Outer Space, The Moon.
This celestial body, formed billions of years ago from the remains of the young Earth, now housed countless creatures.
Those creatures lived in a perpetual trance induced by none other than their leader, who currently occupied the center of the Moon.
The trance was so overpowering that none of them reacted even when one of their most powerful and mysterious authorities, the one who called Himself Secrets, died a miserable death right in their midst.
Their leader, too, did not react much to this, not because She did not care, but because She had placed Herself under the same trance as her subordinates.
The reason for her actions was none other than the barrier surrounding the blue planet upon which her gaze was currently fixed.
Ever since it had been erected, an unbearable urge to simply leave the planet alone had surged within her; not out of fear or disgust, but because of a simple, overflowing emotion.
Indifference.
It was like passing by a breeze. One would be indifferent to such a thing, and even if they deliberately tried to catch it, the breeze would have already dissipated.
Only by remaining in this trance, where she could barely feel her emotions or thoughts, could she stay in place and resist abandoning her conquest once and for all.
One would question this desperation over a single planet.
She couldn't conquer it, but so what?
She had already conquered countless planets before it, and there remained countless more.
Why would she fixate on this one, going as far as to plunge herself into this pitiable state for thousands of years?
She was Velthariel, the Weaver of Willbound Threads. The Goddess of Fated Freedom.
Mother of Decisions Not Chosen.
The one who governed the paradox of a freedom that was always meant to happen.
Anyone who fell under her manipulations believed that every 'choice' they made was solely theirs. She granted them the illusion of freedom so that their suffering would feel earned.
Instead of crudely stripping away free will, she delicately designed it, tailoring each decision to lead toward a predestined ruin. And she drew twisted pleasure from watching her enemies 'freely' dance like puppets beneath her string-pulling.
To 'choose' was to willingly fall into her trap.
To defy her was to play a part she had already expected.
Whether they were deranged Outers, Sane Gods, or courageous heroes, all of them had tasted her kindness.
The kindness of letting them believe it had been their idea all along.
Their idea to follow her.
To die for her.
To dance to her tune from the moment of their birth until their deaths.
So why...?
Why was she so fixated on this single, unremarkable planet among the billions of others scattered throughout this vast multiverse?
The question plagued Velthariel relentlessly, even amid her own trance.
And this was no coincidence.
It was another countermeasure she had designed herself, so that she would never make the mistake of leaving.
Because that question forced her mind to reminisce about her own past.
A past that contained all the answers to her current, inexplicable stubbornness.
This was another one of those times when she was forced to relive that past.
It started as it always did: from when she was a young Goddess, still mastering her concepts.
Even then, she had been powerful beyond measure. But on her home planet, all that power meant little, because she was merely one among many.
After all, the planet she originated from did not even belong to this universe, but to one higher in rank.
The lifeforms of this universe knew nothing of that, believing this macrocosm to be all there was to the world.
But the truth was far crueler.
This cosmos was nothing but the lowest and weakest sector of the vast multiverse.
Above it existed countless others, far stronger and crueler.
Her home planet had the misfortune of being situated in one of the highest such sectors.
And misfortune did not take long to strike.
One day, her planet was pulled into a cosmic game created by supreme entities she could not hope to comprehend even now.
By then, she had become the strongest being on her planet, and so she was chosen as one of those supremes' 'champions.'
Placed within an especially designed world alongside other 'champions,' she was meant to act as a representative in a battle royale of their design.
She had no choice but to play their tune and fight.
Even so, she remained confident.
As long as her opponents weren't those supreme deities themselves, she would manage.
And her confidence did not prove unfounded.
She won.
And she kept winning.
Killing one champion after another, enslaving those she deemed useful, and manipulating her way toward the top.
But across the infinite multiverse, she was hardly the only special one. There were others who had made even her hesitate to confront them.
One of those was none other than a single human.
A human…
An inferior creature that belonged to the lowest of sectors, with no redeeming qualities aside from being dominated by its own desires and feelings.
At the time, she had snorted at the daring of such a creature for even calling himself a champion.
Like she always did, she employed her threads to take hold of his fate.
Surprisingly, it took far more effort than she had expected. In fact, it was the most difficult fate she had ever tried to grasp throughout her long, immortal life.
But she did it.
She discovered his origin, his past, his present, and when she was about to glimpse into his future… she had already realized the enormity of her mistake.
She saw his wickedness and had to admit that, at last, she had bitten off more than she could chew.
And she couldn't even properly feel regret.
Because the moment she dared to touch what she shouldn't have—
To see what she could not unsee—
He was already looking at her.
She first saw a man sitting upon a throne.
He was surrounded by goddesses, devils, and entities of such high rank that they would normally consider the human race no different from unintelligent insects.
Yet every single one of those entities lowered themselves before him, serving and pleasuring him with utter devotion and pride.
The man raised his head.
