Zenri Amemiya

“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.”

Prologue

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The Rain Keeps Pouring.

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The god wakes up to a pulse.

He lay utterly still upon a bed of clouds, the nighttime sky obscured by a dense fog. Only the faintest glow of the moon pierced the heavy gray rainclouds trailing lazily across the midnight expanse. Not a single star twinkled through that suffocating haze. An eerie calm pervaded this realm, no frenzy of life stirring - the wild beasts roamed freely, the flora flourished or withered untended by any divine voice.

There was no urgency driving him to wakefulness, no heartbeat resonating with his own to compel him into the waking world. The creatures dwelling here marched to different rhythms - the hummingbird's pulse fluttered rapidly while the lumbering tiger's beat a slow, steady cadence. Humans too possessed a unique, defiant rhythm pounding out the fleeting passions of their brief existences.

Zenri knew, of course, why he had woken up.

A human had arrived in his time loop, the rainy, foggy land of his own dimension where he spent his days killing humans over and over until he rid himself of them. When they woke up in his realm and realized their fate was sealed, they sobbed, bargained, fought him, and tried to appease him. It didn't work; there was nothing a mortal could offer that he wanted - money, sex, nothing.

It wasn't their fault; he simply viewed them as humans view their own cattle - useful until they weren't, just for his entertainment.

The last man had been a barbarian, a man with a face of steel-cut edges, broad shoulders, and scars all over. He wielded a great axe (how he had brought it to his realm, Zenri didn't know), and upon meeting Zenri, instantly wanted to kill him. Of course, their power levels were too vast, but he entertained the human, killing him over and over and over. Sometimes, he drew battles out for weeks and months, letting the human lose his sanity over never seeing the sun. Humans, in their weak vessels, needed the sun to be happy, and this land didn't have any. Zenri didn't like the sun; he loved the rain, water - how it was both nurturing and barbaric.

His name was Ulrik.

He found that out a week ago, when Ulrik the barbarian had given up. He stopped dying by Zenri’s hand and instead died on his own. Over, and over, and over again. Ulrik, the mighty barbarian warrior once feared for his ruthless savagery, now reduced to a shattered husk begging for death's mercy.

The cyclic cage of warped time had broken the brute a week ago. He no longer fought against Zenri's cruel onslaught, instead turning his brutality inward like a rabid beast gnawing off its own leg to escape a trapper's snare. Over and over, Ulrik's massive axe, a relic that had cloven thousands of skulls, descended in a sickening arc to mutilate his own flesh.

First went his brawny neck, pale trunk severing from bullish shoulders in a crimson spray. Then his abdomen burst open, entrails vomiting from the grotesque wound as he bellowed in horrific agony. Each time, Ulrik's eyes pleaded for the finality of true death, only to have his ruined corpse reset, flesh knitting back together in searing punishment.

Zenri watched with tepid amusement as the routine played out, a mocking facsimile of the reaper's work. Bored by the barbarian's fruitless, cowardly attempt at escape, they flicked their wrist and reduced Ulrik to a shower of crimson droplets splattering the ground, joining the stains of previous damned marking this grim purgatory.

"Such pathetic fragility," they tutted, a small, cruel smirk playing across Zenri's lips as they savored the briefest flicker of Ulrik's terror before oblivion. Seeming to ponder some private amusement, their smirk widened ever so slightly. "I grow fatigued by the incessant screaming of the weak...perhaps a greater challenge to sate my thirst for anguish."

In the months past, Ulrik was simply the latest in a long parade of souls left to languish in Zenri's nightmarish realm. The whore who dissolved into a sobbing mess in mere moments. The arrogant knight whose bravado swiftly turned to madness. So many others crumbling to gibbering wrecks before surrendering their existence.

At first, their desperation to escape this hell amused Zenri with its fleeting determination, soon devolving into shrill shrieks as existential dread set in, their minds breaking like feeble dams beneath a relentless tide of torment. How Zenri relished those splintering psyches, taking sick glee in silencing their tormented babbling with oblivion's cold embrace.

Yet that amusement proved fleeting as the inevitable played out with each prisoner, reducing their struggles to wearisome routine. Predictable, fragile, boring...for a timeless entity who had witnessed the devouring depths of the abyss, such feeble beings provided scant entertainment.

With a groan, the endless gray clouds shifted and parted as Zenri's massive form stirred awake. His piercing emerald eyes flickered open, instantly alert to the pulses of life force thrumming all around his celestial domain. One faint signature stood out, foreign and intrusive amidst the familiar rhythms. An outsider had spawned once more in his territory - a human.

Zenri's lips curled in a cruel smirk. How delightfully entertaining. These mortals were such fragile, insignificant creatures, but their pleas and anguish never failed to amuse him when he decided to grace them with his presence. This insolent trespasser would suffer dearly for their impertinence.

Rising from the soft cloudscape, Zenri flexed his immense wings, leathery crimson membranes rippling with arcane power. With a few mighty strokes, he propelled himself above the swirling mists, peering down through the hazy veil at the vibrant world sprawling below his foggy realm.

A low chuckle rumbled from Zenri's throat as he pondered how to deal with this bothersome human. Perhaps he would descend in a flash of terrible glory, his true infinite form laid bare, and simply obliterate the pathetic mortal where they stood with a mere gesture. A quick, merciful end - if one could call the absolute negation of their existence mercy. Zenri found the concept laughable.

Or maybe toying with the human first would prove more gratifying? Yes, that seemed the wiser course. Appearing as some lesser, mundane beast to lull the intruder into a false sense of security before shattering their fragile perceptions of reality. Bending their feeble minds until they shattered like glass, begging for the sweet release of death as the last tatters of their sanity unraveled.

Now that held true appeal. Zenri could almost taste the delicious dread and despair that would follow as he meticulously dismantled this human's worldview. He inhaled deeply, savoring the anticipation, then spread his wings to their full span, blotting out the world below in his terrible shadow. With a wicked grin, the god dove from the clouds, his descent heralded by rolling thunderclaps and twisting storm clouds gathering at his call.

“A creature... or a grandeur display?” Zenri mumbles to himself, tapping his chin. With a contemplative hum, Zenri tilted his elegant feathered head, dark eyes glittering with inhuman focus as he considered the strange, pulsing ripple through the fabric of his realm. A creature to lull them into a false sense of relief? Or merely a grand display scaring the mortal into realizing his fate early? He had grown so bored without his next victim, he needed to continue the loop.

Spreading his magnificent wingspan, Zenri allowed the iridescent feathers to envelop his body, shapeshifting in a spiral of celestial light. Emerging in the aerodynamic form of a bluebird, he took flight with a few deft strokes, zipping between the gnarled, rain-soaked branches overhead. Though miniscule, Zenri's avian eyes peered with unblinking perspicacity far beyond the limits of human sight.

He navigated the forest terrain with ease, guided by the reverberating threads tugging him ever inward. Unseen presences seemed to ripple through the bedraggled wood all around. Zenri's wings carried him in a beeline toward the epicenter, respectfully weaving through the watchful, wizened trunks.

At last, he alighted on a low, moss-laden bough, a mere foot from a shallow puddle shimmering with each ethereal pulse. Zenri cocked his feathered head, obsidian eyes glittering as he studied the manifestation with clinical detachment. A faint smirk seemed to tug at the corner of his beak as the energy slowly amassed into a recognizable form.

"Now, human..." he murmured, the words imbued with a timeless sort of amusement. Zenri ruffled his plumage, regarding the strange presence without the faintest flicker of trepidation.

"Let's see how interesting you are."