Creation Of All Things

Ruined Courtyard

The air smelled like burnt ozone and blood.

Nullbreed sat atop a fractured statue, one leg dangling over the edge, his fingers tracing invisible patterns in the air. The city stretched below him—broken, flickering with distant fires, alive with the hum of fear. He liked it this way. Chaos was honest.

Then—

A sound.

Not wind. Not rubble settling.

A tear.

The space three feet in front of him *ripped*, not like a portal, not like a crack—like reality itself had been unzipped.

Nullbreed didn't move. His lips curled.

"Finally."

From the tear, a figure stepped out.

The ground beneath him warped. Not bending, not breaking—just *changing*, as if the laws holding it together had been rewritten mid-step. The air thickened, heavy with something old, something that didn't belong here.

Nullbreed tilted his head. "You're not from around here."

The figure—Veylor—smiled.

And the world flinched.

Nullbreed walked. Veylor followed.

Not behind him. Not beside him.

Parallel.

Every step Veylor took left no footprints. The ground refused to acknowledge him. The wind didn't touch his clothes. The dust didn't dare settle on him.

Nullbreed noticed.

"You don't exist here," he mused. "Not really. Just a shadow pushing through."

Veylor chuckled. "Existence is flexible."

A drone buzzed overhead—one of the Vault's scouts, probably sent to track Nullbreed's movements.

Veylor glanced up.

The drone unmade itself.

One second it was there, hovering, lenses focused. The next—nothing. No explosion. No crash. Just gone, like it had never been built.

Nullbreed stopped walking.

"That's cute."

Veylor shrugged. "I prefer silence when I talk."

Nullbreed turned to face him fully now, his grin sharp. "Talk, then."

Veylor didn't sit. Didn't lean. He just was, standing there like a glitch in the world.

"You're strong," he said. "Stronger than this place deserves."

Nullbreed scoffed. "You didn't come here to flatter me."

"No," Veylor agreed. "I came to offer you a game."

"A game."

"The only one worth playing." Veylor's voice dropped, low and smooth. "The kind that starts here—and ends everywhere."

Nullbreed's eyes flickered.

Multiverse.

He'd felt it before—whispers of other worlds, other versions. But no one had ever confirmed it. Not like this.

Veylor continued. "This city? This world? It's a seed. And you could be the one who cracks it open."

Nullbreed crossed his arms. "Why me?"

"Because you're already breaking the rules." Veylor gestured to the ruins around them. "You don't follow their laws. You don't obey their limits. You erase what you don't like." He leaned in. "Imagine doing that to everything."

Nullbreed was silent for a long moment.

Then—

"Prove it."

Veylor smiled.

And snapped his fingers.

The world split.

Not in half—not in pieces. It *unfolded*, layers peeling back like pages in a book, revealing infinite cities stacked atop each other, infinite skies bleeding into voids, infinite versions of them standing in infinite ruins.

Nullbreed saw himself—a thousand times over.

Some wore crowns of dead stars. Some drowned in oceans of liquid shadow. Some stood atop mountains of broken heroes.

All of them powerful.

All of them free.

Then—

The vision collapsed.

They were back in the ruins.

Nullbreed exhaled. His hands were trembling. Not from fear.

From *hunger*.

Veylor watched him. "Well?"

Nullbreed licked his teeth.

"Tell me how we start."

Veylor reached into the air—and pulled.

A single black chess piece appeared in his palm. A king. But not the kind from any set Nullbreed had seen. This one was carved from something darker than void, its edges jagged, its surface swallowing the light.

"Take it," Veylor said.

Nullbreed did.

The moment his fingers touched it, the piece *melted* into his skin, searing a mark into his palm—a sigil, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Veylor's voice was a whisper now. "This world is the first move. Break it. Shatter its rules. Let them see what happens when something like you stops playing nice."

Nullbreed flexed his hand. The sigil burned brighter.

"And after?"

Veylor turned, already walking back toward the tear in reality.

"After?" He glanced over his shoulder, grinning.

"After, we burn the rest."

---

The Signal

High above, in Vault HQ, alarms blared.

Screens flickered. Maps glitched.

Commander Hark stared at the readings—spikes of energy unlike anything they'd ever recorded. Not from Null. Not from any villain.

Something new.

Something worse.

Lenna gripped the console. "What the hell was that?"

Hark didn't answer.

Because deep down, he already knew.

A line had been crossed.

And there was no going back.

---

**Underground – Nullbreed's Lair**

Nullbreed stood in the dark, staring at his hand.

The sigil pulsed.

