"How long has it been??"
"Its been twenty minutes since you fall asleep sir."
"I though it just a short nap. 5 minutes max."
"Because it was five, sir. The rest you spent pretending."
Julian Everan opened one eye and stared blankly at his assistant. The light from the council chamber window hit just right and warm enough to make a nap feel earned. But it was unfortunate.
"What's next?" he muttered.
"Three meetings. Two speeches. One conference, then"
While listening Julian mind already wondered someplace else. Not because he was rude but simply cause he didn't have the energy to pretend anymore. Politics had drained him, slowly and efficiently, like a faucet at sink left slightly open for years. And Julian had been the fool who let it run to reach his dream.
At forty-eight, he was the youngest to ever hold a seat on the Continental Peace Council. A tactical genius, a reformist, a war-ender, a symbol of unity.
But he was complete idiot. The peace he thought he will get at the end of the war didn't come. He completely regret his decision to become politician. There to many dark thing he seen his whole life
He hadn't taken a vacation in over a decade. Meals were powdered, caffeine-infused garbage. Sleep? Ha.
Sleep was a dream that he will never get.
---
That night, after shaking a thousand hands and answering the same question thirty times in thirty slightly different ways, Julian returned to his house.
He kicked off his shoes, fell face-first onto his bed, and mumbled, "I wish I could just sleep forever."
The ceiling absolutely did not answer.
But something else did. Something he never imagined exist.
---
He woke in a place that didn't exist.
It was dark but not the usual, comforting dark. This one shimmered, pulsed. A dream, maybe. Or a mistake in the code of the universe.
Floating in front of him was something wrong.
A shape that shifted every time he blinked. A smile where there shouldn't be one. A voice that entered straight into his skull.
> "You desire eternal rest huh."
Julian mind is blank facing this entity he only blink while replying.
"Huh?"
> "Sleep is your only wish. Peace through stillness. Oblivion wrapped in silence."
"I mean... yeah," Julian said. "Kinda."
He only want to sleep, to rest from all thing he has been faced with his whole life. The mind game, manipulation and whole other things
> "Interesting."
The entity moved closer to him.
> "Most who pray to me ask for glory. Power. Revenge. Not naps."
"Revenge sounds tiring."
> "You amuse me."
Julian shrugged. He wasn't sure what else to do in front of what was probably either a hallucination or death.
> "Very well, mortal. I grant your wish. Eternal sleep shall be yours."
"Wait, what? No, I meant—"
---
He never finished the sentence.
Because Julian Everan died.
And somewhere far away, in a different world where gods still toyed with fate, a child was born under a full crimson moon.
A noble family wept with joy at the healthy baby boy.
They named him Ezrel, after a long-forgotten hero.
And in his tiny hand, branded in gold, was a single divine symbol
The Eternal.
A blessing from the outer god of rest, madness, and time.
A gift no one understood.
But one day, the world surely would.