Beyond the reaches of the multiverse, where the Cosmic Lines gathered like threads of a frayed creation, a decrepit wheel stood. None of it's previous might or authority remained, for all that endured were petrified lifeforms upon it. Once, it had spun with the luminescence of a billion newborn stars, humming the song of perpetual becoming. Souls like liquid light had flowed through it's spokes, drawn from the silence of death and woven back into a vibrant tapestry of life across infinite realities. It had been the Heartbeat, the Weaver, the Unending Turn.
Now it was a tombstone carved with ghosts of existence. It's massive, intricate structure, forged from concepts beyond matter was cold and silent. The once gleaming metal like solidified moonlight, was tarnished, pitted and cracked. Vast sections were crumbling into cosmic dust that drifted soundlessly into the surrounding void. Where vibrant constellations of soul-light had danced along it's rim, now only grotesque, frozen figures remained. Elves mid-stride, dragons coiled in slumber, sentient nebulae caught in an eternal swirl, crystalline beings of pure energy — all life, in it's staggering diversity. Petrified mid-transition, their final expressions were masks of terror, confusion, or profound sorrow, eternally captured at them moment the Great Seal slammed shut.
The silence here was absolute. Not peaceful, but the suffocating silence of a graveyard after the last mourner has left. The Cosmic Lines, the vibrant highways of destiny and connection that had pulsed with the Wheel's rhythm, hung limp and grey. The multiverse beyond this center was a vast, dying engine, starved of the soul-fuel that had sustained it's cycles. Realities flickered and dimmed, stars burned out without reigniting, civilizations crumbled into dust with no inheritors. Eternal Death was born.
Only one spark of true life remained on the entire, crumbling edifice. Near the hub, where the Wheel's residual power faintly pooled like stagnant water, lay a figure. She was small and slender, a humanoid form softened by unmistakable traits of a lamb. A thick pelt of wool once perhaps pristine white but now dulled by cosmic dust and streaked with patches of soft grey, covered her limbs. Her legs tapered into delicate cloven hooves, dark against the pale fleece. From her head, two small curved horns, like polished moonstone, swept back gently. Her face was human-like, delicate and bearing a profound sense of exhaustion, framed by tufts of ivory white hair at hiding her eyes. She lay curled, not petrified, but barely breathing. She was the last ember of a soul left in the cycle. Yet she was fading, her warmth leeching into the unforgiving cold of the dead Wheel beneath her.
The Wheel, in it's final, fading consciousness — a consciousness less thought and more ancient, instinctual purpose — perceived her. It perceived the crushing silence of the void, the absence of the soul-song that had been it's reason for being. It perceived the crumbling of the multiverse, the agonizing finality that had replaced it's eternal cycle. And it perceived it's own dissolution. It's existence, intrinsically tied to the flow of souls was unraveling. It wasn't just dying; it was being unwritten from the fabric of reality, it's very concept fraying at the edges.
One concept remained clear, a desperate imperative born from it's core function. Continuance. The Cycle must turn, Life, in whatever shape or form must flow. Oblivion could not be the final answer.
With an effort that sent shudders through it's decaying frame, groans echoing like the death rattles of galaxies, the Wheel focused the very last dregs of it's power, not to spin, for that was impossible now. But to pour. To perform Samsara one final, unprecedented time ―not on a soul but on itself, using the only viable vessel left: the dying Venalyth.
A faint, sickly light – the color of tarnished silver and dried blood – flickered deep within the Wheel's crumbling hub. It gathered, weak and sputtering, defying the encroaching entropy. This light wasn't the vibrant soul-energy of rebirth; it was the Wheel's own essence, its foundational code, its memory of the Turn, the blueprint of Samsara itself. With a final, silent groan that vibrated through the dead Cosmic Lines, the Wheel willed this light towards the Venalyth.
The light seeped from the cracks in the hub, not as a beam, but as a slow, viscous flow, like liquid starlight mixed with ash. It crawled across the petrified figures, illuminating their frozen agony for a ghastly moment, before reaching the small, warm form. It touched her wool.
She gasped, a tiny, ragged sound that shattered the absolute silence. Her large, dark eyes flew open wide, filled with sudden, incomprehensible terror and a surge of alien energy. The light didn't envelop her; it invaded her. It poured into her mouth, her nostrils, seeped through her wool, and sank into her skin. It was agony and ecstasy, annihilation and creation compressed into a single, unbearable moment. She convulsed, her slender body arching off the cold metal, her cloven hooves scraping futilely as the immense, ancient power of the Cycle flooded her fragile form. The grey patches in her fleece seemed to absorb the light, turning momentarily vibrant.
As the light poured into her, the Wheel itself began to dissolve faster. It's intricate substance fading as it's gears blurred. The petrified figures seemed to sigh, releasing puffs of ancient dust before they too vanished from the rims of the wheel as it used it's own existence to birth something new from itself.
The Venalyth screamed, a sound that contained echoes of collapsing universes and the birth-cry of stars. Her form shimmered, blurred. The soft wool rippled violently with internal light, the white and grey momentarily blazing. Her limbs trembled, seeming caught between her familiar shape and something other as the remaining pieces of the wheel forced it's way into the vessel.
Then, silence fell again, deeper than before.
The light and whatever little pieces of the wheel remained vanished completely into her. The convulsions stopped, the figure lay still once more alone in the void. What was once an ember now was a living breathing body, with a soul purer than anything the wheel had ever created before.
No longer held at bay, the encroaching void lunged towards her, it's jaws inches away from her fragile form before a violet light, engulfed the realm, and at the center of existence where Samsara's Wheel once stood, there was nothing.