Creation Of All Things

The dust settled. Slowly. Like the world was holding its breath after a scream. Adam stood over Nullbreed's flickering form. The giant lay broken, his dark energy sputtering out like a dying campfire. That weird, static crackle around him was fading.

Adam didn't look triumphant. He looked… tired. Like he'd just finished moving heavy boxes. He shoved his hands back into his hoodie pockets and sighed, a puff of air disturbing the settling ash around his feet.

Crunch.

He turned. Brigg lay where he'd fallen, frozen mid-twitch, skin still flickering with that unnatural static. Adam walked over, crouching beside him. He tilted his head, studying the frozen survivor. No pity, just… assessment. Like checking a broken appliance.

He reached out. Not with his hand, exactly. More like… the air around his fingers shifted. It touched the static field clinging to Brigg.

[Reality Override: Temporal Reset - Localized]

The static snapped like a broken TV signal. Brigg gasped, a ragged, painful sound. His one good eye flew open, wide and terrified. He jerked, scrambling back on his elbows, his crushed shoulder screaming in protest. He looked frantically from Adam to the fallen Nullbreed, then back to Adam, confusion warring with terror.

"You… you stopped him?" Brigg choked out, voice raw.

Adam straightened up. "Took a nap. Woke up late. You know how it is." He gestured vaguely at Brigg's mangled form. "Should probably get that looked at. Looks messy."

Before Brigg could stammer a reply, other sounds started cutting through the heavy silence. A groan from beneath a pile of twisted girders. A cough from under a slab of concrete. The faint, rhythmic *beep* of a damaged tether line struggling to reboot.

Across the ruined plaza, near the mangled remains of Mira's squad insignia, a figure stirred. Skyveil. Her once-gleaming armor was cracked and scorched black. She pushed herself up on one elbow, coughing up dust and blood. Her eyes, dazed, scanned the devastation. They landed on Adam. Recognition flickered, then disbelief.

"Adam…?" Her voice was barely a whisper, rough as gravel. "How…?"

Adam just shrugged. "Got bored of wherever he stuffed me. Place had terrible room service." He turned, looking towards the massive crater where the Vault's entrance had been. The ruins Adam had unfolded still hung in the air, defying gravity, revealing a dark, gaping maw leading deep underground.

He took a step towards it.

Thump.

Another survivor – Vesper, maybe? Hard to tell under the grime and blood – stumbled out from behind a fallen statue made of ash. He saw Nullbreed down, saw Adam. His eyes widened. "Null? You… you came back?"

Adam paused, glancing back. "Seemed like the thing to do. Place was getting wrecked." He looked past Vesper, at the stirring figures, the groans becoming whimpers, then weak cries. Life was stubbornly pushing back through the cracks. "Looks like cleanup's needed. You guys got this?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He just walked towards the exposed Vault entrance, the massive slabs of stone and metal still hovering unnaturally. The air crackled faintly around him, reality stitching itself back together in his wake, leaving trails of golden light that faded as quickly as they appeared.

Skyveil pushed herself fully upright, wincing. She watched him go, a strange mix of relief and deep unease warring inside her. He was back. But the way he moved… the casual power… it felt different. Sharper. Less like a god playing human, more like… something else entirely.

---

The Endlands.

Veylor watched the scene unfold not on a screen, but in the swirling, chaotic essence of the space-between-spaces. He saw Adam flick Nullbreed aside like a bug. He saw the golden threads pull erased heroes back from the brink. He saw Adam walk towards the Vault without a backward glance.

The shadowy figure didn't move. The Endlands themselves seemed to hold their breath, the chaotic storms momentarily stilled.

He knows.

The thought wasn't fear. It was… recalibration. A variable had snapped back onto the board with far more force than anticipated. Adam hadn't just returned; he'd returned aware. Aware of Veylor's presence, his meddling. That punch hadn't just knocked Nullbreed down; it had been a message. A calling card thrown right into the Endlands.

Veylor's form shifted, like dark smoke coiling. A low hum resonated through the void, the sound of ancient, patient gears turning.

Let him come. The thought was cold, deliberate. Let him chase the echoes.

Facing Adam now? Pointless. Like trying to dam a tsunami with bare hands. Nullbreed had been a test, a scalpel probing the wound Adam left behind. He'd revealed weaknesses, exposed fractures in the multiverse's defenses… and he'd confirmed Adam's terrifying capacity to simply *rewrite* the damage.

Good. Data was valuable.

Veylor turned his gaze away from the ruined city, from the figure disappearing into the exposed Vault. He looked deeper, into the swirling chaos of the Endlands. Other shapes stirred in the primordial dark. Vaster. Older. Slumbering titans of entropy and negation.

The board isn't set, Veylor mused, the hum intensifying. The others still dream.

Adam was coming. He would follow the trail Nullbreed left, the psychic scars, the broken threads of fate. He would hunt. He would rage. He would try to stop the inevitable.

Chase your shadows, Adam, Veylor thought, a dark amusement flickering in the void. Run yourself ragged trying to plug the leaks in a sinking ship.

