He didn't remember when the screaming stopped.
He just knew it had once been his.
Day 1.
A cold steel collar was locked around his neck, humming with ancient tech and alien enchantments. It pulsed against his spine every few seconds, sending a jolt through his nervous system like a heartbeat that wasn't his. The room around him existed within a pocket dimension. One designed to suppress all forms of supernatural interference. Not nullify. Erase.
Here, powers were irrelevant.
Time didn't flow correctly. Space bent. Even pain didn't fade.
And worst of all?
He was awake for all of it.
Day 2.
A surgeon's scalpel glided over Nyx's flesh—no anesthesia, no numbing agents, just raw pain.
"Subject does not respond to sedatives. Immune system rewrites foreign chemical structure."
Needles were inserted into his muscles. The scientist Dr. Halstrom watched with fascination as blood wept from Nyx's skin, sizzling as it hit the sterile floor. He pressed a button.
Zzzzzt.
The collar lit up again. Nyx convulsed.
"He's adapting faster than projected. Rebuilding nerves in real time. No genetic decay. Full bio-anchoring. Unbelievable."
They peeled open his skin, inserted cybernetic nodes, then watched as his tissue rejected them on a cellular level, spitting metal back out like it was poison. His body refused modification. It defended itself, no matter what.
"His genome behaves like a divine firewall. Our tools don't corrupt it—they're erased from record if pushed too far."
Day 4.
They brought in The Chair.
A machine designed to torment gods.
It was built to test psychological degradation. Hallucination rays, sound frequencies, direct nervous system rewriting. For hours possibly days they assaulted Nyx with pain no human could describe. The pocket dimension looped the experience, forcing him to re-live the same death again and again.
He cried. He begged. He vomited up blood and bile.
Still, his eyes never looked away from Halstrom behind the glass.
He was becoming something else. Something less human. Less mortal.
Something not even the dimension could contain forever.
Day 6.
Halstrom stood over him in the main chamber now. No longer hiding behind walls.
"We've discovered your power's name. The registry calls it 'Absolute Erasion.' You know what that means, boy?"
He leaned down. Whispered into Nyx's ear.
"It means you're not bound by space, time, law, death, or existence. If something kills you, you erase the concept of that death rewriting the universe so it never happened."
"You are a Singularity masquerading as flesh."
"But as long as that collar is on... you're just a prisoner. A slave."
The Truth of His Power
Absolute Erasion was the final rank of power. Not transformation, not domination. It didn't control the battlefield. It deleted the battlefield.
If a blade pierced his heart?
The blade never existed.
If a concept tried to bind him?
The concept would vanish, and all knowledge of it with it.
If the universe itself tried to stop him?
The idea of the universe would flicker... and be gone.
His soul was wrapped in gold-threaded particles that glowed in the cracks of his skin—a warning label from reality itself. No timeline could contain him unless sealed in a cage outside time.
Day 10.
They removed his eye.
He laughed. He didn't know why.
His sanity was breaking in elegant ways.
They called in priests from six religions. They burned his skin with cursed brands. They cast spells to break willpower. But everything wore off. Their gods turned away.
Because his power couldn't be outmatched.
It simply waited.
It wasn't obedience.
It was patience.
Day 12.
Halstrom stood with a full team of engineers and psychics. They were trying a final experiment—injecting a concept directly into his brain.
"Let's see if you can erase the very memory of pain. Let's see if you're man or god."
As they activated the machine, Nyx didn't flinch.
He looked up through swollen, blackened eyes. Blood dripped from his lips.
And then...
The room flickered.
The machines stopped. The psychic screamed.
Halstrom dropped the tablet. It cracked—and then disappeared.
Not broke.
Erased.
The air vibrated. The dimension glitched.
Nyx was still bound, but something deeper had shifted.
The collar sparked.
And for one second…
It turned off.
The blood on the floor froze. Time paused. Everything in the room looked at Nyx. No one knew why they were afraid.
And then...
The collar rebooted.
Time returned.
Nyx exhaled. Still chained. Still impaled.
But now?
He remembered everything.
The betrayal.
The experiments.
His friend's corpse.
The family slaughtered.
The laughter of the powered ones.
The monster's acid dissolving his skin.
And he knew what would come next.
Not revenge.
Not escape.
Erasure.