The obsidian throne pulsed with a faint, internal luminescence, mirroring the cold fury burning in Arcturus's eyes. Kael, a being of swirling nebulae and solidified starlight, stood defiant before him. Eons had passed since their first encounter, eons filled with Kael's relentless pursuit of a conversation, a connection, anything beyond the suffocating apathy of the True Boundless.
"You are powerful, yes," Kael's voice, a resonant chord echoing through the void, repeated a familiar refrain. "I understand that you are one of the True Boundless tier in this infinite omniverse. But I still don't understand your lack of purpose, your absence of feeling, your motivations… or lack thereof. You are a being driven by pride and ego, looking down on everything, everyone, as if they were insignificant ants."
Arcturus remained impassive, a monument to unconcerned power. Its gaze, vast and indifferent, swept over Kael as if he were a speck of dust on a forgotten shelf. "Insignificance is their inherent state. I do not care. Nothing can control me."
Kael's form shifted, the nebulae swirling faster, a silent testament to the frustration simmering beneath his unwavering demeanor. He had returned countless times, defying the incomprehensible distances, the warping realities, the crushing weight of Arcturus's indifference. Each return was a testament to his unwavering belief that even the seemingly unshakeable could be moved.
Eons bled into millennia. Kael's visits became a maddening rhythm, a persistent pulse in Arcturus's otherwise stagnant existence. The True Boundless being found itself increasingly irritated, its patience, vast as the omniverse itself, wearing thin. Arcturus's voice, when it finally broke the silence, was a tremor of barely contained rage.
"Stop talking about these insignificant, weak ants that I wouldn't even mind dying infinite times over! I do not care. Do you understand? Your persistence is… tedious."
Kael, unyielding, met the outburst with a calm that bordered on infuriating. He knew he was pushing boundaries that most Boundless beings wouldn't even dream of approaching. But he had seen the cracks in Arcturus's impassive facade, the flicker of something akin to… annoyance. Annoyance was a feeling, a reaction, and a crack in the seemingly impenetrable wall of the True Boundless.
"That's precisely the point," Kael countered, his voice ringing with quiet conviction. "You cannot use your authority recklessly. You're the strongest, the most powerful, but can you defeat the Dragon God from the Xylos omniverse? Can you truly claim to be beyond consequence?"
The name hung in the void, a forbidden word, a scar upon Arcturus's otherwise flawless existence. Arcturus's anger surged, a tempest of raw power threatening to consume everything in its path. Its eyes, previously cold and distant, blazed with furious energy. The obsidian throne cracked under the strain of its emotion.
"How dare you speak of his name! How dare you remind me of my brutal defeat? I killed a single mortal once, for mocking me... and the Dragon God… the Dragon God retaliated with a fury you cannot imagine! He… he humbled me." The confession, wrenched from Arcturus against its will, was a crack of lightning in the infinite darkness. A chink in the armor of the supposedly invincible.
Kael pressed his advantage, his voice a steady counterpoint to Arcturus's burgeoning fury. "Listen to me," he pleaded, not begging, but urging. "I'll keep talking, I'll keep returning, until you take action to protect this hopeless omniverse from invasion. Other Boundless beings like myself are tired of this endless cycle of destruction. We're weary of watching while lesser beings suffer. Why won't you help? Why won't you act?"
Arcturus's anger boiled over, a supernova of fury and frustration. The void itself shuddered under the force of its rage. With a wave of its hand, a gesture of such raw power that it tore at the fabric of reality, Kael was banished. Hurled into an incomprehensible realm, a chaotic maelstrom of impossible geometries and fractured dimensions, a place from which escape seemed eternally impossible.
The True Boundless being had grown weary of Kael's words, tired of the persistent challenge to its apathetic existence. But even as the echoes of Kael's defiance faded, the boundless reality warper's persistence had left an indelible mark, a faint tremor in the heart of the supposedly emotionless Arcturus. A tremor that whispered of responsibility, of connection, of the weight of power that even a True Boundless being could not entirely ignore. The seed of change, however small, had been planted. And Arcturus, for the first time in an eternity, felt something other than the cold comfort of absolute power. A disquieting unease, a sense of… responsibility.