The stars were gone.
All that remained was a sea of darkness, pierced by a single flame burning in the void—a flame so ancient it hummed with echoes of universes unborn. In the heart of that flame stood Pain—but not the Pain that once fell from grace.
He had shed the form of a fallen god.
Now, he was beyond divine.
He was the Omega Flame.
His body was no longer bound by flesh. It flickered between dimensions, a shifting silhouette of molten obsidian and white fire. Eyes of collapsing galaxies stared outward from his face, and his voice echoed not through air, but through concepts.
"They feared chaos. But chaos is not destruction."
He raised a hand. A dying star materialized in his palm, then shattered into musical notes before vanishing.
"Chaos is freedom. And I am its final prophet."
Around him, lesser gods—those who survived the Great Collapse—watched in trembling silence. They had once stood above worlds, shaping civilizations and bending time. Now, they knelt like insects.
A tall, armored general—one of Pain's surviving lieutenants, Kryon the Severed—stepped forward, head bowed. "The Codex is gone. The Starcaster has merged with it. What remains of our plan?"
Pain's voice was calm. Cold. "Perfectly intact. In fact... he fulfilled it."
Kryon lifted his head, confused. "But the reset—"
"Was never meant to stop me." Pain turned. "It was meant to free me."
He raised his arms, and the fabric of reality tore open. Through it, infinite versions of Steven flickered—alive, dead, divine, broken, unborn. Pain stepped into the rift and stood at the edge of the multiverse, where only abstract forces lived.
Behind him, his army stirred—dragons forged from entropy, titans made of forgotten time, and beings known only as The Final Choir.
"The multiverse thinks in lines. Past. Present. Future. But I am the end of all lines. The Omega Thread."
He looked outward. Beyond even Steven. Beyond even the Source.
"There is something beyond even the First Flame. A truth neither Codex nor Creator dared awaken."
His hand touched the edge of an unseen barrier, and a single drop of black fire leaked through it. The moment it touched space, a thousand realities died in silence.
"I will burn everything... not to destroy it—
—but to set it free from the illusion of order."
Then he turned back toward his army. "Prepare the march."
---
Back in the New World...
Steven stood at the edge of a floating temple, the winds of light brushing against his skin. Aetheron approached, carrying news.
"The Realms are stirring. Some still remember the Absence. They fear you—Steven. Or whatever you are now."
Steven's eyes glowed faintly, the runes on his body shimmering like shifting starlight. "Let them fear me. It's not over."
Aetheron nodded. "Then what's next?"
Steven's gaze drifted upward—toward a red fracture forming in the stars.
He could feel Pain rising. Could feel the pull of the Omega Flame.
"Next?"
He raised his hand, forming a blade of pure Codex light.
"We go to war."
---
To be continued