Illirim
The words landed like sunlight on frozen ground: "I have always been proud of you, my son." Warmth bloomed, thick and honeyed, in the hollow where his heart used to beat.
"I will always be proud of you. No matter what." Her voice, a soft murmur against the crushing silence. Safe. Anchoring.
Her smile. Radiant. Fracturing the dread. "Even now… at this moment… I love you…" A final ember in the gathering dark.
Illirim, hand locked around his mother's throat. Not his grip. Not his will. Fingers like ice-cold iron, pressed into the fragile column of her neck. His eyes: pools of liquid despair, reflecting the terrifying acceptance in hers. No struggle. Only love, staring back at the abyss within him.
"I love you forever…" Her breath, a final sigh scented faintly of chamomile and home.
He squeezed.
Not a snap. An unmaking. Structure dissolved. Bone, flesh, spirit; unraveling like rotten thread under cosmic shears. The air filled with the sudden, cloying sweetness of lavender and roses. Her favorite. A grotesque perfume blooming from the void where she knelt.
Silence. Absolute. Heavy with the scent of funeral flowers.
A hand. Heavy as a dead star. Fell on Illirim's shoulder. The hooded entity stood behind him, a stain against reality. Its voice, when it came, was ground glass and distant supernovae. Empty. Amused. "Good job…"
Illirim spun, burying his face against the entity's shadow-cloaked form. Sobs wracked him, silent screams shaking his frame. Hot tears tracked paths through the dust on his cheeks, falling into the scent of lavender and roses and absence.
Then… stillness.
A beat.
A shift.
A smile cracked across Illirim's tear-streaked face. Wide. Vacant. "Ooo!" His voice pitched high, brittle as spun sugar. "It smells like flowers!! Oh my god!" He spun in a clumsy circle, sniffing the carnage-scented air. "My mom loves these smells! Where is she?" The old awareness, the crushing guilt, slammed shut behind walls of manufactured joy. A child's mask fused to the ruin.
The Entity's amusement vibrated in the stillness. "Come now, child. I know where she is. But you must help me first."
No hesitation. Illirim skipped forward, a marionette with cut strings. "Okay, Mister Dark!" The laughter that followed was bright, sharp, and utterly hollow, echoing in the space scented by his mother's erased life.
-
Ajnido
"You dare defy the Cycle?!" His father's roar shook the sanctum. Flames, not metaphorical, crawled in the patriarch's eyes; hungry, fluorescent green things that cast sickly shadows on the gathered family. Mother. Brother. Sisters. Uncles. The hooded priests of Sefron. All watching. All judging. "The Flame claims what is owed, boy!"
Ajnido backed towards the heavy sanctum doors, the scent of hot stone and sacred offering thick enough to choke on. "NO!" The word ripped from him, raw. "I won't become ash for a god that tastes devotion but gives nothing!"
His father's face purpled. Rage became apotheosis. "YOU. WILL. BECOME. SEFRON'S. BREATH!" A snap of fingers, sharp as breaking bone.
Fluorescent green fire erupted. Not heat. Violation. It swallowed Ajnido whole. It didn't burn skin; it scoured his being.
He felt layers of self – fear, hope, the faintest ghost of love; eroding like sand under acid. His soul screamed silently. '
No... I... REFUSE!' These people. This cage of 'care'. This destiny carved on his bones since birth. The High Priest's oily voice echoed, "Closest to Sefron since His Birth... Perfect Offering..."
Instinct, buried deep beneath years of suppression, flared. Ajnido's own finger snapped. A sound like the universe cracking.
White.
Not light. Negation. Incomprehensible. Blinding. It lasted less than a heartbeat.
When it vanished, so did his father. Utterly. No ash. No scream cut short. Not even the smell of ozone left behind. Just... vacancy where a tyrant stood.
Horror painted the sanctum. His mother's face contorted; pure, familiar disgust. Her mouth opened;
Flash. Gone. Erased mid-syllable.
His sister bolted for the doors; Flash. A silhouette of white fire, then nothing.
The lead priest raised a trembling hand. "DAMN YOU, WRETCHED—!" Flash. The curse died in the void.
Only his brother remained. Eyes wide, not with terror, but profound sorrow. The only one whose touch hadn't felt like chains. Who saw Ajnido, not Sefron's vessel.
Ajnido felt nothing. The Flame had scrubbed him hollow long ago. Only the echo of betrayal remained. The phantom ache of being a tool, a sacrifice, a monster. A grand, terrible smile stretched his lips. He snapped.