Because when Veylor finally stepped onto the field… when the true pieces awoke… it wouldn't be Adam setting the rules. It would be the end of the game entirely. Veylor's form dissolved further, retreating into the deeper darkness, a silent predator withdrawing into its lair, leaving only the chilling echo of its intent hanging in the chaotic void. The hunt was on, but the hunter was still gathering his pack.

Vault HQ

The heavy silence inside the Vault core pressed in like wet cement. Only the faint drip… drip… of condensation from the exposed, twisted pipes overhead broke it. Adam stood where Vesper had collapsed, her final word hanging in the charged air.

Architect.

He didn't move for a second. Just looked down at her broken form, the flicker of her tether line casting weak blue light on her pale face. He hadn't just pulled her back from Nullbreed's temporal stasis; he'd patched her together enough to *speak*, pouring raw causality into her shredded body like jumper cables on a dead engine. It wasn't healing, not really. Just… postponing the inevitable crash.

"Architect, huh?" Adam murmured, finally crouching beside her. He didn't touch her again. The effort it took to stabilize her this much was like holding back a collapsing dam with his bare hands. "Sounds like a pretentious jerk."

His gaze lifted, scanning the cavernous chamber. The Vault's core wasn't just broken; it was *gutted*. Nullbreed hadn't just smashed it open; he'd carved it apart with pure negation. Twisted spires of dark, non-reflective metal reached towards the ceiling like the ribs of a colossal beast. Scorch marks, deep and unnatural, marred every surface – not fire, but the *absence* of matter. And scattered everywhere… remnants.

Not just debris. Personal effects.

A cracked visor that belonged to Skyveil's lieutenant. A half-melted energy gauntlet from Mira's signature gear. A scorched piece of fabric with Vesper's squad insignia still faintly visible. They lay where their owners had fallen, defending this hole in the ground against something that shouldn't have been possible.

Adam stood up slowly. The air crackled faintly around him, a low hum of reality knitting itself back together in his immediate vicinity. He walked towards the center of the chamber, where the main containment field generator should have been. Now, it was just a gaping pit, ringed by jagged, warped metal.

He stopped at the edge. Peered down. Not into darkness, but into a swirling, chaotic

nothing. Like staring into static on an old TV, but deep enough to make your soul itch. Residual energy – Nullbreed's signature erasure – pulsed weakly from it.

"Took the whole party with you when you left, didn't you?" Adam muttered at the pit. "Rude."

He knelt, pressing his palm flat against the cold, scored floor near the edge. Not physically. More like… connecting. Golden light, faint but intense, spiderwebbed out from his touch, seeping into the metal and stone.

[Reality Override: Temporal Echo Scan]

Images flickered behind Adam's eyes, fragmented and chaotic:

Vesper and her squad, backs to the core, firing desperately into a wave of pure distortion. Their energy bolts fizzled out inches from Nullbreed's advancing form.

Nullbreed, not just smashing, but unmaking. His touch dissolved reinforced alloy like sugar in water. Heroes lunged, only to freeze mid-strike, their forms dissolving into static before crumbling to ash.

A flash of something else. Not Nullbreed. A flicker of intricate, impossible geometry woven into the erasure field for a split second. Like… a blueprint made of pure void. Then gone.

Vesper, lunging not at Nullbreed, but past him, towards a secondary console. Her hand slamming down on a sequence of controls just as the distortion wave hit her. A final, desperate act. A containment purge? A message burst? The echo fractured.

Adam pulled his hand back. The golden light vanished. His expression was unreadable. "Purged the containment logs," he said quietly. "Tried to send a flare. Into the Blind Eternities. Risky play, Vesper."

He looked back at her unconscious form. "Guess that's where 'Architect' came from."

A low groan echoed through the chamber. Not from Vesper. From the pit itself. The chaotic static swirled faster, pulsing with a sickly, dark light.

"Right," Adam sighed, standing up. "Left the back door open too. Classy."

He raised his hand, fingers spread. Golden light gathered, forming intricate, shifting runes in the air before him. Not just power – rules. Laws of physics rewritten on the fly.

[Singularity Command: Causal Lock - Tier 9]

The golden runes shot forward, slamming into the swirling chaos of the pit. Instead of an explosion, there was a sound like a giant, cosmic click. The chaotic static froze. Hardened. Sealed over like obsidian glass. The sickly light dimmed, contained.

"Temporary patch," Adam muttered, dusting his hands off on his hoodie. "Better than nothing."

He turned, his eyes scanning the ruined chamber one last time. They lingered on Vesper. He couldn't carry her out. Not without risking the fragile stasis he'd imposed. And he couldn't stay. The air here still tasted of Nullbreed's erasure, and underneath it… something colder. Older.

"Help's coming," he said, though she couldn't hear. "Try not to die before they get here. Seriously, the paperwork sucks."

He shoved his hands back into his pockets. The air around him shimmered, reality-bending like heat haze.

[Zero Step: Spatial Fold]

He stepped forward – and vanished. Not with a bang, but a soft pop of displaced air.