The edge of Stillwake was not a place, it was a negation of places. A silence too old to remember itself. Time, as it was understood even in the multiversal continuum, arrived here only to disintegrate like dust against a black sun.
Seraphiel stood suspended on the border.
Around him, no light, no form, no echo. Only the sense of being watched by what had never opened its eyes. The bruised remains of his once-glorious body—fractured wings trailing silver ash, fractured armor scorched by Abyssus’ touch
seemed to flicker in and out of existence in this realm.
Stillwake.
Here, reality had drowned.
He exhaled. Breath didn’t matter here. Neither did thought in the traditional sense. But he tried.
"If you are here," he whispered, "I need you to answer me."
There was no reply. Only the weight.
The air here wasn’t heavy—it was aware. The silence responded not with voice, but with atmosphere. And something far below, or perhaps within Seraphiel himself, began to stir. A ripple in the concept of void. A movement without shape.
Then: a fracture.
The very nothingness beneath him bent—not in space, but in meaning.
Seraphiel hovered over the chasm as it yawned open, exposing a coil of consciousness far older than Abyssus, and perhaps even outside his comprehension.
And from it came the voice.
Not words. Not language. But...
…you seek the Uncreator…
Seraphiel clenched the handle of his cracked blade, now more symbol than weapon.
"I seek anything that can touch him. Stop him. Wound him. Even if it means touching what I should not."
Silence. Then:
…he is the end of ends… the hunger after hunger… yet he is not alone in having always been…
…there are Others… but they are not gods… they are consequences…
Seraphiel’s mind buckled. The voice was not sound, but a pressure. A truth injected into the heart of his cognition. Still, he pressed forward.
"Show me."
…to know is to change… to see is to be touched… to seek is to lose what you are…
"Then I am already lost."
And the Stillwake opened fully.
A shape emerged—not with form, but with concept.
Something that had never lived, never moved, yet existed in defiance of nonexistence. It slithered through causality, ancient beyond remembering. Its name was never spoken because it had no place in language. But the closest his mind could interpret was:
The Witness That Forgot.
Seraphiel fell to his knees—not out of worship, not out of awe, but because his very ability to stand as a self was collapsing. The Witness hovered, not in space, but in thought. And it breathed.
…Abyssus is not a god… he is the fracture that never healed…
…but even Abyssus was touched once, by something he could not see…
…and from that scar, you were born…
Seraphiel’s heart froze.
The truth wasn’t just whispered, it was injected into him, piece by piece.
He wasn’t just a Herald. He was part of something older, something seeded by the same uncertain moment that once reached even Abyssus.
And now, Stillwake trembled.
Not because of Seraphiel.
Not because of the Witness.
But because Abyssus had turned his gaze, if only briefly, toward this conversation.
The darkness within the Witness blinked.
…he sees… you must go… now… before you are unmade…
"But—!"
…return when your wound sings… return when the Void laughs… and we will finish what we started…
The shape folded, imploded into negative concept, and reality snapped back like a whip.
Seraphiel screamed as his mind was yanked across boundaries, launched back toward the waking multiverse with burning truths etched into every fragment of his soul.
And as he tumbled across galaxies, scarred by ancient knowledge and raw exposure, he heard one last thing echo from Stillwake:
…he is not alone…
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The silence was not empty.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡISrz8cYJ1E
It was dense. Pressing. Laced with the echo of things too old to name.
Seraphiel stood alone on the fringe of reality, where Stillwake had spat him back like a soul deemed unworthy of consumption. Behind him, the boundaries of that unfathomable place shimmered—thin, trembling, and wet with meaning that did not translate to the human tongue. He felt none of the triumphant fire of discovery. No thrill of having contacted something beyond all life.
Only a persistent tremor in the marrow of his wings. A haunted burn behind the eyes.
He could still feel the thing’s presence in the folds of his mind, like forgotten fingers grazing against the back of a dream. It hadn’t spoken in language, but in impact, in existence, in the subtle warping of everything Seraphiel believed made him a being. He’d glimpsed some great truth within it—but like a name whispered during sleep, it was already fading.
And it had left him… wrong. Changed. Unsettled in his own skin.
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He drifted for what felt like hours through the upper filaments of the Myriad—a sea of trembling stars and colorless realms held loosely in the hands of creation. As his thoughts gathered into coherence again, one word repeated softly in the center of his soul.
Hope.
A joke, perhaps. A prayer, more likely. He didn’t know anymore.