Flash.
His brother became cinder. A brief, crumbling statue of ash before collapsing into dust that smelled faintly of… cedar. His favorite scent. Gone.
Silence. Thick. Bitter with the ozone-stink of unmade lives and cooling rage. The sanctum felt cavernous, tomb-like.
A hand settled on Ajnido's shoulder. Heavy. Cold as extinguished stars. The Entity materialized from the shadows behind him, its presence a blot on reality. Its voice was smooth obsidian, laced with cruel delight.
"Exquisite…"
A pause, savoring the emptiness. "I offer… more kindling. For the right service."
Ajnido's mind, already a barren landscape scoured by Sefron's touch, clouded further. The Entity's words resonated in the hollow. Monster. They'd all called him a monster.
Now… he could be the monster. He could burn it all. Delight, sharp and artificial, flooded the void where feeling should be. The answer was effortless, a sigh of pure, hollow release:
"Yes."
-
Ism
Sunlight, warm and honey-thick, dappled through the leaves of his garden. Ism knelt in rich, dark soil, the scent of crushed herbs and damp earth rising around him. Before him, his children sat cross-legged, eyes wide as nascent universes.
"Okay, watch close," he murmured, a smile playing on his lips. He raised a hand, palm open. Space above it shivered, then detonated. A miniature supernova bloomed; silent, contained, terrifyingly beautiful. Heatless light washed over wide-eyed faces. Stunned silence, then gasps of pure wonder.
"Wow!"
"Papa! Again!"
Ism chuckled, the sound warm and easy. "Hya!" Another silent supernova birthed and died in his palm. The garden filled with delighted shrieks and bubbling laughter. Pure gold.
"Your turn soon," he promised, dusting soil from his knees. "Basic Custodes move. Entrance exam stuff."
He sank onto a worn stone bench, the coolness seeping through his tunic. A glass of water, condensation beading on its surface, waited. He took a long sip, the cold clarity grounding him. This… teaching, the eager faces… it echoed his own father's patient voice. A balm against the quiet ache of retirement's inertia.
His gaze drifted to the heavy parchment envelope beside him. The Eternal Knight's seal. He broke the bonding; a sound like a tiny bone snapping; and unfolded the letter. A single red note.
"Ism,
Thank you for your service, I not only love you as a soldier but also as a brother. I have decided to step down as Nova, and to give the torch to Ytoia. After the ceremony, I will disappear and remain in solitude for the rest of my days.
I have sent you a farewell gift, personally made by me, and no, it is not Saga :). Anyway, stay save, and if you really need me, you know how to call me.
- E.K."
A sigh escaped him, heavy as galactic dust. Brother. The word resonated deeper than 'comrade'. Gonk. Ytetra. Heliterna. Desdan. All of The Golden Age. Now E.K… all ghosts or vanishing echoes. The sadness threatened to climax, a dark wave.
He looked up. Saw the sunlight catching in his daughter's hair, his son's earnest frown as he tried to mimic the hand motion. The wave receded, pushed down deep. He forced a smile back onto his face.
Then… nothing.
The future… blinked out.
Not darkness. Absence. A void where possibility should hum. A psychic scream ripped through the timestream; his own future self, howling a warning into the now. Panic, cold and absolute, seized his spine.
His hammer, Aetm, materialized in his grip with a bone-deep thrum he hadn't felt in decades.
His wife's smile died. "Ism?" Confusion, then dawning fear as the familiar, dreaded weapon appeared. The children's laughter cut off mid-peal, frozen in the suddenly frigid air.
He felt it. A cancer spreading along the axis of time. A devouring darkness. Not shadow. Anti-Light. It swallowed photons, concepts, hope. It stood at the garden's edge; a cloaked entity woven from pure negation.
Its hand, a silhouette of devouring void, rested lightly on his wife's shoulder. She stiffened, eyes wide with primal terror. The only thing visible within the consuming dark: a slash of white teeth. A devious grin.
"LET HER GO!" Ism's roar shook the leaves. No answer. His children whimpered, frozen mid-step by the entity's oppressive aura.
Ism moved. Not through space. Through causality. He bypassed the intervening air, hammer already descending in a shriek of compressed time; only to wrench it to a dead stop a hair's distance from his wife's face. The Entity had shifted her, a perfect shield.
"I will unmake her Purpose first…" The voice was the static hiss of dead stars, devoid of inflection yet dripping with malice. "…then your children's. You will watch."
