The world was still.
No, not the world—everything. Time held its breath. Matter shivered in its place. Every law of physics curled into a fetal position as if begging to be spared what came next.
Seraphiel stood at the edge of the last known concept. No air. No gravity. No echoes of gods. Just the Void, folded in on itself, cradling a single impossible shape in its dead heart.
Abyssus.
He was not standing. Not floating. He simply was, and that made the whole multiverse flinch.
Seraphiel’s breath, if it could still be called that—trembled. His wings, once mighty conduits of divine will, now dragged behind him like shredded sails. The broken handle of his halberd rested against his hip, its blade long since reduced to philosophical dust.
Still, he did not kneel.
Abyssus tilted his head, not with curiosity, but with calculation—like a being observing the faint rustle of a thought that didn’t interest it. Then, it spoke, its voice not through space, but through meaning:
“Have you brought an answer to the question I never asked?”
Seraphiel didn’t reply. He knew this being did not ask to understand. It asked to fracture. To crush. To simplify. Any answer he gave would be reduced into ash by the truth Abyssus already embodied.
Silence hung.
Then, with the gentlest flick of two fingers, Abyssus snapped.
The sound was not heard—it was realized, as if every entity, every world, every strand of potential that ever might be, was informed of what had just happened.
And then—10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8ztmEEIWBG
Half of all that is… ceased.
Not just living things.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH1o3R1seMc
Not just galaxies.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3DJCMXcGtA
Not just memories.
Half of everything.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfqYdtzEDT9
Gone.
The Void screamed. Creation convulsed. Colors that never had names faded into nothingness. Children across universes stared at empty toys they didn’t remember losing. Entire pantheons fell silent mid-prayer. The gods of time itself reached for calendars that no longer existed.
Seraphiel staggered. Not because he had lost something—but because everything had.
He clutched at his chest, where a beat of emotion surged—and then was caged. Not now. Not before him.
Abyssus raised his arm, pointing toward Seraphiel, his gaze still dead of expression. No pride. No hate. No cruelty. Just unrelenting purpose:
“Clone, merge, form pacts with divine beings,10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKiWZS0LVT8
do all you want.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPvb04jdwM4
But right here… right now…10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqKLFISqhJJ
Fight me for an eternity.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDAmxP7kKko
I will not move.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB6ImqzsYtR
And if you do not lay an attack upon me…10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgoGmXjl9HN
I will erase you from existence,10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvy2hK0kbqX
just like the other Heralds.”
The silence after was not stillness.
It was threat incarnate.
Seraphiel’s fingers flexed. He felt it—the weight of expectation. The reality of extinction dangling by the thinnest strand of defiance. He had stood against titans, merged with light itself, peered into Stillwake and survived.
But this was different.
This was Ultimatum.
His mind reached back to Lyra and Tavin—the last sparks of warmth that still existed in his ruined memory. He remembered the Seed’s question, trembling between curiosity and emotion. He remembered the fusion of the Divine. The burst of hope. The scream of impossible victory.
And then Abyssus’ smile.
Kneel.
He hadn’t kneeled then.
He wouldn’t now.
But attacking…? That meant accepting the game. Accepting that Abyssus could be fought.
It was a lie.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1ILEr4nCaF
Abyssus could not be beaten.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMpprifCetu
Abyssus could not be reasoned with.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCjxZBTsRE1
He was not a villain.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdo8N7is7u5
He was not a god.
He was the inevitability of the end.
Yet, as Seraphiel looked up… he smiled.
Even a lie, if believed by enough worlds, could become reality.
“I will fight you,” he whispered—not as defiance, but as duty.
He shifted his stance. Light bled from the cracks of his ruined weapon. Across the remnants of time, the echo of dead Heralds hummed, their remnants etched into him, not as power, but as memory.
Abyssus said nothing.
He did not move.
He simply waited.
The first strike would begin eternity.
And Seraphiel…
…raised his hand.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpyg84mXAvP
There was no music to mark the moment. No drumbeats of fate, no angelic chorus, no screams of dying stars.
There was only Seraphiel—standing broken, wings torn, essence bleeding—and the God That Waited.
Abyssus.
