Since Tenebris had consumed the essences of all other Celestials, including the Keeper of Dreams and the Warden of Memories, their powers now coursed through his shadowed veins. With a flicker of will, he could pierce the minds of others, unraveling their pasts like threads from a cosmic loom. He tightened his grip on Regina's throat, closed his eyes, and plunged into the radiant abyss of her memories. What he beheld struck him like a hammer forged of dying stars: she had poured her might—and the Veiled Nexus, that hidden seed of creation—into a jagged stone, black as night yet streaked with emerald life. With no destination decreed, she had hurled it beyond the Celestial Realm, casting it into the infinite unknown. Her power, and the secret it cradled, was lost to him.
Regina's lips curved into a smile, faint but fierce, even as pain clawed at her. Through the haze of his grasp, she saw despair fracture his scarred visage—a triumph carved in silence. "At least," she thought, "this devourer shall not wield my light to shroud the worlds in ruin."
"NO! NO! NOOOO!!!" Tenebris's scream erupted, a howl that shook the foundations of Paradios. From his towering form burst flames of dark red fury, thick and molten, a storm of wrath that swallowed the Celestial Palace. The crystalline walls shattered into a blizzard of light, the golden thrones melted into rivers of slag, and the Floating Isles trembled as the blast tore through all that stood. In moments, the grand seat of heaven was reduced to rubble and ash, a graveyard of splendor beneath a fractured sky.
Tenebris stood alone amidst the wreckage, his armor pulsing like a heartbeat of malice. His voice rumbled, low and resolute, a vow etched into the ether. "I swear by the blood of the fallen and the fires of my will, I shall reclaim that power. Though I must scour every realm, every splinter of the boundless multiverse, I shall find it—and with it, the universe shall kneel for thou is the new master of this universe and thou must rule it with full power."
****
PRESENT DAY
Zen City, Western Federation.
Zen City Children's Home.
"Haa… I'm so happy," Green sighed, a breath of relief escaping him as a massive orange bus rolled into the front yard of the orphanage. Its side blazed with bold letters: WILHELM STUBBE'S HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE SOCIAL REJECTS. A wide grin split his face as he darted from the window, snatching his small black traveling bag—stuffed with the few belongings that mattered—and bolted for the door. But a voice halted him mid-stride.
"Wait a second there, young man," came the call, gruff and familiar. Green turned to see the dorm master, a stocky figure with a round head perched atop an equally round body, waddling toward him. Keeping his gaze low, Green avoided those judging eyes.
"Have you signed out?" the man asked, his tone clipped.
"Yes, sir," Green mumbled, eyes fixed on the scuffed floor.
"Good. Now shoo out of here," the dorm master said, waving him off like swatting a fly before turning away.
Green ignored the gesture—he'd endured worse for fifteen years—and dashed through the huge double front doors. "Wilhelm Stubbe's School for the Social Rejects," he thought, staring at the bus with a mix of awe and hope. "I can't believe I'm finally escaping this pit."
It wasn't the promise of high school that lifted his spirits; it was the chance to leave the orphanage, a cage he'd rattled against since infancy. Found as a baby near the crater of a mysterious meteor, Green bore a strange mark: every strand of hair—on his head, brows, lashes, everywhere—was a vivid green, a hue no doctor could explain. The caregivers dubbed him simply "Green," no surname, a name as stark as his solitude. Foster parents who roamed the orphanage's halls recoiled at his gaze, muttering that his eyes unsettled them, a discomfort they refused to bear. Rejected time and again, he became the "Orphan of the Orphans," shunned even by his peers.
The orphanage kept him cloistered, educating him within its walls since no school would take him. Wilhelm Stubbe's, a haven for outcasts, only accepted high schoolers, so they'd waited until now to ship him off. Alone, always alone, Green had grown intimate with isolation. One habit bloomed from it: gazing at the stars on clear nights, their distant light a balm to his soul. "I wish I could shine and soar like them," he'd whisper. "Freedom is a treasure beyond price."
As he aged, he noticed something else—his green eyes held a gift. They saw what others could not. At six, a foster father strode into the orphanage—tall, handsome, dripping with wealth in a polished black suit and gold trinkets. To Green, he glowed with a surreal red aura, a shimmer no one else perceived. Panic seized him at first, but when he realized it was his secret alone, he let it fade from mind. Years later, he saw it again in the orphanage chef, an old woman whose faint blue aura danced around her like a ghost of the sea.
His eyes bore another marvel: a memory sharp as a blade. He could recall every car plate number that had rolled through the orphanage gates since he arrived, each digit etched in his mind like carvings on stone.
Now, standing before the orange bus, Green felt a spark of something new. The driver, a gruff figure, chatted with the other dorm master—a lanky man in a too-small suit, his thin mustache twitching on a long, narrow face. Green clutched his bag tighter, stepping toward the vehicle that promised not just escape, but a thread to something greater—something tied, unbeknownst to him, to a stone that had fallen from a shattered sky, bearing the power of a Celestial and the Veiled Nexus, a secret poised to unravel the cosmos.