Hey readers, this is a scene from the future so read but it will be better to avoid it if you do not like spoilers.
Ooh, come on. Is this what the mighty new defender of Prime has become? I thought you were special — especially after inheriting part of my project. I expected better than this."A being that looked half-dead and half-alive taunted the young man opposite him. The young man's body — twenty-five years by his physiology — was battered with wounds, but a sickly green light washed over him, knitting flesh and bone, reversing burns and rips until the injuries were gone and strength returned to him.
"I'm only getting started. Don't get cocky, you… Zombie." The young man's voice was calm, controlled, but it carried a dangerous edge. "When I read the histories of this world, you were someone respectable — someone worth remembering. But you have fallen. Have you forgotten you were a Sovereign Manifest for eons, yet you stand defeated by someone who ranked up just a month ago? I thought you aimed for Infinity, meant to become something new. To me, you're half-dead. All I need is to kill you again and again until you finally stay dead."
His body flashed with light as the last of the healing closed. Energy thrummed beneath his skin; he brimmed with power.
"World Formation, Reality's hand" He murmured the words like a prayer and a command. Beneath his feet an illusion unspooled — a seed of a world that spread outward, swallowing the wreckage of shattered planets and stitching them into a new tapestry of land and sea. Elements sparked into being; weird Vitral energies he had learned to shape wove themselves through the forming continents.
"Welcome to my world." The phrase fell from his lips as the new world finished taking shape — whole, humming, and unmistakably his.
The "zombie" recoiled at the sight of the new world forming beneath the other man's feet — shock flickering across whatever face the mask hid — then steadied. The freshly birthed world hungrily siphoned at him like dry earth at the first drop of rain. He shut his eyes; the chaotic energy within him stilled as if listening. Slowly, the half-dead part of him knit back together. Life flowed in again. His posture straightened; he looked younger, though long silvery hair fell over his shoulders and a mask hid his features from prying eyes.
"You've learned a trick," he said, voice low. "But as you said, I have been a Sovereign for countless years. I have more than one card to play."
"World Formation — Death-Life Incarnate." The words left his lips with the weight of ritual. A dark, restless world unfolded beneath him, an inverse echo of the first: shadows and light braided together, rivers that looked like veins, mountains that breathed. It spread outward, a living counterpart swallowing space as it grew.
The two creations met like clashing titans. From a distance it looked like a second, fiercer big bang — a collision of forces so immense that spared planets groaned and cracked under the pressure. Fractured worlds shattered and tumbled, becoming fuel for the contending deities. Dust and fire braided into the wake of the confrontation, and the void itself seemed to roar at their fury.
The space itself trembled, as though on the verge of cracking apart, yet it held on stubbornly. It was as if the cosmos refused to collapse, unwilling to end the magnificent clash taking place within it — a battle so grand that even the universe wanted to bear witness.
The young man slowly closed his eyes. Silence reigned for a brief moment, as if time itself leaned closer to listen. Then, when his eyes opened again, they shone with a brilliance that mirrored the endless heavens. They glittered like the starry night, galaxies spiraling within his pupils. Any who gazed into them would feel their souls stir, their minds clear, and truths they had never understood would suddenly blossom — awakening them to the mysteries of existence.
"It seems you have forgotten one thing," his voice rang out, calm yet suffused with immeasurable weight. "I have evolved. I carry the weight of the universe itself. I do not merely control life and death — I weave reality. What you claim as your domain… I now command as well."
For the first time, the half-dead Sovereign faltered. His mask tilted back ever so slightly, and his voice cracked with disbelief. A sliver of raw fear bled into his aura.
"Impossible… it cannot be done!" His words came out as a growl, desperate and enraged. "Do you know how many eons I have sacrificed? How many lives I devoured? This project has consumed everything I am! And yet—you… you claim mastery already? I will never allow it! You will not take what is mine! Once I kill you, I will ascend, and these chains of existence will finally break!"
