Age Of Gods: Rise and Fall [EN]

Chapter 1

If you are reading this, then craziness is seizing me.

A little bit of context, in 2050, Earth had undergone a phenomenon called the Restoration. During this event, the Gods from our most ancient legends and beliefs emerged. The Greeks and Romans Gods like Zeus and Jupiter, who represent the same concept, were separated into distinct entities for an unknown reason. However, during the rest of that year, nothing else changed (with the exception that temples were now occupied by Gods). But in 2051, demons appeared and attacked humans on all fronts. Gods didn't stand still, they fought alongside humans and succeeded in pushing back the demons. That war lasted for one year and everyone thought it was over but then more powerful entities arose. Entities that were so powerful that their strength competed with our gods' while others were less powerful but still strong enough to oppose a country like the United States. Little by little, as to rebalance the balance of power, people with extraordinary power started to fight against the demons. As the war continued, many heroes marked history. This war ended in 2100, signing the end of the era of Men and the beginning of the era of Gods. Among those heroes, some were known as the new Gods, their powers were equal to the ancient Gods. 

The most famous being the Goddess of Light and the God of Darkness... Well, this history lesson is now over, it's time to tell my story.

As of now, my name holds little importance, just know that I lived a pretty normal life till 2018. That year was quite dark for me, I think we can consider it as the year of my death and rebirth, to learn to appreciate my life over my studies was one of the most important revelations that I've ever had. Nothing exciting in 2019 but 2020 was a rude year. 2020 saw the birth of my first disappointment in love.

I fell in love with someone that I could never meet. But thanks to her, I now know how it feels to truly love someone. She became my only reason to go forward, the only light guiding my path and the only sun that guided my days. 

After some unsuccessful attempts to reach out to her (after all who would give a chance to a perfect stranger), I resigned myself to waiting for an opportunity to present itself. "Why is he talking about that?", it must be what you are thinking right now, know that when I accepted to wait, something had changed in me. Initially, nothing seemed to have changed but I couldn't ignore it. A little jet-black creature popped out of my shadow, thinking it was a dream, and having read too many martial arts and isekai, I offered it a bit of my blood to form a contract with it. Surprisingly, it wasn't a dream and I formed a contract with that creature. I noticed two things: firstly I was the only one who could see that creature and secondly I had acquired the power to gather some unknown energy inside my body. Moreover, that creature seemed to feed on this mysterious energy. 

Since I wasn't going to constantly call that creature "creature", I had decided in the greatest lack of inspiration that could have existed on this planet to name it "Shadow" (I warned you about the lack of inspiration...). Nevertheless, Shadow seemed to like that name. I discovered that it was an easy way to make it appear or disappear. I then spent most of my time alternating between my daily life and the discovery of the limits of this new power.

Here we are in 2021, I thought I had figured out the characteristics of that power. From what I could observe at the time, it was a power which limits grew overtime. At first, I could only maintain Shadow a dozen minutes per day, at that time I could maintain him four to five hours a day. I also noticed a great affinity to manipulate shadows and darkness. At a given moment, I was able to create a double from the shadows, that double wasn't moving and like Shadow, the more I trained the longer the double stayed. I had used that opportunity to test other techniques like moving in the shadows (very difficult to master, by the way, maintaining myself in a shadow and moving from one to the other is very demanding) or creating weapons from the darkness.