Caius slowly lifted his right hand.
He focused his mind, drawing upon the core that rested near his heart, desperately trying to summon the terrifying overwhelming power that a noble of the Age of Gods should possess.
The air in the room grew slightly warm as a small pathetic crackle echoed in the silent bedroom.
A small gray plume of ash trickled out of his palm and drifted aimlessly onto the expensive carpet.
Caius stared at the ash with his expression turning entirely deadpan.
“Fucking useless.”
In the Age of Gods, power was absolute.
The 13 Major Gods did not just observe the world; they actively dictated its laws through their chosen vessels.
The power system, the Divine Ascendancy, was a brutal hierarchy.
If you were “Unblessed,” a mortal without a divine contract, you were nothing but fodder.
You relied on standard steel and human physical limits, destined to be crushed under the heel of the nobility.
To become something more, you had to form a contract.
You had to become “God-Touched” channeling your patron’s specific mana to reinforce your flesh and bone and the higher you climbed… from Exemplar to Saint to Demigod, the closer you became to a walking natural disaster.
Caius was born into House Draxos.
They were an ancient hyper-militaristic bloodline stationed at the savage borders of the empire.
They were the shield and the sword against the untamed wilds and for thousands of years, the members of the Draxos bloodline were meant to sign their contracts exclusively with Valerion, the Major God of War and Blood.
A true Draxos awakened with a terrifying crimson aura.
They fought with a frenzied, explosive bloodlust that could shatter castle gates and rout entire armies.
Weakness in House Draxos was not just frowned upon; it was actively cut out but when it was Caius’s turn to stand before the ancestral altar and receive his divine right, the God of War had looked down upon him and found him entirely lacking.
Valerion had rejected him.
The patron deity of his own bloodline had refused to grant him even a single drop of martial mana.
Faced with the terrifying prospect of immediate exile or execution by his own father for being an Unblessed cripple, the original Caius had done something desperate.
To secure his legal standing and force his way into the prestigious Divine Academy, he had reached into the absolute bottom of the divine barrel.
He had bypassed the 13 Major Gods and formed a contract with a dying forgotten Minor God of Ash.
It was a contract so weak and so fundamentally pathetic that it barely registered as magic.
Caius clenched his fist, crushing the dying embers into gray dust.
What the hell am I supposed to do with fucking ash?
Blind someone?
Give them a mild cough?”
The sheer absurdity of his situation threatened to crush his sanity.
He was living in an era where the high-tier Blessed could alter the landscape.
Maeve for example could summon a fortress of hardened earth with a stomp of her boot.
Isolde could freeze a courtyard solid in a heartbeat.
Not only them but when Blessed of the Goddess of the Wind reached the Saint stage, they could literally tear oceans in half to allow their fleets to pass.
And the Main Villain… the great and terrible Caius Draxos… was sitting in his bedroom producing chimney sweepings.
How was he supposed to seduce the proud god-blooded heroines of Ur with this?
How was he supposed to command the respect of House Draxos, or survive the inevitable, apocalyptic clash with the reincarnated God of Light?
A Devil’s contract wasn’t even on the table yet… he didn’t even know where to begin finding a primordial Heretic altar, and even if he did, his frail ash-tainted body would likely disintegrate the moment a Devil looked at him.
He was trapped.
He was a dead man walking, ticking down the days until his scripted execution.
Knock!
Knock!
Knock!
The sudden sound made Caius flinch, his crimson eyes darting toward the heavy oak door of his bedroom.
“Young Master Caius?” a soft, trembling voice called out from the hallway.
It was one of the estate’s maids.
“The Patriarch demands your presence in the grand hall. Dinner is being served. He… he said that if you do not present yourself tonight, your rations will be cut for the remainder of the month.”
Caius gritted his teeth with his jaw muscles feathering.
The ‘Patriarch’ was his father, Lord Voran Draxos.
A monstrous man who stood seven feet tall and reeked perpetually of blood.
To Voran, Caius was worse than dead; he was a living stain on the family’s flawless military record.
Going to dinner meant sitting in suffocating silence while his older brothers… true blood-soaked Blessed of the God of War mocked his frail constitution and his pathetic Ash core.
He kept quiet.
“Young Master?” the maid pleaded with her voice tinged with genuine fear.
Disobeying the Patriarch’s orders in this household usually resulted in severe physical punishment and the servants were often the ones who bore the brunt of the collateral damage.
Caius remained perfectly still.
He felt a pang of guilt for the maid, but he simply could not face the wolves tonight…
Not when he was this weak…
Not when a single backhand from his oldest brother could shatter his ribs.
After a long, agonizing minute of silence, the woman stopped knocking.
He heard her let out a shaky defeated sigh before her soft footsteps retreated down the stone corridor, fading into the vast oppressive echoes of the Draxos estate.
Alone once more, Caius leaned back against the edge of his massive bed and let out a long exhausted sigh, staring up at the vaulted ceiling.
‘I don’t want any stre-‘
Suddenly, the air in the room completely vanished.
Time seemed to stop as the dust motes floating in the faint slivers of moonlight froze perfectly in place.
Immediately, a pristine glowing blue tab pinged into existence directly in front of his retinas, casting a cold light across his face.
[Congratulations for Surviving Seven Days In The Age Of Gods, you are now awakening the Monthly Sign-In System!]
His breath hitched.
The blood rushing in his ears drowned out everything else.
His pupils shrunk to pinpricks as he stared at the floating otherworldly text.
‘After all of this time…’ Caius thought with his hands beginning to tremble as a savage desperate grin slowly split across his face.
‘Have I finally been rewarded?’
[Welcome To The Monthly Sign-In System! Sign In Every Month To Receive Rewards! Would you like to sign in?]