Creation Of All Things

Ostarius

The words hung in the air like frost—

unspoken shock freezing the room in place.

Aurora stood at the center, cloak still dusted from the broken world they had returned from, eyes distant, like they were still staring into that empty sky. Her voice was steady, but the edge of disbelief still clung to every word.

"They're gone," she said again. "All of them."

Alfred's fist slammed into the wall. A loud crack followed, shards of stone falling to the floor.

"What do you mean by gone?!" he shouted.

He wasn't asking. He was demanding the world to give him a better answer. One that didn't exist.

Aurora didn't flinch. She just stared at him—haunted. "I mean the faction. Our people. The cities, the outposts, the defenses, everything we built back in our original universe… It's like they were never there."

There was silence.

Cold.

Heavy.

Even the walls of Ostarius seemed to pull tighter, holding its breath with the rest of them.

"Our family…" Alfred said again, slower now, quieter. "Our family."

Aurora looked away.

It hurt more to meet their eyes than to face the endless nothing.

"They were erased. I can't see anything. Not what happened. Not what's happening now. Not even the tiniest thread of a future. My Eclipse Sight…" she shook her head, voice faltering. "…it's blind."

Across the room, Aria stood still, arms crossed, her brows furrowed—but her expression calm.

Too calm.

She wasn't panicking. She was thinking.

Because none of it made sense.

A sudden attack? On them? Without a sound? Without a sign?

Impossible.

Their father—an apex force. Their mother—a goddess of conceptual will. And Mael… a living weapon. An Absolute Monarch forged for singularity-level warfare.

No battle happened.

No alarms were tripped.

No power surged.

It just… vanished.

And if it wasn't a battle—

Then what the hell was it?

"Wait…" Joshua's voice broke through, rough but steady.

"What about Mael?" he asked.

Aurora turned slowly toward him.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Adam looked for him first… nothing. No trace. Not even residual aura. It's like—"

She stopped.

Joshua's jaw clenched.

No one ever really loses Mael. Not without something big. Bigger than gods. Bigger than systems.

Alice stepped forward, eyes wide, voice low. "And Adam? Is he—?"

Aurora didn't let her finish.

"He's tearing the universe apart."

Her voice wasn't poetic.

It was literal.

"Krozak's with him. So is Wraith. They've split paths. Scouring reality, crossing timelines, going through forbidden doors we weren't even sure still existed. He's not waiting for answers. He's digging them out."

Alfred stepped away from the wall, breathing hard.

"And what happens when he finds out who did this?"

Aurora didn't answer right away.

Instead, she looked out the window. The stars looked back, silent.

Then—softly—

"He won't stop. Not until the last thread of that force is unmade. And after that…"

She exhaled.

"After that, he might not stop at all."

The weight of that sentence hit them like gravity itself.

Adam wasn't just a leader. He was a monarch that rewrote rules by existing. And now?

He wasn't leading.

He was hunting.

Kaiden, who had stayed quiet till now, leaned against the doorframe.

"Then we need to help," he said simply.

Joshua glanced his way. "With what? We don't even know what we're facing. We don't even know where to start."

"We do," Aria said suddenly, eyes still locked on a distant point only she could see.

Everyone turned.

She stepped forward, voice calm but sharp.

"We start by finding the void. Because anything that can erase us… isn't working from light, or time, or even causality. It's working from nothing."

Vael let out a low breath from the corner. "You mean the Endlands."

Aria nodded.

Aurora looked to her then, a flicker of hope threading into the edge of her voice.

"If they used the Endlands to wipe us… we might still be able to trace the echo."

Joshua crossed his arms, eyes dark. "Then we follow the echo."

Alice looked around the room. "And Adam?"

Aurora smiled faintly.

"He'll feel it. Wherever he is… he'll find us."

They all stood there, the firelight flickering low behind them. Shadows dancing like old memories. The silence no longer felt empty. Just waiting.

Waiting for the next step.

The first real one.

Toward the thing that stole their past.

And maybe…

The gods behind the curtain.

Elsewhere

The Void

Adam sat alone—floating in silence so deep it didn't even echo. The void didn't speak. It didn't breathe. It just was. Endless. Empty. Cold.

But not colder than him.

His cloak drifted like torn shadow in the stillness, the faint flickers of his aura cracking through space around him. Red. Black. Silver. Colorless.

He didn't move.

He didn't have to.

He was remembering.

The weight of childhood—the way the world forced him to grow too fast. The day he lost his parents. The day the tears dried faster than they fell. Because he didn't have the luxury to break. He had two siblings. A promise. And a hunger to never feel that helpless again.

So he became something else.

A warrior.

A leader.

A monarch.

And when power finally answered his call, he didn't use it to destroy.

He used it to rebuild.

He brought them back.

He saved what he had lost.

He carved a place where his family would never feel what he felt.

And now?

Gone.

All of it.

Erased like a name from a broken tombstone.

His fingers curled.

The void around him rippled.

A tear opened—then vanished—then opened again, twitching like it was afraid of what sat in its center.

Adam didn't blink.

"Funny…"

His voice was quiet. Dry. Distant.

"I gave everything for them. Everything."

He lifted a hand slowly, and the space in front of him cracked—like glass under a whisper.

"And someone thought it'd be funny to take them away."

His eyes burned now. Not with heat. Not with magic.

But with something older.

Wilder.

A storm that had been waiting years to rise.

"I've lost before," he said.

"I survived it."

"I became stronger."

The stars behind the veil flickered. One by one.

Like they knew what was coming.

"But this time…"

His aura unfurled.

Not like a wave.

Like a maw.

A Monarch's Will. Unchained.

A god who wasn't born to sit on a throne—

But to flip the table.

"…I'm not surviving it."

He stood slowly, still floating above the nothing, his body glowing with a silent, furious light.

"They wanted chaos?"

He smiled.

It didn't reach his eyes.

"Then let the world remember what real chaos feels like."

And with a single step—

Adam vanished.

Reality cracked behind him.

And the void, for the first time in forever, trembled.