And the gap between them was not distance. It was concept. Purpose. Meaning. It was the abyss between "what is" and "what will never be again."
Seraphiel surged forward, not with a battle cry, but with silence. Every beat of his approach tore apart layers of dimensional veil. The broken handle in his grasp ignited—not in fire, but in refusal. Refusal to vanish. Refusal to submit.
The first strike landed.
It never touched Abyssus.
The universe around him screamed.
Reality shredded. Laws unstitched. Stars flared and reversed into embryonic gas. The very principle of resistance howled through Seraphiel’s blade.
And yet… Abyssus did not blink.
He simply stood.
Unmoving.
Unfeeling.
Unimpressed.
Seraphiel struck again. And again. Each blow not just physical, but conceptual—wielding hope as his edge, memory as his weight. The echoes of Heralds long slain danced around him. The screams of forgotten gods curved through his weapon like harmonics of dying choirs.
Abyssus did not dodge.
He did not block.
He let the attacks happen.
And in that permission lay the terror of his power.
Each blow cracked space. The multiverse hiccuped. Time spun its compass wildly. Children were born remembering battles they never fought. Oceans cried tears of moons that had yet to be created. And still—still—he stood unmoved.
“You’re…” Seraphiel grunted through clenched teeth, “...not even resisting.”
“You have not earned resistance.”
The words struck harder than any blade. Seraphiel faltered—but rage caught him. He called out to the Seed, to Lyra, to the boundless will of all things that refused erasure.
His blade shifted. Around him, golden halos of infinite Seed echoes shimmered. From each, a copy of the weapon. From each, a version of his memory. All merged into his form—Herald, Echo, Flame, Void.
And then it changed.
The blade became coated in Absolute Void, siphoning away light and identity, but also entwined with a core of Hope so bright it nearly burned thought itself.
His eyes flashed.
“Abyssus.”
He struck—this time not against, but through. Hope and Absolute Void synchronized, vibrating against the fabric of being, carving meaning where none should exist.
The strike connected.
It ripped through Abyssus.
Tension buckled the sky.
Everywhere, across the all-verses, those still alive felt it. A whisper: “It worked.”
Abyssus staggered—not physically, but conceptually. As if something had actually registered. His form shimmered, glitching for the smallest instant. A fragment of Absolute Void had made contact with something real.
Seraphiel did not stop.
He pressed forward with every ounce of surviving divinity. The Seed, now matured in understanding, harmonized with his rhythm. The fusion of concepts—death, hope, longing, resistance—became not a weapon, but a declaration:
We will not vanish.
We will not kneel.
The battle became cataclysmic.
Nebulae died screaming. Rivers of time boiled. Titans from ancient pre-histories rose and fell in moments. Shadows of future timelines tried to escape the battleground, only to be devoured by the vortex of clashing will.
And in that chaos…
Abyssus looked down.
A hairline crack ran across his chest—impossible. Indefensible. Real.
The multiverse cheered.
The fusion of the Seed and Herald flared brighter than any sun. Their form trembled under the strain of maintaining everything they were.
Seraphiel roared:
“NOW! Fall! END!”
He gathered all that remained of their collective energy—divine light, fractured void, echoes of the slain, the burden of survivors—and launched it with a final scream.
It struck Abyssus head-on.
Silence followed.
Abyssus was engulfed.
Light swallowed him whole.
And then—stillness.
No response.
No shape.
The God of the End was… gone?
The fusion staggered. Seraphiel panted within its core, knees nearly buckling. The Seed’s voice—timid, hopeful—whispered from within.
“Did… we win?”
A flicker of time passed.
Another.
And then—
From within the blinding haze of the obliteration…
A hand.
A figure.
Stepping forward.
Unburned.
Untouched.
Unimpressed.
Abyssus.
He smiled—not cruelly. Not even smugly.
Just… inevitably.
“Bow.”
The word was soft.
But it broke the stars.
The fusion dropped to one knee, not from obedience but from collapse. From realization. From understanding.
They hadn’t fought Abyssus.
They’d fought an illusion of him. A sliver. A phantom idea.
The real being had been watching.
And now he had spoken.
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