyes away from his desk, and his eyes caught sight of a giant pillar of fire.

“...I-Impossible...”

A pillar of fire blazed upon the world above the clouds, rising beyond the literal heavens. Ordinarily, this shouldn’t have been possible. But God already knew where that blaze was coming from.

“So, that monster is on the move again...”

Starting twenty-five hundred years ago and ending fifteen hundred years ago... During that long millennium, he had seen that pillar of flame frequently flare up in an incomparable radiance.

“What idiot’s woken up that monster...?”

God had no need to confirm where the fire came from. The only things that burned in this world were the candles that represented human lives. The candle flame that represented a person’s life wasn’t always consistent; instead, it was constantly changing, often flaring up or guttering. Further, there was an enormous gap in the brightness of the flame between individuals.

For those with a great deal of authority, the flames were naturally larger, and were larger still when they were in their prime. For those who would die without accomplishing anything, the flame was weak, and it wouldn’t change during their lifetime.

It was a flame that showed just how brightly, how intensely, that person was living. However, it was impossible for a candle flame to grow into a pillar of this size. It was still a candle flame, after all, and there was no way to tell a difference in intensity unless there were multiple candles around for comparison.

The pillar of flame was so large that it was greater in size than the combined flames of every person living on the planet.

“Damn... Does he intend to destroy this world?”

It was a life that burned bright, but it was also a life whose flame consumed others. The candle that the pillar of flame erupted from belonged to the only man who had ever reached the realm of God on his own.

“Suiboku.”

The world’s most powerful man, a man who could shake the heavens and the earth, and could even shatter the stars. A man who even God feared. Until recently his life — his flame — had settled down, burning as though the man himself was asleep. But now, it was blazing bright once again, with a strength that God himself had never seen before.

“It’s bigger than it once was... Maybe it’s all over.”

God, too, was only a boat floating upon the river of fate. Watching the pillar of flame burn more brightly than ever, God found comfort in being powerless in the face of the inevitable.