Rage, white-hot and desperate, fused with soul-crushing fear. Ism folded. He struck not from one angle, but from every point on the temporal axis: past, present, future, the interstitial gaps between moments. Aetm's echoes screamed through reality's layers.
A low grunt vibrated from the Anti-Light. Annoyance, not pain. "Persistent. Now… witness."
A void-mark bloomed on his wife's chest. Not a wound. An erasure. A hole punched through her very essence. Her scream wasn't sound, but a silent vibration that tore at Ism's soul.
Instantly, identical marks flowered on his children; small, terrible blossoms of absolute negation. Their small bodies went rigid, silent cries etched on their faces.
"NO!" Ism's voice cracked. Rage warred with utter helplessness.
"Hush," the Entity commanded, the word a physical pressure. "I require… secrets. Hortus Dei's buried bones. Its whispers." Amusement radiated from the devouring dark.
The choice was an abyss. Betray the brothers who bled with him across centuries… or condemn the hearts that made his own beat.
The garden's scent of earth and sun turned to ash in his mouth. His teeth ground, the sound loud in the terrible silence. "Fine." The word tasted like poison. "I'll… help. But release them!"
"Tut-tut-tut." The Entity's void-hand patted Ism's wife's marked shoulder mockingly. "Collateral, dear Ism. Sweet, precious… leverage." It savored the words. "Their existence… hinges on your obedience."
Ism's shoulders slumped. The fight bled out of him, leaving only a cold, hollow dread. "Okay…" The word was a whisper, a surrender. "I'll listen."
The Entity's void-hand shifted from his wife to clamp onto Ism's shoulder. Cold seeped through his tunic, burning like frostbite on his soul. "Come."
Reality twisted; a nauseating lurch. The sunlit garden, the terrified faces of his family, the scent of crushed herbs and despair… all vanished. Swallowed by the anti-light. Only the crushing cold of the Entity's grip and the phantom screams remained.
-
The Walker
The soul writhed in the Walker's grasp; a flickering ember of stolen consciousness. It wasn't held; it was unmade. Fingertips of pure negation kneaded its essence, peeling away layers of memory, hope, fear.
Screams, silent but felt in the fabric of the void, vibrated through the throne room. Despair, thick and gooey like burnt oil, seeped from its unraveling form. The Walker grinned, a fissure splitting the consuming dark where its face might be.
"My puppets…" The words were the static hiss between dead stars. "My fuel…" A low chuckle rasped, echoing in the suffocating emptiness. It raised the dissolving soul like a gruesome trophy.
"Ahhh… See this!?"
Not a question. A declaration to the abyss. "The pain! The suffering! The… emptiness!" It laughed again, the sound a dry rattle in the infinite dark. Feeding. Always feeding.
Its voice hung alone in the Throne Room of Denied Purpose. Walls woven from forgotten dreams groaned softly. The floor, tessellated with shattered hopes, drank the lightless echoes. No audience.
None needed. Yet… it spoke. To the silence. To the void. To the presence it felt coiled deep within its own anti-light; a ghost of recognition, a phantom familiarity. 'Someone… knew…' The thought flickered, weak and unwanted.
The Walker crushed it instantly. Purpose denied. Just like all things would be. "The Tear…" The name slithered out, ripe with anticipation. The grin widened.
It rose from the Throne. Not a seat. A monolith sculpted from compounded failures and extinguished potential. Its substance recoiled as it stood. Existence itself flinched, reality's threads fraying where the Walker's shadow-feet touched the dream-shards
Purpose eroded like sand under a tidal wave of nothingness. Closer. So close to the perfect, encompassing void. Just like its core. Just like his core.
A reflective surface swam into being before it; a pool of stagnant void. For a fractured instant, an image shimmered: A man. Not cloaked in anti-light. Standing in sunlight. A hint of a smile touching weary eyes. Too much light. Too much… potential.
"Too happy," the Walker scoffed, the sound like grinding bones. Its will flexed. The reflection erased. Purpose denied. Memory excised. Never to be seen. Never to matter.
It walked. Direction held no meaning. Cause? Effect? Irrelevant noise. Only the gnawing hunger remained. The drive towards the ultimate negation.
"I took his Mother," it mused, the static voice almost conversational.
"I took his Rage. I took his Family. Mortals cling to such fleeting sparks…" Amusement vibrated in the dark. "They forget. None of it matters when the source is found… the one who resists the inevitable void…"
The Walker paused. The infinite dark around it seemed to deepen, to focus. A cold certainty, older than stars, crystallized.
"I recognize your resonance… Knight."