Chapter 18: The Paradox Awakens
The stars screamed.
Across every world Kael had forged, the skies split apart. The light and shadow that once moved in harmony now clashed violently, tearing the heavens into twin storms. The balance the very essence of his creation was unraveling.
Kael stood at the center of the storm above Obsidian Reach, his aura radiating calm amid chaos. Around him, his generals gathered, their expressions sharp and grim.
Varis drew his obsidian blade. "The balance is breaking across the realms. The Monoliths are losing connection to your will."
Draven knelt, pressing his hand against the trembling ground. "The structure of reality itself is changing. The laws you set are… shifting."
Lyssara's voice trembled. "Something's rewriting creation, my lord. And it feels like you but not."
Kael raised his gaze to the sky. Beyond the veil of his reality, he could sense it the presence moving in the void. It was both familiar and alien, divine yet fractured, echoing his own power.
Erethis.
The Paradox Entity had awakened.
In the void beyond stars, Erethis took form. A body of flame and shadow intertwined, its eyes like twin collapsing stars. It drifted through the cosmic rift like a ghost, speaking in voices that overlapped and contradicted.
"I am your reflection," it whispered, "the part of you that defied the end, the seed left in Zeirath's death. You built balance but I was born from imbalance."
Its touch spread across space. Galaxies warped. Whole realms bent under the weight of its presence. The mortals who once prayed to Kael's twilight sigil now heard new whispers songs of rebellion, of freedom from both light and dark.
Erethis reached toward creation and tore open a gate. From that wound spilled the Paradox Legion shifting beings of energy and shadowfire, neither alive nor dead, feeding on imbalance itself.
Back in Obsidian Reach, Kael's throne trembled. The Monoliths flickered, projecting echoes of the destruction spreading across the farthest realms.
Kael clenched his hand, shadow and light rippling around his fingers. "It's using my essence to undo my work."
Lyssara stepped forward. "Then we destroy it."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "No. You can't destroy what exists as both me and not me. Erethis is a mirror of what I am a flaw born from my ascension."
Varis frowned. "Then what do we do?"
Kael's expression hardened. "We find where it entered my creation and we seal it. I will face it myself."
The hall darkened. Kael's shadow expanded, reaching across realms like rivers of night, tracing the corruption back to the origin point the Outer Veil, where existence and void met.
He stepped toward the gate forming before him, his aura blazing with quiet authority. "Hold the Dominion together until I return."
Draven's voice was heavy. "And if you don't?"
Kael's gaze turned to the cosmic rift above. His tone was calm, but beneath it lay something vast and unyielding.
"Then creation ends with me."
He vanished into the breach ascending once more, toward the void where Erethis awaited.