"Headmistress!"
Warren's breath caught as he stood before the figure he hadn't seen in years. For a brief moment, the pressure in the air left him dazed.
The woman before him wasn't just the principal of Grimstone. She was something else entirely.She was highest-ranked in the Pantheon Candidate Sequence.The creator of the divine world known as the Supreme Star Domain.And the leading candidate to ascend as the next [Star God].
Elara Everhart.
Just standing near her made Warren's heart pound.
Warren himself was no weakling. As a rare high-tier god who'd refined his domain across twenty planes, he ranked among the top echelon of Grimstone's faculty. His Divine Realm was home to mythical creatures, balanced climates, and near-perfect elemental harmony,a world most graduates could not even dream of crafting.
But next to Elara, it felt laughable.
Her world wasn't a set of planes. It was an interstellar system, she'd managed to create over a dozen functioning star systems, all orbiting in harmony. Entire populations thrived on her planets,billions of intelligent beings, living and dying under her laws.
Just being in her presence made Warren feel as if he were shrinking. He tried to keep his expression calm.
"Don't look so tense," Elara said gently, offering a small smile. Yet her mismatched eyes,one like a star, the other like a black hole,seemed to peer straight into his soul.
"You wouldn't be here unless something serious happened at the Academy."
As she spoke, she snapped her fingers.
From thin air, mortals from her world appeared around her,attendants trained for this exact moment. Calmly, without panic, they placed trays of shimmering fruits and divine nectar on the table beside her. She plucked a slice without looking, then waved her hand again and the mortals vanished.
Warren stared. Even after years, he was stunned. Manifesting mortals across realms? For ordinary gods, the divine fire cost alone would be staggering.
Still, he didn't forget why he'd come.
"Yes, Headmistress," Warren began carefully. "It's about this year's graduation projects. There's a remarkable student. A genius, I believe his work could help with the very problem that's blocked your path for centuries."
Elara froze mid-bite.
She exhaled slowly, setting the fruit aside.
For over a hundred years, she had pursued a single impossible goal: the design and stabilization of a low-latitude world. A world without full structure, balanced by intent rather than law. It had become her obsession.
Every step she took revealed how truly unreachable the goal was.
"A student," she said, flatly. "From our graduates?"
Warren nodded.
"And he created a working low-latitude world?"
"Yes!" Warren's voice cracked with excitement. "I admit, at first I thought he was just being reckless. Like a student giving up,picking an impossible topic just to make a statement before failing out."
"But then…" He shook his head. "He actually pulled it off."
Elara didn't respond, but Warren didn't stop. He was too caught up in it.
"You have to see it for yourself."
He raised a hand, and a projection appeared between them,shimmering, unstable, yet pulling at the senses like gravity.
The Endless Abyss.
A dark, chaotic spiral of interlinked planes, each writhing with horror. It felt wrong even to look at. Every layer radiated cruelty, entropy and ugliness.
But it worked.
Elara leaned forward slightly.
Warren grinned. "His name's Cillian. This is his graduation project."
"And it's called the Endless Abyss."
The moment she heard the name, Elara's expression changed.
She saw it immediately.
This world didn't follow rules.
Sixty-six interconnected planes of pure degradation. Each one warped in design, a deliberate nest of chaos and contradiction, and the deeper she looked, the more horrified she became.
Not only was it somehow functioning,it was thriving.A self-sustaining, low-latitude world born from rot, ruin, and madness.
"I…" Elara whispered. "This world not only welcomes darkness, it feeds on it."
She felt sick just watching the projection. For the first time in centuries, a world shook her to the core.
Warren continued, smiling nervously. "The more I watched it, the more amazed I was. The systems, the transformations, even the progression of the creatures,he accounted for all of it."
"I thought he was bluffing, honestly. But the longer I studied it… the more it made sense."
"Everything is wrong," Elara muttered. "But it fits together."
Then she took control of the projection.
Her divine computing power activated. Dozens of her world's stars began to spin in sync, running calculations, analyzing structure, checking for fault points, entropy bleed, systemic collapse.
The Abyss responded by accelerating, and the projection's time sped up,a thousand years went by in minutes.
She closed her eyes and let the numbers play out.
Then she opened them, her breath caught a hitch and even her star-and-black-hole gaze trembled slightly.
"Impossible."
"What?" Warren asked, leaning forward.
Elara's voice was quiet.
"The world runs… perfectly."
Warren smiled. "Then—"
"But it shouldn't." she snapped, cutting him off. "There's something wrong. Deeply wrong. This world can't be stable…and it's not."
"It's a cursed thing"
Warren blinked.
Elara stared at the projection. The twisting spiral. The endless descent.
"This world should not exist. It breaks too many laws and it bypasses safeguards I've spent decades trying to solve."
"It might contain a fatal flaw."
She stood slowly.
"Warren. Shut it down and end the simulation. We cannot allow it to expand for any longer."
He frowned. "But—"
"This isn't just a dangerous world, it's quite literally antithetical to order. If it keeps evolving… it may become a god-eater. Or worse."
Warren hesitated, staring at the swirling darkness of the Endless Abyss.
It felt alive, like it was watching them.
Warren stared into the abyss and it stared back
And for the first time, he wondered…what kind of mind had created something like this?