Space was quiet here—quiet and colorless.
No sun. No stars. No air. Just two figures standing on a plane of blinking threads—like a web stretched infinitely through the void.
The fabric beneath their feet pulsed with a thousand blinking lights , like veins carrying light instead of blood.
One of them—a tall figure with skin like cooled wood, etched with glowing silver cracks—clenched his fists, breath slow and deliberate.
"You should walk away, Auren," he said, voice echoing like distant thunder across the emptiness. "This fight… it's not about pride anymore. It's my universe on the line."
The second figure—broader, dressed in layered robes that floated despite the absence of wind—tilted his head.
His eyes, sharp and pale blue, gleamed with something ancient. Pity? Rage? Both?
"I'm done holding back, Zeor," Auren whispered, raising his hand slowly. "I warned you once."
And then—
He moved.
No flash. No roar. Just instant motion.
A blur of shifting after-images, sending geometric echoes that bent the fabric around them. One motion—his arm slicing down diagonally—sent a crescent of light arcing through the plane.
Zeor twisted sideways, barely evading.
The arc missed him—and split the sky.
A gash opened across the void, showing flickers of color, places, times that didn't belong here.
Zeor's boots skidded back, soles carving glowing trails into the floor beneath him.
"You're pulling too deep," he growled. "If we slip again—"
But it was too late.
Auren surged forward, one foot stomping hard into the ground, creating a crater of floating fragments.
His next punch twisted gravity itself. Zeor caught it with both hands, veins glowing beneath his cracked skin. Their clash rippled out, shaking everything.
And in that ripple—they fell.
Not down. Not through space. But into somewhere else entirely.
The blue sky was still. Clouds drifting lazily. Birds wheeled overhead.
Then—
The air shivered.
Without warning, a circular tear opened in the sky like a wound, spraying streaks of color and static. Then came the sound—like metal screaming. Two glowing figures, miles tall, descended from the rip, crashing into the Earth .
The first landed in a desert—sand melting due to the heat from falling.
The second landed in the ocean—water evaporated instantly, leaving nothing but a boiling crater.
No one saw it at first. It was too fast. Too unreal.
But then cities trembled.
People looked up—and saw shapes towering over mountain ranges. Their bodies radiated colors the human eye wasn't made to see.
Their steps cracked the crust of the planet.
They didn't stop.
Zeor roared, lunging forward, elbow crashing into Auren's jaw. The blow leveled an entire valley—forests, rivers, and towns vanished in light.
Auren stumbled, then smirked.
"You've improved."
"Don't compliment me while I'm trying to kill you," Zeor spat.
They clashed again—shockwaves flattening the horizon, tsunamis rising from every sea. Satellites fell from orbit.
The moon cracked, its pieces drifting in slow motion across the sky.
And then—
Auren vanished, reappearing above Earth's atmosphere, hands burning with swirling, spiraling flames.
Zeor looked up—and understood too late.
Auren dropped his hands.
The world lit up.
Where Earth had once spun quietly in its lonely corner of the galaxy, now there was only a scar—jagged and white-hot—slowly cooling into nothingness.
And in the space above that void, Auren hovered.
The flames that swirled around his hands dimmed. The heat retreated.
His breath steadied as he opened his palms, and the energy coiled into a silent orb before vanishing entirely.
"It's done," he muttered.
Then he looked upward—not at stars, but beyond them.
Reality folded around him like paper set on fire. Lines bent. Angles twisted.
The Hall of Looming Judgement was not a place meant to exist.
It floated atop a spiral . The ceiling was not stone but a swarm of frozen universes, each one trapped in a jar of light, blinking like dying lights.
And at the center, seated on chairs were the Judges of Thryxx.
They were not shaped like men.
One had no face, only a thousand blinking eyes embedded in a curtain of worms.
Another's head was a spinning cube made of teeth.
The tallest among them breathed through a tunnel of wind that carved sigils into the air each time he exhaled.
Auren landed on the black marble floor, boots clicking softly.
He bowed.
"My Lords. The battle is finished. My universe is safe."
The Judge with the cube-head leaned forward, voice a wet hiss.
"You held back. That punch was not your final strike."
Auren didn't raise his eyes. "He was once my brother."
Another Judge, the faceless one, tilted sideways, arms unfolding into feathers made of bone.
"Sentiment is corrosion. But… you succeeded. The threat is purged."
They all clapped—not with hands, but with thoughts.
Across the hall, other beings stood—witnesses.
Tall, skeletal serpents .
Winged creatures with eyes for feathers and fire for skin.
A god whose chest was a void of stars, and whose limbs melted into the walls.
They cheered in voices .
"The next Battle of the Thrones shall be held during the 77th Shift,"one of the Judges announced, its words engraved into the air as it spoke.
"Prepare yourselves. This was but the prelude. There are others waking."
Auren said nothing. He only bowed deeper.
From the side chamber, a female officer stepped forward.
She looked almost human—until she moved, and reality tore slightly where her figure passed.
Her name was Quinaya—an Overseer of Reformation.
"Permission to restore the obliterated clusters," she said, kneeling.
"Granted."
The Judge with the spinning cube-head waved a finger—each joint screaming as it bent. "Fix the breach. Rebuild the shattered echoes. And erase all traces of the anomaly."
"As you command." Quinaya rose.
She turned, and began walking toward the Transit Gate, a flower-shaped portal pulsing with white veins.
Then—
She paused.
A sound—no, not a sound.
A whisper.
It didn't touch her ears. It brushed the inside of her bones.
Quinaya turned sharply.
Eyes narrowed.
Nothing.
Just the empty hall. Judges watching. Reality humming softly.
"…Residual echo," she muttered, brushing it off.
Before she stepped onto the portal.
It brightens .
And she was gone.
(EARTH 2m22)
A man stood still—motionless—gazing out of a high-rise building window.
His fingers trembled against the glass pane. His breath fogged the window.
Because he had seen it.
Again.
A tear in the sky. Flames from nowhere. Screams. Silence. Crumbling buildings. Oceans lifted into the air like weightless dust. The end.
And then—nothing.