And Velthariel, for the first time in her life, found herself on the receiving end of the same contemptuous look she had always given others.
She couldn't speak, couldn't move, and couldn't even feel anything aside from the terror that engulfed the depths of her soul and spread to every corner of her body.
She only saw him move his hand as though swatting away a fly.
Then, in the next instant, unspeakable pain engulfed her.
She only survived by activating her last trump card, the one that allowed her to escape into the river of time and jump between timelines.
Even then, that casual motion of his hand followed her all the way, leaving her only an inch away from death.
Velthariel struggled to remain alive for thousands of years.
And during that time, the terror she had felt gradually transformed into humiliation. Then humiliation became rage… Endless, all-encompassing rage.
But no matter how much that rage, stewing within her very being, urged her to confront that thing that called itself human, she knew it would be a fool's errand.
Her only fate would be death, so she changed her approach. Her concepts had never been meant for direct combat anyway.
And now that she had glimpsed his origin, she could simply trace it back through the river of time and kill his younger self, thereby erasing his future existence.
And that was what brought her to this sector. Because, absurdly, it was that thing's home universe.
Despite her persistent injuries, the lifeforms of this sector still had no way of resisting Velthariel.
And since she had traveled millions of years before the birth of that man, she decided to use the time to build an army for herself before moving to destroy his home planet.
An existence of that level could never have had a normal place of birth.
Velthariel refused to underestimate him a second time, for she knew she wouldn't be lucky enough to survive a second motion of his hand.
So she invaded planet after planet, destroying civilizations, conquering every being, and twisting them along the way.
When she finally reached it… the blue planet… his origin. She finally encountered resistance as she had predicted; the planet possessed an abnormally large number of native gods, and they opposed her fiercely.
They rarely succumbed to her corruption, and they were unusually united against her.
The millions of years she had initially thought were far more than enough to accomplish such a simple mission instead became an essential component of her eventual victory.
The fight devolved into a prolonged war that spanned all those millions of years.
Much later, even the mortal races joined the fight, making it far more difficult than it should have been.
But all of that seemed to come to an end a few thousand years before the birth of that thing.
Velthariel stood on the verge of victory, ecstasy burning through her veins at the thought of finally succeeding.
...
But that was when those mortals accomplished what even the gods could not.
They erected that cursed veil.
Velthariel did not give up. She persistently lingered like a parasite, waiting until the veil was finally lifted thanks to the subordinates she had secretly left on the planet.
That was the beginning of the end.
The gods fell, the mortals followed; every life on that planet was coming to an end.
...All but one spear-wielding human.
The first moment Velthariel saw him, terror struck her. For a second, she thought she had miscalculated the time of that man's birth.
Thankfully, that wasn't it.
This spear-wielding human was another anomaly, but not one on the same level as that man.
He was young, pitifully weak, and easy to manipulate.
She guided him toward sloth, made him watch as his loved ones died one by one, and then tortured him until he went half-insane.
All of it worked easily. Only her attempts to kill him kept failing. What made her even more uneasy, however, was a certain phenomenon.
The more she provoked him, the harder he lashed back. And the stronger he became.
But it did not matter.
Eventually, he became the last human alive. With this, that man's birth would be prevented.
And the moment she let her guard down and moved to finish the anomaly off herself… She became acquainted with the concept of infinite willpower.
And that concept made her witness a miracle. One human butchering her army one by one. Standing up again and again. No matter what. No matter how.
Until his spear finally reached her.
And the moment she fell was the second time she felt humiliation.
Again, at the hands of a human.
By now, Velthariel hated this race with all her being. Thankfully, no matter how tenacious the man was, he lacked the concepts to grant her a true death.
All she had to do was move her consciousness into another timeline, erase the fact of her death, and move on. She had accomplished her objective. Now, it was time to return and wait for those supremes to choose her once more for their game.
Surely, now, she could win it all and receive their promised rewards.
All those thoughts came to a halt because of a single wish.
...A wish to go back in time and redo it all.
Now, Velthariel had to play along once more.
But this time, armed with the knowledge of that anomaly, she decided to give him the same importance as that man and do her best to eliminate him.
But...
That was easier said than done.
The anomaly had somehow grown even more absurd in this timeline, foiling all her manipulations. Granted, she could only exert a minuscule amount of her power due to her trance.
Even so, in her latest attempt, she had been certain that he would at least be crippled beyond recovery, if not outright die.
Alas, she ended up losing three of her pieces while he remained alive.
"...Another failure, huh..."
Velthariel's gaze followed her unseen fate threads until they landed on the back of the man running toward home.
"It matters not. If I can't kill you now, then my past self can surely do it."
A faint smile stretched across her lips.
"You like playing the historian by visiting the past, right?"
Her smile deepened.
"Then I'll make sure the Velthariel of the past prepares a good welcome for you next time..."