It rained for the first time in centuries.
Not with water, but with the quiet patter of ashes that once made up galaxies.
They drifted down like soft snow across Seraphiel’s homeworld, a sacred world untouched by war for eons. Now, it stood in mourning. Trees bowed beneath the weight of cosmic soot. Rivers ran with grey. And the stars above?9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaknB5HUwIc
Dimmed.
The skies themselves had knelt.
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Seraphiel lay in the hollow of a broken cathedral, a thousand stained-glass wings shattered across the marble floor. He had not moved for three days.
Tavin knelt nearby, his voice hoarse from speaking to him.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmdHKSSY0fA
“You’re alive, Sera. Please… speak to me.”
Seraphiel didn’t respond.
His breathing was ragged. His feathers, those that remained, shivered every time the wind carried a distant echo.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWbyPeWutAR
It wasn’t pain he feared.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsBXgkRJP20
It was memory.
Each second replayed a thousand lives lost, again and again, compacted and re-screamed in his head like a loop that had no mercy.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD4hbWbqERg
“We shouldn’t have fought him,” Lyra said behind them, her voice trembling. “We were arrogant. We thought he was… defeatable.”
She didn’t cry. She couldn’t.
Her tears had burned out in the moment she watched Abyssus erase the Heralds with a gesture.
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The Empty Seats
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The Round Table of the Heralds was rebuilt. Out of duty. Out of desperation.
Eight chairs once stood in defiance of the Void.
Now… three remained. One cracked. One empty. One occupied by Seraphiel, who stared through it rather than sat with pride.
Tavin and Lyra stood beside him.
The rest? Names whispered only in eulogies.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡztq0fyaxN8
“He told us to kneel,” Tavin said bitterly. “And we did. But what now?”
No one answered.
Seraphiel finally spoke—his voice no louder than the dust falling from the air.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOiFUwtAdbG
“We lost something far greater than that battle.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL9Yrps2diE
“What?” Lyra asked.
Seraphiel raised his head.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6MIDzmNAHG
“We lost the right to believe.”
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Elsewhere, the Seed, still glowing, still somehow untouched by Abyssus’ final wrath, wandered through what remained of the multiverse. He walked through blackened corridors of collapsed timelines, his footsteps echoing in places that should no longer exist.
He stopped at the corpse of the Divine Being—a husk floating in folded spacetime.
Kneeling, the Seed touched it gently.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ5d6LKOzZB
“We tried.”
He didn’t cry. He couldn’t.
But something in him pulsed strangely, an echo of what humans would call grief.
Or maybe guilt.
Behind him, the faint shimmer of Abyssus lingered, like a shadow cast on nothing.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3sL37vnAit
“Do you now understand?” Abyssus asked—not with malice, nor kindness. Just fact.
The Seed stood.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡec8AY4kQjH
“You let me live.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡik1LsouUrb
“Yes.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz9KkjxqOrv
“Why?”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzk8zrRRMAm
“You are a tool I still find... useful.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXGPbDoanCg
“And if I resist?”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqZ2WLO7NQH
“You cannot.”
The Seed clenched his small fists.
But Abyssus was already gone.
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The Silent Threat....
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On a distant world, a monument was built.
Not to Abyssus.
To the ones he erased.
The three Heralds who died so quickly, so brutally, their names became prayers whispered by civilizations desperate not to meet the same fate.
But even prayers faltered.
Because Abyssus had said nothing since.
Not a demand.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡABOTCS0sBi
Not a timeline.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs9x6EKm3Dg
Not a condition.
Just silence.
And that silence spread faster than any war ever had.
Worlds evacuated themselves out of sheer fear. Planets sacrificed their own leaders, families, kings, in case Abyssus demanded a soul.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0ruryNbsxL
But he didn’t.
He just… watched.
And waited.
For something.
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we return to Seraphiel...
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He stands before a cracked mirror. Behind him, his wings flicker. His sword—once radiant—is now dull and splintered with fault lines.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwbDivZ1CVs
“We’re not done yet,” he says.
Tavin looks up.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjz6rzD3byi
Lyra raises her eyes.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkfHL5AUesN
“What can we possibly do?” she asks.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAiPbJ87Lji
“We don’t fight him,” Seraphiel says.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2LvcLAHMoZ
“Then what?”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡypyVsCAqrY
“We change the only thing that scares him.”
Silence.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK8np6vlTHZ
“What’s that?” Tavin asks.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2W4uJMlKhi
“Ourselves.”
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There was a silence between universes now.
Not the comforting hush of sleep, nor the sacred pause between heartbeats. This was the silence of a hunted thing—quiet not from peace, but fear.
After the Fall of the Divine Being, after the obliteration of the Five Heralds, the story of Abyssus had stopped being legend and become truth.
Entire galaxies paused.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcUYRiANLvM
Civilizations that had climbed to cosmic heights ceased expansion.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFhm8EX7H05
Warlords, conquerors, gods… all fell silent.
The multiverse now lived like prey beneath an unblinking, invisible eye.
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Within a hollowed-out supernova, its fire frozen mid-collapse, stood the Sanctuary of the Heralds. What was once a temple of radiant energy now flickered dimly.
