Date: 6/23/2001 – Time Unknown
Location: The Great Void – The Heart of the Final Trial
Perspective: Kaiser Everhart
"Maybe love was never meant for someone like me."
I am a construct of calculated cruelty and emptiness. My birth was an unfair distribution of unfairness, a talentless existence designed to be a weapon, not a son.
"But I will not let Cartethyia go."
I will not allow her final day to be defined by my perceived inferiority. If the universe is a story written in fate, then I will become the collapser.
"I will win at any cost."
The Void around me began to vibrate. The absolute blackness did not merely fade; it ignited. The Void peered into the moment of my birth, searching for the extension, but it found something else entirely: an anomaly of will.
The surroundings shifted into a high-density sea of information.
Whitescale.
The disease was a masterpiece of biological entrapment. It functioned through a retroviral integration into the cardiac myocytes, binding the host's life force to its own replication cycle. Magic failed because it targeted the mass, and the mass was the heart.
I will find the cure..
Darkness rotated around me, structured rather than void. Equations surfaced first.
C22H28N4O6C_{22}H_{28}N_{4}O_{6}C22H28N4O6—a protease inhibitor scaffold—unfolded in three-dimensional space, its bonds snapping into place as simulated rifampicin derivatives aligned along viable docking sites.
I will not lose her.
"Cartethyia never wanted to see me in pain."
"She ate at the end of the day just to ensure I was fed."
I ran the numbers in real time, adjusting molar mass and polarity, solving for a threshold that would cross the blood–heart barrier without inducing systemic shock or inflammatory cascade.
She is a blessing that no one can replace.
Biology followed mathematics. Synthetic mRNA strands assembled themselves, base by base, encoded for CRISPR-mediated silencing. Their target was precise: the Whitescale's SSS-protein, the molecular hook it used to anchor itself into the marrow.
Once neutralized, the organism would remain intact—alive, even—but structurally blind, unable to bind, unable to spread.
"Her smile is the only thing that matters. She is the most beautiful woman in this world, and her existence is the only truth I accept."
The calculations reached their zenith. Every number since nursery, every heartbeat I monitored, and every chemical reaction I memorized fused into a single, undeniable solution. The cure for Whitescale was not a medicine; it was a restructuring of the human definition.
I looked at the Void.
My eyes, once a lifeful blue, felt the weight of the darkness. They turned into a devoid, absolute black—the color of the emptiness that has consumed itself.
"How dare you try to take her away," my voice echoed, no longer a child's plea but a command that vibrated through the spiraling light.
"You are not allowed to write my story. Nobody is."
The spiraling light engulfed the path. The equations shattered into pure radiance, bleaching the Void until the darkness was a memory.
"Anomaly… Who... who are you? "
The Void's voice, for the first time, held a frequency of doubt. It looked past me.
For a fleeting moment, the Void did not see a subject or a weapon. It saw the light that had created it—the primary authority that existed before the first word was ever created.
The expansion stopped.
Everything turned to white.
Date: 6/23/2001 – 5:12 AM
Location: Foundation Research Sector – Recovery Ward
In the physical world, the silence of the recovery ward was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic hum of life-support systems. 97 test tubes stood in perfect alignment, their occupants awake but vacant, staring through the glass with the hollow eyes of those who had accepted their irrelevance.
Only one tube remained clouded.
Designation 000981 drifted in the cyan suspension fluid, his body convulsing in slow, agonizing ripples. Thin ribbons of dark crimson leaked from his tear ducts, spiraling into the liquid like ink in water.
He was crying blood.
Outside the glass, Cartethyia was a collapsed figure on the sterile tile. Her sobs were jagged, tearing through the room's artificial peace. She pressed her forehead against the cold base of the tank, her hands trembling.
"Give him back," she whispered, her voice a raw thread of desperation. "He is my life. Let him live."
Vance stood on the observation deck, his gaze fixed on the telemetry monitors. Kaiser's neural activity was a chaotic storm of spikes that should have resulted in brain death minutes ago.
Physiological distress exceeds all predicted parameters.
"Why is he in such pain?" Vance muttered to himself, his voice devoid of its usual clinical detachment.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perspective: Kaiser Everhart
The darkness had been bleached away. I stood in a blinding, infinite white expanse—a void that had been scrubbed of its shadows.
I opened my eyes. They were blue again, clear and sharp. I looked for the entity that had tried to break me.
"Child of death," the Void spoke. Its voice was no longer a weight in my spine; it was an echo in the light.
"Why does the end fear you?"
"Why can the finality of the story not reach your heart?"
"Why do you strive to see a tomorrow that was never promised to you?"
I stood in the center of the nothingness, confused.
"Your tale began with a theft," the Void informed me.
The light around me erupted into a hollow, translucent vision. I saw a womb, dark and cramped. There were two pulses. One was vibrant, a gold-threaded light that consumed everything in its reach. The other was a flicker—faint, grey, and dying.
"You died in the womb," the Void said, the words carrying a cold, tragic weight.
"Your twin sister absorbed your life force. She was the destined protagonist; you were the discarded scrap of life."
"You were a corpse before you were a child."
I watched the vision. The grey flicker—me—did not vanish. It didn't accept the end. It reached out with phantom fingers and clung to the sister's heartbeat.
I was a parasite of fate, anchoring myself to her existence just to stay in the room of reality. I forced my way into being born through sheer, instinctive refusal to be erased.
"You are neither living nor non-living," the Void observed.
"You exist outside the realm of reality and fiction. You are an anomaly that persists outside my supreme authority."