His chaotic world rumbled violently, as if sharing his fury. With a roar, he poured every ounce of his existence into it, the dark-and-light domain swelling until it threatened to devour even the stars.
But the young man only lifted his hand, his expression serene, unshaken.
"Sovereign's Vortex… Extract."
The words echoed like judgment, reverberating through the fractured void. His radiant world shuddered, then twisted upon itself. In the blink of an eye, it became a colossal vortex, an endless spiral of power that pulled at the very fabric of reality. Space warped. Matter screamed. Time seemed to falter. The vortex's pull was merciless, devouring planets, starlight, and the Sovereign's false world with hunger that could not be sated.
The masked man's creation fought back, but it was like a candle caught in a storm. Piece by piece, the Death-Life Incarnate world cracked and withered, until all its stolen vitality was sucked dry, stripped away by the vortex.
Hovering amidst the destruction, the young man spoke again, his voice carrying like a decree across the ruined battlefield.
"When I was mortal, I studied space. I sought to understand its nature, its endless emptiness, its subtle chains. And when I combined that knowledge with gravity — the force that binds the stars and bends the heavens — I discovered this truth." His glowing eyes locked onto the broken Sovereign. "You should feel honored. You are the first to witness this attack… and the first to be consumed by it."
The vortex roared, swallowing the last remnants of the Sovereign's world. The half-dead man's body hung in the void, stripped of his power, trembling as the cosmic spiral dragged him toward the fate he had so long sought to escape.
The once-defeated corpse floated in the void, his body limp, stripped of the stolen power of his world. For a heartbeat, he seemed truly dead — nothing but a husk drifting among shattered stars. Then something shifted.
His fingers twitched. His chest rose. Deep within, a light flared — not bright but ancient, sickly, and alien. His eyes snapped open, and they were no longer what they had been. First, a blinding white glow flooded them, bleaching away everything human. Then it darkened into a black so pure it felt like staring into an endless abyss. Finally, a piercing green iris surfaced at the center like a serpent rising from murky waters.
The young man's breath caught. Every instinct screamed at him to move, to flee. His skin prickled; the hair on his arms and neck stood rigid. This was not the same being he had fought moments ago. This was… something else. Something older. Something far more dangerous.
The "zombie" stretched his arms slowly, vertebrae popping like breaking stone. His aura rolled outward in waves — cold yet heavy, like a tide of forgotten nightmares. When he turned, the mask still covered his face, but the very air seemed to fracture around him.
"To drag this one to such depths…" the creature murmured, its new voice echoing like a chorus from a thousand caverns. "To force him to submit and call me forth — you are… remarkable, child." The thing's gaze fixed on the young man, not with hatred, but with something far colder — hunger.
"Unfortunately, you carry something that belongs to us," it continued, the words sinking into the young man's mind like hooks. "You fused with the final piece of the project this body was crafting. That fragment is mine. Give it to me, and this ends. No more fighting. No more pain."
The voice was a paradox — smooth and almost soothing, yet it carried the abyss behind it. It was the lullaby of a predator whispering to prey.
"And if you're wondering what I am…" The masked head tilted slightly. "I think you've already guessed. What lies inside you and what stands before you were once one. We were split. We were separated." The creature took a slow, deliberate step forward, and the void rippled as though space itself recoiled.
"But before you hand it over," the being said softly, "tell the voice inside you to come out. Speak. I know it's there. I know it hears me. Let it reveal itself. Let it remember who I am."
Silence fell. The stars themselves seemed to dim. In the young man's chest, something stirred — faint but unmistakable, like a pulse answering a call. It was the voice he thought he had lost for a while and was back to help him in this fight. For the first time, the confident glow in his eyes flickered. A whisper brushed the back of his mind, familiar yet distant.
The abyssal figure tilted its head again, waiting. "Yes," it hissed. "I can feel it. It knows me. And soon… you will too."