Excerpt:

Epilogue

Luna, 2417

The world is on fire.
Well over three hundred thousand kilometres away, beneath me, the world is on fire. The war all but over, our kind nearly exterminated, there are no more massive battles. As I alight softly upon the surface of the moon, the earth spinning slowly underneath, the scars of over three hundred years of war and destruction are as keenly visible as the oceans that had given it its name of the Blue Planet.
Earth, or Terra as they now called it, is forever changed. Directly beneath me the familiar lights of cities still glow brightly in the world's night, revealing what was once called Europe, now the lands host to the capitol of the new world, Roma Novum Regius. Farther to the planet's west, however, the darkness is penetrated only by a rough ring of eternal fire outlining what is commonly known as the North American crater. The finest example of my kind's destructive potential mankind ever had the displeasure of witnessing, its creation was a blast that rippled the atmosphere and blanketed the world in dim twilight for years. More than anything, it was a catalyst that broke apart the barriers between our worlds and heralded in the war.
With disgust, I cast my spoils to Luna's feeble grip. The body sinks slowly to the colourless ground, thin blue-glowing radiance effervescing from the body, drifting off towards the nearby planet. Already his wings are starting to decay, feathers whispering away on a non-existent breeze, disintegrating into void with tiny crackles of energy. In the end, we are less than ashes.

In this, we are less than human. And yet, we are so much more. When animal first crawled out of the seas, we were there. When ape uprighted itself, and for the first time, it was our spark that gave them this. Our worlds entwined, we traveled among them, but they could not comprehend us. Granted a spark, First Man grew ancient and powerful, but bearing an animal host remained mortal. Inevitably, they died, and as their sparks released from their corporeal bearers, they joined with us, becoming the first of the Younger.
As First Man explored its world, and time went by, there grew unrest among the Younger. Differences in opinion regarding mankind's role in our existance led to the first true conflict among our kind. Some believed we were given responsibility over mankind, and were to lead it in directions that would make it prosper. Others felt mankind, a byproduct of our own travel through their world, was ours to do with as we please.
Before the conflict escalated, the Elder intervened. All of them older than mankind itself and not afflicted by the Younger's human past, they struck a neutral accord between the two sides, and our world, divided in two with Earth the connecting part, was assigned each a side. With Earth between them and the sides divided, travel through Earth lessened, and with it the spark within mankind. Thus ended the era of Ancient Man, and began the ages man itself remembers. On the rare times man saw us, it gave to us meaning beyond our intent. Man named us Angel, and Devil.

The destruction of the North American continent marked the first death of our kind. Over three hundred and fifty years ago, mankind finally found us through the works of one man, a man whose identity is shrouded in mystery. How he accomplished this feat is unknown to me, as it is to all of my kind that I have spoken to since the war began, but this human, this... mortal, broke the veil between our world, and the human world.
I move to the body now come to rest in the moon's dust, and pick it up off the ground effortlessly. My clawed fingers dig into the chest of my victim, and crackling energy spurts from the wound. Blood softly shimmers to Luna's surface, unhurried by the gravity. I glance at Terra, where the massive crater flickers with visible flame like a cauterized wound, and close my eyes. With a moment's focus, I conjure energy within my mind, call it forth from the spark that burns within me as it does in the unconscious body if the one I hold. His chest bursts forth and breaks open, energy cascades from him, washes me in it's pure, raw radiance. My consciousness expands.
I stand in the crater, thousands of miles of wasteland in every direction. The ground is warm to the touch. The moon's light reflects off a glass desert to the north.
I fly high above the moon's surface, and look down upon myself. Energy is rippling across the surface in miniature shockwaves.
I open my mouth and eyes and scream wordlessly into the vacuum. I scream of pain and joy, of suffering and purest extasy. I am reborn.

