The void still sang—not with sound, but with him.
Ayla stepped from the fading shimmer of the Dreamrealm into the brittle hush of the waking world.
Her boots touched stone—jagged and starlit, the surface of a lone asteroid orbiting the corpse of a collapsed sun.
Windless. Cold. Perfect.
She exhaled.
"He's real," she whispered. "He's finally real."
She didn't cry—Ayla didn't cry anymore. But something inside her clenched, aching against the centuries she had woven around her waiting heart.
Qaritas.
Not a fable. Not a vision.
A soul. A presence. A man made of ache.
She remembered Xriana's voice—back when they were still children of stardust, gathered beneath the Veil of Threads:
"There will come a god from the place where dreams cannot reach.
You will not know him by sight, but by silence.
And he will carry your fate... or your destruction."
Back then, Ayla had laughed. Danced through nebulae. Rewritten constellations just to prove fate wrong.
But now?
Now the name echoed through every breath she took:
Qaritas.
And it didn't feel like fate.
It felt like truth.
And if she was wrong—if this wasn't him—then she had gambled a universe on a heartbeat.
But her soul knew.
In the marrow of her being, something ancient reached toward him. As if she'd been waiting for him longer than she'd been alive. Longer than stars had sung.
This wasn't madness. This wasn't hope in disguise. This was truth, clothed in silence.
She wasn't wrong.
He was Qaritas.
Not Eon.
Not the First Evil.
He was something the void hadn't broken yet.
She had listened to Hrolyn her entire life—every warning, every prophecy, every lesson carved in fire and consequence. He had told them: if the Ascendants failed, it would not be a fall. It would be an ending.
Twenty-eight Ascendants. Born to birth fourteen bloodlines, trained to lead their families like constellations guiding the dark. Together, they were meant to shape the last army—one that could defy the First when he returned.
Not if.
When.
Whether they rose or fell, the battle would come.
But if they fell?
Then so too would the universe that bore them.
Ayla had seen one of them die.
Not in battle, but in despair—drifting into the Maw of Quiet, leaving behind only a name carved in stardust and a dream that cracked in her hands.
Twenty-seven left.
And now, one more—Qaritas—awakened outside the order. A variable they hadn't planned for. A hope Hrolyn hadn't dared name.
And now, standing in the echo of Qaritas's awakening, Ayla felt that prophecy stir—not as fear, but as memory.
A promise kept. Or a doom reborn.
Sometimes, she wondered if the universe watched them like actors on a stage. If every scream, every sacrifice, was someone else's story to enjoy
"Took you long enough."
The voice was dry. Familiar. Laced with careful scolding, interrupted her thoughts.
Ayla didn't turn. She was already grinning.
"You're following me again, Komus."
The Ascendant of Space crossed his arms over his armored chest.
"I tracked you for six days. Through three dimensions. Not a single word. Do you know how worried Niraí was?"
Ayla spun slowly, starlight trailing from her sleeves.
"You mean you were worried."
He flushed instantly.
"I wasn't— That's not— She almost opened a Gate without clearance!"
"Which you would've leapt through headfirst."
She flicked the tail of a comet's glow at him.
"I swear, Komus. You're more transparent than a solar flare and you're afraid to tell her, your Feelings."
"I'm not scared of her."
"No, just of Nysaeon throwing you into a slow-time loop for flirting with his sister."
Komus groaned and rubbed his temples.
"Remind me why I still talk to you?"
"Because I know all your secrets and still love you anyway."
He smiled despite himself.
"Fine. You win. What happened in Ranaesa?"
Ayla's face changed.
The laughter faded. In its place: something soft. Reverent.
"I found him," she said, quiet. Unshakable.
"I found Qaritas."
Komus froze.
The air around him bent—just slightly—as if gravity itself recoiled in awe.
"You..." His voice caught. "You're sure?"
"I saw him. Felt him."
Her hand touched her chest.
"I read his mind without meaning to. And I saw it—the loneliness. The ache. He's not like Eon."
"Does anyone else know?"
She shook her head.
"Zelios suspects. Irteia felt it too. But... no. I needed to see him first."
Komus's joy faltered.
"Ayla. If Hrolyn finds out you kept this from him—"
"He won't stop me," she said sharply.
