The world of darkness began to churn.

                Emptiness gave way to a roiling, frothing, formless nightmare. Death had reigned for so long that the Gods had almost disappeared, their names lost, their wills forgotten.

                If not for the imperfect barrier of their prison, allowing a trickle of life-giving mana to leak through over the millenia, they would have been permanently destroyed, faded to nothing. 

                Instead they began to wake, the dim light of their consciousness transforming what had previously been an endless, silent void into a maelstrom of motion and violence. The chaos didn’t affect the slumbering gods, for they were the chaos, it was born from them.

If a mortal were to stumble into this realm, even for a moment, they would have been undone. The pressure of godhood, the unfiltered essence of a pantheon reborn, would stretch their perception of time—making their final instant an eternity of unravelling thought and broken mind.

                Mal’Ankou was the first to remember himself. Time was meaningless to him in this state. Even though he was only half aware he knew that he was safe for now, the power trickling into him must have been doing so for thousands of years for it to build up enough to awaken him. If it had lasted that long it would likely continue. 

                Some time later, perhaps minutes, perhaps a hundred years, Mal’Ankou began searching; if energy was finding its way into his cell, he could find a way to communicate with the mortal’s outside. 

                The God Mal’Ankou needed not fear waiting. Time was a mortal concern; such trivialities were beneath him. He would be free, he would bring fear back to the many worlds. Whether it took a week or a thousand years, the difference meant nothing to an immortal, timeless god. 

                If anything, the failure of this universe spanning prison had only served to confirm that he had always known. 

                He was eternal. 

                He was inevitable. 

                Reality itself had chosen him to rule.  

He would break this cage, he would tear his kin free from their bindings, and he would rule. 

Mal’Ankou smiled and began his work.