The universe began with a word.
It was not a gentle whisper, but a command that tore silence apart. The Word built light, and the light built time, and time built gods who swore they understood what perfection meant.
But in the vibration that followed that first utterance, something went wrong.
The sound caught on itself — a hiccup between syllables — and for the briefest moment, Order doubted itself. That doubt, that infinitesimal hesitation, did not fade. It curled inward, folded through dimensions, and hid behind the structure of creation like a parasite in the skin of infinity.
When the Monitors charted the walls of the multiverse, they recorded the presence of an "anomaly" beyond the Source.
When Dream first mapped the realm of story, he marked a blank space where nothing could be imagined.
Even the Presence left it untouched.
A single paradox, buried deeper than comprehension.
Eons passed. Civilizations rose and fell, gods bled, angels forgot their purpose. Every time the multiverse collapsed and was rebuilt — in every Crisis, every Rebirth — the hidden anomaly pulsed brighter, closer, hungrier. Reality cracked, and through those cracks something listened.
Then, one day, the silence screamed.
The Source Wall trembled. Titans of thought — the Monitors, the Endless, the Old Gods — turned their gaze toward the void and saw light dripping upward. Time stopped obeying. Stars burned in reverse. Whole galaxies whispered in dead tongues, crying out the same word across space:
Paradox.
He arrived not in thunder, but in distortion. The sound of existence looping on itself.
A figure stepped through the fracture — tall, fractured, beautiful, wrong. His skin shimmered like glass containing storms. Beneath it, galaxies spun and died.
Reality tried to reject him, but every rejection became another proof that he was.
He walked across the empty plane beyond the Wall, and where his feet touched, color drained away. A Monitor dared to speak, his voice trembling with divine authority.
"Identify yourself," he commanded.
Paradox tilted his head, and time unraveled. The Monitor saw every version of himself die — crushed, vaporized, erased, born again, erased again. In each death he heard the same whisper:
> "You built existence on reason. I am the flaw you refused to see."
The Monitor ceased to be. Not slain, not vanished — simply never written.
In that moment, the multiverse shuddered. The Speed Force dimmed. Magic faltered. The dreams of gods bled into waking worlds. Somewhere in Gotham, a clock ticked backward; in Themyscira, statues wept dust. The Spectre fell to his knees and wept because he understood: the Word had remembered its mistake.
Across creation, minds broke. Some called Paradox a demon. Others worshiped him as freedom given form. He did not argue. His voice, layered in countless tones, echoed through the void like prophecy spoken by static.
> "You mistake destruction for cruelty. But what is cruelty to that which cannot feel? I am not your end. I am your beginning, unmade."
And with those words, the Unmaking began.
Data corrupted across the Source Net.
Dreams fused with memories.
Rivers flowed in spirals.
Angels forgot which heaven they guarded.
A Lantern tried to bind him, forging a construct the size of a sun. Paradox merely breathed, and the green light inverted, turning into a black flame that devoured will itself. The Lantern's ring screamed as it shattered. From its remains, the first of the Unmade arose — creatures half-real, their bodies etched with the Broken Ouroboros.
The Endless convened. Destiny closed his book; every line that should have named Paradox was blank.
Death refused to meet him.
Desire remembered loving him once — or would one day — and cursed both memories.
Only Dream dared to speak. "You do not belong here," he said.
Paradox smiled with a thousand faces. "Neither do you. You are the cage. I am the door."
He stepped forward — and the Dreaming bled into reality.
Worlds screamed. Equations failed. The Word that began existence trembled, unsure if it had the right to continue.
And for the first time since creation, the multiverse realized it could end not in fire or judgment, but in understanding.
For when Paradox looked upon creation, he did not hate it.
He pitied it.
> "You are all stories pretending to be truth," he murmured, as the stars fell silent.
"Let me unmake your lies."
And the universe — trembling, terrified, and beautiful — began to forget that it had ever been ordered at all.