The silence was heavier now—after the storm, not before.
Everett stood alone, half-conscious, his breath thin as thread. Around him, the dome of black had vanished—but the scars remained. Time hadn't resumed fully. It simply limped forward, hesitant.
Gloria and Guruji lay still.
He checked first—a pulse from Gloria, faint but there. Guruji's chest, too, rose with shallow rhythm. Their auras, however dimmed, endured. Relief brushed Everett's features.
He exhaled. Then—he opened the Dark World.
The space shimmered… and folded.
---
They stood once again on the World of Bones.
The skies were pale and deathless, stitched with bone-fossils of extinct beasts. The throne still waited—carved from vertebrae of forgotten titans, its seat worn by memory and madness alike.
Everett's body was crumpled near its base.
And on the throne…
He sat.
Dark Everett.
A version of him, not quite him. His eyes carried aeons, not years. His posture was that of a man who had ruled a thousand silences. But in this moment, he was still. Almost gentle.
He looked toward Gloria and Guruji—unmoving on the cracked white plain.
Perhaps… remembering.
Perhaps… regretting.
Perhaps… not even that.
Then the Dark Everett stood.
Each step toward Everett—the real Everett—was a ripple through time itself. Dust folded inward. Bones creaked in reverence. His hands slowly extended, fingers like branches of dark fire—
But something made him pause.
He turned, sharply.
Toward Guruji's bag.
It flickered.
Once… twice…
Then burst open.
From within came not chaos, but light—golden, ancient, and sacred. A scroll emerged, rolled and rimmed in celestial script, its core throbbing with intent. It floated into the air, vibrating like a tuning fork for fate itself.
Dark Everett stepped back.
The scroll turned—and flew toward Everett.
His eyes fluttered open. Barely. But they locked onto the scroll. And it obeyed.
It hovered before him… then unfurled.
Words unreadable to most lit up like carved constellations across parchment not made of paper, but memory.
Everett read.
Line after line. His expression tensed. Softened. Hardened again.
Whatever this scroll was… it wasn't just a message.
It was a revelation.
Dark Everett stared.
Then—
He laughed.
Not cruelly. Not even mockingly. But with a deep, echoing mirth—like someone finally understanding a riddle that haunted him for centuries.
> "I understand now," he said.
> "I understand… so that's how it is."
He looked at Everett, then at the two unconscious forms behind him.
> "So you… you are not me."
"You are different."
He stepped away from the throne and looked at Gloria.
> "And if you are destined to Glory…"
He smirked. Eyes strangely kind.
> "Then I will not interfere with you."
"Let luck be your side."
He turned again. Lifted his hands.
And in response, the katana returned—but not as before. Not just darkness.
It was foundational.
This blade hummed with the origin of endings, and the end of beginnings. The black mist had been replaced by pure event-horizon force, a cutting edge that divided existence from nonexistence.
He raised it high.
A single flash—brief, absolute—formed in the sky.
And with that flash… the world broke.
Split cleanly into two.
A crack, dark as uncreated thought, stretched across the heavens. Like a wound in the fabric of everything. It radiated neither heat nor cold, but a third thing—the unmaking.
It was unspeakable. Majestic. Absolute.
And no one saw it.
No crowd.
No god.
No witness.
Only silence.
Only division.
Only truth.
---
TO BE CONTINUED…
Hey, this is Miracle_cube123. What you've just read is the raw, unfiltered draft. The refined version will arrive when inspiration kicks back in. Stay tuned.