Chapter 1: At the Gates of Southern Heaven

Many years later, after leaving the Great Road Trip West, I once again stood at the gates of Southern Heaven. My heart hammered, same as it did the first time I ran from home, only this time, I wasn’t sure what I was coming back for.

The sky above shimmered like cracked glass in a Texas summer, heavy with heat and the kind of tension that makes your skin itch. Behind Derek, a million fighters surged as he sliced open the heavenly gate with his sword. Demons poured in, Marcus at their head, banners flying like high school teams storming the field on Friday night. Meteors rained down, igniting the clouds in a firestorm, and the towering white palaces of Heaven came crashing down, just like a high-rise imploding on the evening news—all dust and disbelief.

Mr. Jennings blocked my path at the front of a hundred thousand troops, hoisting his family heirloom—a battered old Louisville Slugger, the bat scuffed and worn, a faded signature barely visible under the grip tape. Legend had it, his granddad once used it to chase off a pack of coyotes behind the old Dairy Queen. He bellowed at me, calling me a beast.

I just grinned, lifting the Universe Ring, the Red Ribbon, and the Fire-tipped Spear high so the sunlight caught them, glinting red and gold. As if I’d given a secret signal, those hundred thousand heavenly soldiers instantly defected. One kid—barely old enough to shave—ripped off his badge and tossed it in the dust. Another, older, grinned at me with a gap-toothed smile, like he’d just won the lottery. Helmets hit the ground, uniforms loosened, and their real selves showed for once.

In the panic-stricken faces of gods and saints, the eyes of the heavenly soldiers blazed with the same fire as mine. How many had spent centuries grinding away, clawing up the ranks, only to land in the same dead-end job for a thousand years? Their souls erupted at last—like a protest long overdue in the heart of a fading Rust Belt town.

Come, let us summon a new sun and moon together. The words felt like a promise and a dare, ringing out in the charged air as the old world burned away behind us.