"This is my fate. Not his."
"He'll see it as defiance."
"Then let him."
Komus hesitated—then embraced her without another word.
She clung to him, starlight falling around them like feathers.
Then, from the shadows at the edge of reality—a laugh.
High.
Hollow.
Hungry.
The stars above flickered out. The dream-veins beneath the asteroid bled starlight.
Komus stepped in front of her instantly, fingers splayed, warping the void into a protective shield.
"No," Ayla whispered. "They're not here for you."
They came from behind black stars.
The Skotosars.
Children of the First Light-Eater.
Unborn. Unholy. Unnamed— and in another life her kin.
They poured from the rift Between Universe's spilling like a cosmic nightmares.
One slithered forward on coils slick with oil and memory, a serpent twenty feet long, its movement a prayer of ruin. Its body writhed with half-formed mouths and sunken eyes—
faces stretched across its glistening hide like masks made from sorrow. Each one whispered a different regret Ayla had buried, their voices threading together into a chorus of forgotten sins.
They didn't speak aloud—they bled into her mind, hissing truths she'd drowned in starlight long ago.
"You left them."
"You let him burn."
"You loved him too late."
The creature's breath reeked of apology. Its eyes never blinked. And neither did the ones carved across its skin.
Another loomed—a grotesque titan, towering and malformed, its lion-like body twisted upright in a mockery of divinity. Muscle and sinew had been stitched with bone and ash, as if resurrection had gone terribly wrong. Jagged wings of shattered glass jutted from its back, twitching violently, each spasm slicing the air and bleeding light that flickered like dying stars.
Its chest and limbs pulsed with embedded skulls—hundreds—but worse were the faces.
They were not dead.
Stretched across its flanks, woven into the skin like tattoos of suffering, were faces twisted in endless grief. Some cried. Some screamed. Others chanted her name with teeth that no longer belonged to them.
Ayla. Ayla. AYLA.
Their mouths moved in time with the beat of her own heart. Their voices were not sound, but pressure—memories she had buried clawing back into the shape of flesh.
She saw herself among them. Not once—many times. Her face, her eyes, her regrets repeated and fused into the monster's flesh like a curse she could never outrun.
The wings beat once—howling. Not with wind, but with anguish. Shards of glass rained down, each fragment showing visions of what could have been—worlds she failed to save, lovers she abandoned, gods she betrayed.
The creature opened its mouth, and a roar erupted—not of sound, but blame. It shook the Hall. It cracked something in her chest.
This was not an enemy.
This was her consequence, given form.
One crawled on bent, backward limbs—spindly and wrong, like a spider designed by something that had only heard rumors of bones. Each step snapped and clicked, the joints moving in sickening rhythm. Its head was shaped like a jagged diamond, sharp-edged and gleaming wet, faceted like a cruel crown.
Dozens of faces stretched across its skull—half-melted, fused into the glassy surface like souls trapped in amber. Some wept. Some screamed. Others stared with mouths agape, eternally suffocating. Their expressions twisted in sync with its breath, as though they were still alive—still aware.
Its eyes were sewn shut with threads of hair and tendon—yet it watched.
It always watched.
Not with eyes, but with presence. It felt like being peeled open. Like being remembered by something older than time. Its gaze slithered under your skin and made you feel seen—in the places you never wanted known.
And as it crept forward, every face whispered in unison, not in sound, but inside your mind:
"We remember you."
Others walked like gods—tall, elegant, velvet-cloaked silhouettes that moved with impossible grace. But their beauty was a lie. A warning.
Rotting galaxies hung impaled along their ribs like ornaments—celestial corpses threaded through bone, their dying stars still twitching with lightless gravity. Nebulas bled from the wounds, trailing smoke that hissed with the death-throes of civilizations.
Faces stretched across their garments—countless, contorted, pleading. Not stitched for display, but alive, fused into the velvet like a second skin of suffering. Their mouths opened and closed in silent screams, eyes rolling in endless terror as they were dragged wherever their god-binders walked.
Some of the faces wept. Others laughed. One looked exactly like Ayla.
Where these beings stepped, time curdled. Dreams collapsed into ash. And reality recoiled.
They did not speak. But every step was a sermon. Every gesture a judgment.
And the faces on their ribs—the dying galaxies—whispered in static-laced unison:
"We followed them once."
