The cosmic winds howled through the graveyard of dead universes—a place even the Thronebound feared to tread.
Lyra had brought me here with a rare smirk. "There's something you need to see."
Before us floated a massive cocoon of crystallized time, its surface reflecting countless fractured moments.
[Unknown Entity Detected]
[Energy Signature: ???]
I reached out—
—and the cocoon shattered.
Out crawled a child.
No older than ten, with silver hair and eyes like broken mirrors. She rubbed her face and yawned.
"Mmm... who woke me up?"
Lyra took a step back. "Oh. That's bad."
The First Bite
The girl—if she was a girl—tilted her head at me.
"You smell tasty," she said.
Then she moved.
Not through space. Not through time.
She moved through the concept of distance itself, her tiny hands already gripping my arm.
"Mine," she giggled—
—and bit down.
[CRITICAL DAMAGE: SOUL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED]
My Voice—my power—screamed.
The Horror Revealed
Lyra yanked me back. "She's a Failed Maker! One of the originals they tried to decommission!"
The child pouted, licking my blood from her lips. "Mean Lyra! I wasn't done eating!"
Her stats glitched into view:
[Designation: The First Hunger]
Tier: Beyond Scale
Abilities: [Oblivion Bite], [Conceptual Immunity], [Narrative Rewrite]
I stared at my missing forearm. It wasn't just gone—it never existed.
Lyra's hands shook. "She doesn't follow rules. Not even cosmic ones."
The child grinned, her teeth too many and too sharp.
"Let's play tag! If I catch you..." She patted her stomach. "I'm still peckish."
The Unwinnable Game
We ran.
Through dead dimensions. Through collapsed timelines.
Everywhere, she was already there.
In one universe, she ate the color blue—leaving skies permanently bleached
In another, she rewrote history so we'd always been her toys
In a third, she bit the fourth wall—and readers felt teeth
Lyra's breath came in gasps. "We need to—"
The child appeared inside her shadow.
"Gotcha!"
Lyra screamed as tiny teeth sank into her shoulder—
—and I snapped.
The Taste of Madness
I didn't attack.
I opened my mouth wider than existence and—
—ate the game's rules instead.
The child blinked. "Huh?"
For the first time, she hesitated.
My Voice roared:
"Tag. You're it."
And for one impossible moment—
—she was afraid.
Aftermath
The child vanished with a giggle. "Next time, I'll eat your backstory!"
Lyra clutched her bleeding shoulder. "...How?"
I examined my new silver-veined teeth—a souvenir from our "game."
"She's hunger. So am I." I spat out a shard of something indescribable. "Just... hungrier."
Lyra stared at me like she was seeing something new.
The Voice inside me purred.
[New Title Acquired: The Rulebreaker]
Somewhere beyond reality, the Makers shuddered.