He could feel it now—the weight of what he'd agreed to. The scale of it.

He smiled.

For the first time in years—

He wasn't bored.

Abandoned Skyline – Nightfall

The stars above didn't shine like they used to.

Not here.

Not anymore.

They flickered like they were scared—like something had whispered to them and they didn't want to be seen.

Down below, at the edge of the city where glass towers became shadows, Adam stood alone on the rooftop of a ruined spire. Wind curled around him but didn't dare touch him. His coat fluttered on its own, pulled by something deeper than the air.

Then—

It hit.

A pulse.

Small. Clean. Not from this world.

Adam's eyes snapped open.

The signal was faint—like someone had pressed their fingers against the seams of the universe and pulled just enough to leave a fingerprint behind.

Not a portal. Not teleportation.

Entry.

His body blurred.

And in the next instant—he was gone.

Ruined Courtyard – Seconds Later

The world cracked like glass as Adam appeared midair.

No flash.

No warning.

One moment the courtyard was empty.

The next—it knew it had a visitor.

Adam floated ten feet above the stone, boots pointed down, arms still, gaze locked.

His eyes swept the wreckage.

A broken statue. Twisted ground. Air still buzzing with the scent of null-code and ash. Power residue clung to the scene like smoke after a fire.

But no one was here.

No Nullbreed.

No signature to trace.

And yet—he could feel it.

His eyes narrowed.

"This wasn't just power," he muttered.

He raised a hand, letting creation thread between his fingers like silver ink in water. The threads spun into a web, reading the echo of reality.

Two presences.

One was familiar. Dark. Chaotic. Controlled in a way that was almost… practiced. That was Nullbreed. He'd crossed paths with his energy before.

But the second—

Adam's fingers twitched.

The web snapped.

The threads dissolved like they'd touched something they weren't allowed to read.

"What the hell was that?"

He dropped to the ground, boots landing with a soft thud on the broken stone. His eyes scanned every edge of the courtyard. The ground had been warped—not broken. Twisted in a way that looked like space forgot how it worked for a second.

He crouched, touched a shard of air still trembling with distortion.

It flinched.

The air flinched from him.

He stood back up slowly.

"Someone came through."

Not a gate. Not a spell.

Something else.

His mind scanned through every anomaly he had logged since arriving in this world. None matched this. None felt like this.

Whoever it was… wasn't from this world.

But they hadn't arrived in it.

They had stepped through it, like it was just a hallway to somewhere else.

That kind of movement wasn't teleportation.

It was invasion.

Adam turned in a slow circle.

Still nothing.

Even his system couldn't track the echoes.

That meant only one thing.

"Whoever you are… you don't want to be found."

He looked up toward the dark sky.

The stars still flickered.

But now—they weren't just afraid.

They were hiding.

Adam's eyes burned faint gold.

"Too bad," he said quietly.

He raised his hand and pointed toward the air where the tear had once been.

A single particle of light ignited.

Then another.

He began tracing a map—drawing threads not of power, but possibility.

If he couldn't find them through this world… he'd follow the laws they bent.

And find what laws they broke.

He stepped into the air, slowly rising again, hovering like a shadow that didn't need the ground.

Then—

He vanished again.

And the courtyard?

It went silent.

Still.

But now…

Watched.

Celestial Plane

The room shimmered with strands of light—thousands of them—dancing slowly in the void like threads pulled from forgotten stars. This was where all fates converged. Where every outcome, every broken destiny, every rebirth and collapse spiraled together like a cosmic sea.

At the center of it all sat Aurora.

Eyes cold, sharp, glowing faint gold.

She leaned forward slightly, chin resting on her palm, elbow balanced on the curved armrest of her throne. Her other hand hovered lazily in the air, fingers flicking across invisible lines of fate, each one glowing with a different pulse—some bright, some cracked, some bleeding dark energy from corrupted futures.

She didn't flinch.

Didn't blink.

She was the Goddess of Prophecy and Causality, after all.

She had seen this outcome before.

Multiversal collapse.

An echo of total ruin spiraling from a single spark. A chain reaction that devoured realms one after the other. A void that even she couldn't look into.

But this time…

It came closer.

Faster.

More violent.

"Doomed," she muttered, the word slipping out like ice. "But only one path."

She waved her fingers.

The thread dissolved.

Another one took its place.

Then another.

She kept searching, flipping through countless realities, scanning for a stable route. One chance. One future.

There had to be a timeline where it didn't fall apart.

Where it didn't all end.

And she knew… if there was anyone who could stop it—

Her fingers paused.

Her expression shifted.

"…Where is he?"