"We believed."
"We burned for it."
They hissed in unison, warping the air.
"Now we will scream it back into your bones."
Komus shouted her name—but Ayla was already moving.
super sonic boot leaping on starlight exploding it outwards.
Her blades slips off its sheen—born of grief and defiance—sang through the dark.
She screamed—not aloud, but within—every name she'd ever failed to save echoing through her skull like thunder in a tomb.
Her blades slowed. Her wings faltered.
And then—nothing.
"I once was one of you," she snarled. "And I will unmake you."
She spun—cutting through illusions, through the layers of reality they corrupted.
The worlds they destroy.
But they adapted, as she watches the horror take multiple forms.
One wore Qaritas's face.
One spoke in her own voice.
Another whispered her future—her death.
She faltered.
And they pounced.
A heartbeat passed. Then another.
Reality warped—as if someone were redrawing the laws mid-breath.
The world blinked.
Not light.
Void.
Everything inverted.
The Skotosars screamed—not from pain, but confusion. Their forms twisted, bled into mist and regret.
A presence stepped through the wound in the stars.
Qaritas.
No body.
No armor.
Just purpose.
He raised a hand. Didn't strike—just willed.
And the Skotosars unraveled.
"She was never yours to haunt."
"You have no claim. She was never written into your hunger."
His voice was a storm hidden behind velvet."I unmake the lies you wear like skin."
Komus dropped to one knee, gasping.
Ayla... stared.
Not with awe.
With fear.
Because Qaritas hadn't fought them.
He had undone them.
As if they were fictions he'd chosen not to believe.
Silence fell again.
The stars did not return.
Only the echo of breathing.
Qaritas turned to her.
"You told me to choose," he said.
"I chose to be someone."
Ayla opened her mouth—but the words failed.
Her wings shivered.
Something primal recoiled.
In his shadow, she saw the same hunger.
The same softness too close to ruin.
The same strength too close to vengeance.
The same potential to become what had destroyed so many before.
The void whispered.
Komus trembled.
And Ayla?
She reached out.
Not with certainty.
But with hope.
"Then let me hope it means something."
But even as she said it, the stars behind her shuddered.
And far away, across the bones of a dead sun, —everything froze.
The air crystallized mid-breath. Ayla's hand, still outstretched, glimmered like glass. Komus, mid-flinch, locked in the whisper of motion. Even Qaritas himself — half-shadow, half-purpose — paused like ink suspended in water.
Then, the shadows rippled.
A click of heels on bone.
A curtain drawn across reality.
Hela Grimm stepped forward, peeling through the seams of the scene as if it were fabric she herself had stitched. Her raven-shaped skull mask tilted slightly, violet eyes flickering with amusement.
"My, my..." she purred, her voice brushing the stillness like a knife through silk.
"What was our dear Qaritas up to before this charming little tantrum of gods and dream-things?"
She glanced at Ayla's frozen expression — awe and fear tangled mid-reach — and grinned.
"Always with the reaching, aren't they?" she mused. "Reaching for salvation. For purpose. For something that makes the ache make sense."
Hela walked in a slow arc, trailing the edge of the moment like a director pacing the lip of her stage.
"You see," she said, turning her gaze back to you,
"stories like this — the big ones, the cosmic ones — they always start the same way."
Her tone dropped, smoky, conspiratorial.
"With a scream. With a silence. With a choice."
She clapped her hands once — and the theater rose again around her.
The Ossuary Stage.
Bone-white seats gleaming. Corpses leaning in.
The audience of the dead waiting — twitching, grinning, weeping with empty eyes.
Hela perched once more upon her throne of terror-bone and starlight.
"But don't worry, loves."
She tapped her skull mask, a hollow clink echoing through the theater.
"You'll get to see the rest."
Her smile widened into something sharp.
"After all... the god of Nothingness has only just begun to want something."
A long pause.
And then, as if addressing someone just offstage:
"Curtain's yours, Qaritas. Let's see if you're worthy of your echo."
The light dimmed.
The corpses clapped.
"We're all watching now," she coos, tapping a bony finger to her temple.
"Even the quiet ones behind the page."
Her violet eyes flick to the edge of existence—past you.
"They've always wanted a god like him."