God is a human invention. In attempting to understand their world, and the rare sightings of our kind, their frail minds seek answers, and without finding them, they imagine them. When at last we were revealed for what we are, it was us, however, they blamed for the non-existance of their divine creator. Painted off as deceivers and controllers, mankind was whipped into a frenzy against us. We, on the other hand, did not know what to do. We had never been faced with the prospect of mankind discovering us for what we are: Neither angel nor devil, no agents of a divine creator, but a different species, perhaps related to their creation but not the prime mover of the event. Mankind had seemed instead to turn its eyes skyward, to the moon upon which I now stood, and to the universe.
Before the war, none of my kind had stood where I do now. We are bound to our world and theirs, and while many of us can fly higher than the greatest bird, our spark inexorably calls us back. As the shockwave of energy from my destroyed kin echoes away, leaving a new crater on Luna's pockmarked face, the residual energy already ebbs back to the blue world below. And yet, I feel its pull slightly lessened. A thousand years ago, I was but one among my kin. When the worlds fractured and He brought us into Terra, I fought like the others. But unlike most, I learned. I watched, and learned, for mankind is nothing if not inventive. While I do not know how they broke the barriers between our world, I saw and learned as they did, when the first of our kind died in North America. He was an Elder, and like all the Elders, more ancient than mankind itself. Like all Elders, his spark was pure, untainted by a past life as a human. When that spark was relinquished from his control, the erupting power not only annihilated most life on the continent, leveling cities and turning deserts to glass, but it imbued the land with its force. What few creatures survived the blast, human or otherwise, were changed forever. Mankind witnessed this, as did I. The few remaining humans were altered: Most changed for the worse, but a few changed for the better. The unfortunate among them were worse off than dead, mutated into grotesque Abominations, hybrid creatures of human, animal and parts of our kin. The more fortunate gained great power, becoming Ascended, like the Elder from which they spawned.
To a one, they were driven mad. Their example served, however, to inspire Mankind's gift of invention, and when next one of ours died, the circumstances were more controlled, the power contained, and grafted into willing subjects. These became the first of the Imbued, humans instilled with a fraction of our spark, becoming in every aspect superior beings to the rank and file of the human warmachine. With the advent of the Imbued, everything changed. Stronger, faster, and sometimes even capable of the more esoteric of my kind's abilities, flight, energy manipulation, near-unstoppable resillience, the Imbued led the forefront of the War against my kind. And with each captured Eternal, their power and numbers swelled. But as they learned, so did I.
At first, I hunted the Abominations and the Ascended. As they carried within them a splinter of a spark of one of our Elders, they provided me with what I sought, at first. I destroyed them and they relinquished to me their shards of power. But they were tainted, even the Ascended. I drank of their lifeforce, but I was barely sustained. And so, I began to hunt Mankind's champions. As I slew my first Imbued and consumed the tattered spark within her mortal shell, I knew that I had proven my hypothesis. I fed off the Imbued, growing stronger as the War progressed, keeping myself out of the larger battles as the world was torn asunder. And when I grew strong enough, I decided to test my final theory.
I hunted one of our own. At first, I sought out and found a wounded Younger. A rare find, for our kind heals quickly. I acted quickly, driven by a hunger I only just began to understand, an slew him where he hid. As I consumed his essence, so did the backlash consume what was once Venice.
The lifeblood of an Eternal, of one of our own, empowered me beyond what I thought was possible, though the destruction I had wrought in her demise attracted too much attention, and I left the city a ruin of Abominations and worse.

I learned, since then. For all mankind's advances in science, brought on by the years, the lure of war, and the power they gained from our sparks, they did not return to space. But I, having gained sustenance from my fallen kin, grew strong enough to go further than any other. I brought my prey there, free from prying eyes, and I feasted, and I grew, and things became clear to me.
Over three hundred and fifty years ago, Mankind brought about the mythical Apocalypse, their Ragnarok, Yawm ad-Din or whatever a thousand dying faiths had called it. They cast asunder the walls between worlds and made war upon those responsible for their creation. Now, five hundred years after the last pure-sparked human walked Terra, their arrogance has brought them what they believe to be victory. Our kind are near exterminated, and what few remain lurk in the wilderniss like animals, or hide among Mankind like trained dogs.

No more. I will hunt, and I will grow. Already I grow stronger than most Elders, though the remaining few are nowhere to be seen. I will be a scourge to Mankind, a pestilence among their cities. I will drink of the most meager soul what divine touch is in it, and when I am sated, I shall drink more.

The called the war their reckoning, their justice against the oppressing Eternals, who had imposed their slavish religion upon man, but I know better. Soon, they will know too. Soon, they will know my name. There shall be a Judgement Day, and the verdict will be guilty. And I shall wipe clean the earth of their taint, and start anew.

And I shall be a God. And they shall call me Reaver.