"Why must you see tomorrow?"
I looked down at my palms. My breath hitched.
"Why?" I asked myself.
The world fractured.
The glimpses hit me.
I saw my palms.
A child's hands first—sticky with melting ice cream, sunlight bleeding through a seaside boardwalk, laughter not yet questioned.
AGAIN.
Rougher palms, scar-lined, tightening leather reins while a horse snorted beneath me, iron armor clinking with each breath.
AGAIN.
Ink-stained fingers smoothing parchment, candle wax dripping onto knuckles as a quill scratched late into the night.
AGAIN.
Trembling hands clasped in prayer, pressed against cold stone as bells rang somewhere above.
AGAIN.
Gloved palms adjusting a pocket watch, soot floating through gaslit air, boots echoing on cobblestone.
AGAIN.
Bare hands gripping a rifle stock, mud seeping under fingernails as artillery thundered in the distance.
AGAIN.
Calloused fingers counting coins at a market stall, voices haggling in a language I almost recognized.
AGAIN.
Shaking hands pulling a child close as firelight swallowed the night behind us.
AGAIN.
Clean, manicured palms resting on a glass railing, neon reflections crawling over my skin far below.
AGAIN.
Hands hovering over a keyboard, veins visible under sterile white light, alarms muted but present.
AGAIN.
Frostbitten fingers tightening rope, breath fogging as a mountain loomed, uncaring.
AGAIN.
Bloodied palms pressed into wet leaves, lungs burning as something moved just out of sight.
AGAIN.
Steady hands pouring tea, steam rising in a quiet room that felt too peaceful to last.
AGAIN.
Bandaged fingers flexing, pain flaring as I tested whether I could still move them.
AGAIN.
Palms open to the rain, standing alone in an empty street after everyone else had gone.
AGAIN.
Hands gripping a steering wheel, headlights cutting through darkness that refused to end.
AGAIN.
Wrinkled, tired palms resting on a cane, watching the sun sink behind familiar land.
AGAIN.
My hands—mine—staring at them too long, as if waiting for them to explain themselves.
They were mine.
For now.
Just then, the Void grew silent. It wasn't looking at me anymore. It was looking at a presence that stood behind me—a light so absolute it made the white expanse seem dim.
Before time and space existed.
"Ensure everyone gets a chance to live," a voice said.
It wasn't a command. It was casual, lighthearted, like a suggestion made between friends.
"Why?" the Void asked, its tone trembling with a sudden, ancient recognition. "Why must I allow the expansion of the unworthy?"
"Because everyone has the right to witness the beauty of living," the voice replied, sounding iconic and effortless.
"Just like I do. So, allow the universe to expand upon your void, as I created you to do."
"Understood," the Void whispered.
The entity stared into the light of all creation. I stood in the center—the bridge between the void that wanted to end and the light that wanted to begin.
Date: 6/23/2001 – Time Unknown
Location: The Great Void – The Heart of the Final Trial
Perspective: Kaiser Everhart
The white light did not vanish so much as it settled, becoming a thick, luminous fog that felt like breathing static. The pressure that had been trying to crush my heart was gone, replaced by a vacuum of silence.
"I apologize."
The Void's voice had changed. The tectonic, authoritative weight had shifted into a dissonant, shimmering hum. It sounded smaller, yet more vast.
"I did not realize it was you. My perception was clouded by the friction of your mortality. I was testing a grain of sand, not realizing I was standing before the creator."
I stood still, my hands at my sides. "Who am I?"
"This is only the second time we have met since the dawn of creation. The first time, there were no words. There was only the first expansion. And now, you appear in this... human form."
The fog around me swirled, forming patterns that looked like the death of galaxies. Numbers began to drift in the air, glowing with a cold, mathematical light.
"It is impossible. This vessel... it can reach zero seals. Out of 1,507."
1,507 seals?
"Not even the Creator form can reach that state. It is a level of paradox that contradicts expansion. Why are you here?"
"Why are you amongst the existence of the mortal realm?"
"Why? Why? Why…"
The Void's questions hammered into the white space, repetitive and rhythmic. It was confused.
The entity that claimed to hold all of reality was spiraling.
"I don't understand what you're saying," I said. My voice was the only thing that felt solid. "I don't care about seals or the dawn of creation…"
"I wish to live. I wish to make Cartethyia happy."
"That is the only thing that matters to me."
The Void's light flickered.
"A blessing," it whispered. "A singularity of selfless intent. You possess the power to rewrite the collapse, yet your reason is a dying human woman."
"It is a paradox I cannot solve."
"Then tell me what I am," I demanded. "If you know my form, tell me the origin."
"I cannot. I do not know your origins."
"I was created to know my purpose, not yours. I am the shadow cast by the light; I cannot see the light itself. I am merely the Void of creation."
"Then what is the Quill?" I asked.
"What did you mean by the Heir? You said I could write tomorrow."
The fog turned a bruised shade of violet.
"Why must you know about the expansion of creations? The very thing you created?"
I clenched my fists.
"I want to know who I am," I said. My voice was cold, stripped of the child's tremor.
"I want to know why I was born a corpse. I want to know why I wish to live even when my own heart has stopped beating."
"If I am meant to be an anomaly, then give me the truth to destroy."
The Void grew still. The swirling astrology of the fog slowed until the stars were fixed points of ice.
"If you seek the truth of the quil, then you must understand the conflict that birthed it,"
"I will tell you."
"I will tell you about..."
"The War of the Written Sovereign"