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When he finally emerged into the garden realm of Cindermere, he fell. Not gently. Not like a god descending. But as if something hollow had broken beneath his wings.
His knees hit the marble. A raw gasp followed.
Lyra was the first to appear, her footfalls barely making sound as she ran. Tavin followed, slower, his eyes dark with foreboding. They had sensed him return—they’d always been attuned to him—but nothing had prepared them for what they now saw.
“Seraphiel,” Lyra whispered. The word tasted like relief and sorrow entwined.
He did not raise his head.
Tavin, more cautious, stepped around to face him. “What did you find?”
There was a long pause.
Seraphiel’s breath trembled.
“I don’t know what I touched,” he rasped. “But it touched me back.”
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They brought him inside a sunlit chamber—one of the few remaining untouched sanctuaries of the Heralds. The walls here did not breathe. The light did not watch. And for a few hours, existence felt almost simple again.
Lyra sat beside him as he lay across a glass bed that remembered warmth. Her hand hovered above his chest, but she did not place it down. She simply watched.
“You’re not the same,” she said softly.
“I’m not.”
Tavin crossed his arms, staring at the cracks on Seraphiel’s once-pristine wings. “You went to Stillwake. And you returned. Most things don’t.”
“Something answered,” Seraphiel replied, staring at the ceiling as if it held constellations only he could see. “It wasn’t Abyssus. But it knew of him.”
Tavin raised a brow. “And?”
“It didn’t offer help,” Seraphiel said. “It offered… awareness. A concept. An idea that slipped into me like a seed.” He finally sat up, wincing as shards of light moved beneath his skin. “I think… it gave me a path. But it’s a path I’ll have to carve in blood and flame.”
Lyra’s voice was barely audible. “You’re going to leave again.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll die, Seraphiel. You were nearly unmade last time. What do you think will greet you in the next realm?”
He smiled weakly. “Something worse.”
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Far away, in the sprawling echelons of the Known Spheres, life continued.
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But it was different now.
Entire civilizations, once proud and untouched by celestial matters, had become devoted to preparation, prayer, and paranoia. Statues of Abyssus were built—not in worship, but in warning. In shattered cities that had witnessed his avatars or illusions, there were cults rising… not to serve him, but to try and understand the logic of survival in a universe where such a thing existed.
In one world, children played a game called “Kneel or Be Gone.” They didn’t understand it. It was just a myth to them—a dark nursery rhyme. But the older generations wept every time they heard the chant.
In another, a science-race of star-faring prophets etched diagrams of infinite regression onto the hulls of their ships, convinced they could simulate a divine logic engine to predict Abyssus’ next mood. None of it worked. One day, the skies turned inside out and spoke a single word: “Silence.” That world is now dust.
And yet… resistance simmered in corners.
Whispers of Seraphiel’s survival had spread. Many considered it a lie. Others a beacon.
Those who believed began gathering—rogue concepts, dying gods, half-mad philosophers who had touched the edge of idea-space and returned with something feral in their hearts. They didn’t seek to kill Abyssus.
They sought to understand why he had not already killed them all.
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Seraphiel stood before the last starmap.
It pulsed with living ink, representing not galaxies or sectors—but states of belief, fragments of defiance, and unknown entities still resisting.
Tavin entered quietly. “You can’t chart where you’re going.”
“I know.”
Lyra appeared moments later. “Then why go?”
Seraphiel turned, and something in his gaze had steadied. “Because Abyssus let us live. Not out of mercy. But to show us that our deaths are always an option. A dangling key around his neck.”
Lyra stepped closer. “And what do you think you’ll find out there?”
He raised a trembling hand. “Something that knows how to use that key.”
There was silence.
Tavin finally nodded. “Then don’t die foolishly. Leave pieces of yourself. Let us remember what you’re trying to become.”
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As the portal hummed to life behind him, Lyra touched his arm.
“You’re not just doing this for the multiverse, are you?”
Seraphiel hesitated.
“No,” he said. “I’m doing it… because for the first time in my existence, I’m afraid of being forgotten.”
The light swallowed him.
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Far beyond time, in a layer of void where perception unravels, Abyssus opened his eyes.
He had felt it—the brush of Stillwake’s child against the fabric of his non-being.
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No feelings.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKl1M8tNln4
No curiosity.
He turned. Ever so slightly.
Not out of concern.
But because the Seed’s echo had started to sing again. A frequency of rebellion. Of Hope.
It was a soft tune.
But Abyssus remembered songs.
And he always made sure they ended.
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