Three seats remained in its inner sanctum. Only one was occupied.
Seraphiel stood in the center, not sitting—his cracked sword stabbed into the crystal floor. Behind him, two other figures entered slowly.
Tyvin, ever calm, eyes glowing faintly with stardust.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIOcxpFyQ8g
Lyra, radiant and distant, her long silver-white hair now dulled by trauma.
They had not spoken for hours.
It was Seraphiel who broke the silence.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU1jdLerPJK
“I’m going.”
Tyvin blinked slowly. “Where?”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfnN7ZjuKwL
“Beyond what’s known. I’ll scour every edge of the outer layers of concept, myth, essence. There has to be something.”
Lyra’s expression darkened. “You want to find something that can kill him.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdYz46TSzKv
“No,” Seraphiel said. “I want to find something that can understand him.”
Tyvin folded his arms. “And if you do? Then what?”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLfh62DQyp2
“Then maybe… just maybe… I won’t be alone when I kneel.”
Lyra took a step closer, her voice rising. “Seraphiel, five of us are dead. Gone. Not erased—unmade. And you want to do what? Chase ghosts through forgotten timelines?”
He looked up, his eyes hollow but burning.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh6LD6ne29E
“If I don’t go, then all that’s left is waiting. And if I wait, I become like the rest of them—afraid, trembling, praying for mercy he’ll never give.”
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Elsewhere, the knowledge of Abyssus had spread like a virus.
Entire cultures changed.
In the Chronospire Realms, the ruling philosophers dismantled time-based religions. Worship of divine order was abandoned in favor of cold, nihilistic mathematics. Time no longer meant progression—it meant exposure. The more time passed, the more likely Abyssus might notice.
In the Eld Shroud, a gas-giant society, the living cloud-beings began ritual suicides at birth. Not out of fear, but as sacrifice. Their logic: if fewer minds existed, perhaps the Eye would look elsewhere.
The Children of Light, once preachers of hope, rebranded themselves the Nameless Choir. They chanted in tones that mimicked Abyssus’s final command: KNEEL. Not to mock him. But to remind themselves that hope must evolve—or die.
Abyssus had become a shadow deity not worshiped, not hated… but accepted.
Like gravity. Like entropy.
He simply was.
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In the sanctuary, the air grew heavy as Seraphiel summoned the astral map of the known and unknown multiverse. Thousands of lightlines flared to life—coordinates of gods, tyrants, whispering black holes, memory-consuming oceans, weaponized suns, ancient forgotten entities.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡif3gw2EoIB
There has to be something,” he whispered.
Tyvin walked forward and spoke gently. “There’s always something. But not always what you want.”
Seraphiel turned. “You think I’m a fool?”
Lyra answered, stepping beside Tyvin. “No. We think you’re a hero. And that’s the problem.”
He stared at them both.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw4LsL2pyW8
“Abyssus doesn’t fear us. Doesn’t even register us. You think staying here helps?”
Lyra touched the broken edge of his armor. “Maybe not. But we guide. That is what we Heralds do when strength fails.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRd4PB35uhi
“Then guide me to something that can fight.”
She looked away.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1KIooN0Re9
“You won’t find it,” Tyvin said. “Because Abyssus isn’t a thing to defeat. He’s a truth. The only way to face him is to change what truth is.”
Seraphiel nodded. “Then that’s what I’ll do.”
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When Seraphiel left the Sanctuary, the skies bent around him.
He no longer walked through space as mortals do. He tore through possibility, leaping from logic to myth, from dream to lawless dimensions where time was fermented in vats.
He entered the Sea of Infinite Thrones, where dead gods still sat on collapsing chairs made of worship.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcBksWoQsSR
He visited the Echo Cathedral, where prayers went to die.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN1uLJaKcvz
He spoke to the Library of Sins, whose books bled ink when opened.
In every realm, he asked a question:9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhCb9Ltd4cA
“Is there something that can make Abyssus pause?”
And every answer was the same:9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvwaDAEQsK3
“No. But there might be something that can make you stronger.”
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Far from Seraphiel’s journey, in a torn part of the Void where even meaning had unraveled, the Seed stood silently.
He was changing.
The exposure to emotion, to fear, to hope to everything Abyssus never understood had begun to twist the Seed in ways he could not explain.
He felt.
He wondered.
He remembered.
In the silence of the dark, he whispered:9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpTp3pANU6U
“Am I him?”
And from behind him, something vast and cold replied:9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXi5d7zqgVK
“Not yet.”
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That night, Lyra and Tyvin both shared a dream.
In it, they stood at the edge of a mirror that reflected not themselves, but Seraphiel—bloody, broken, screaming through universes that tore him apart and put him back together again.
At the mirror’s center was Abyssus, unmoving, unspeaking. Only watching.
Behind him was something else.
A shape. Not yet born. Not yet real.
But becoming.
When they awoke, Lyra clutched her chest.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHPKghRrZE7
“He’s going to become something more.”
Tyvin nodded.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi9IJfXUTNF
“So will Seraphiel.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyoM4umnlxM
“Will that save us?”
He looked up at the fading stars.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKJMNl4KVqR
“Or doom us all.”
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