Barbatos's eyes snapped open as fine fractures spread rapidly across his olive skin, branching outward like cracks across a mirror. Blinding light erupted from within those fractures in violent streams, pouring through him with such intensity that, for a brief moment, he no longer resembled a man at all. He looked like a collapsing star forced into human form, his body reduced to little more than a fragile shell containing something vast and immeasurably dangerous.
Slowly, he inhaled and forced himself to focus.
Resting between his fingers was a single strand of hair.
Vale's hair.
By every conventional standard, it was insignificant. A microscopic fragment of biological matter. Yet to Barbatos, it was something far more important, a direct connection. A constant within the chaos of existence itself.
Technology had failed. Caesar's systems, calculations, and tracking algorithms had all broken down against Vale's anomaly. But this had nothing to do with technology.
This was Biology.
Barbatos closed his eyes and concentrated on the strand, reaching beyond logic and perception toward the fundamental imprint hidden within it.
"Just give me something…" he murmured.
Then he forced the connection open.
His soul tore free from his body.
Not gently or naturally.
It was ripped outward as something dragged through reality itself.
And suddenly,
He fell into the Abyss.
A place beyond universes.
A place between realities.
The endless expanse connecting realities, where the spawn wandered endlessly through the currents of chaotic atum. It was not their birthplace, but it was where they thrived, a domain formed from instability itself.
Darkness consumed everything around him.
Absolute and endless.
There was no sky above him, no ground beneath him, no sense of direction or distance. The void stretched infinitely in every direction until even the concept of space itself began to lose meaning.
Yet despite the silence,
He was not alone.
Barbatos could feel them moving through the Abyss.
The spawn.
Countless entities drift through the darkness like unseen predators. He could not fully perceive their forms, but their presence pressed against his awareness constantly, alien, unnatural, wrong. They moved endlessly through the void searching for worlds to consume, expanding through reality like a disease spreading between universes.
Then he saw the lights.
Scattered throughout the darkness were distant glowing spheres suspended within the Abyss itself.
Universes and realms alike.
His gaze sharpened immediately.
From what he had learned, the brightness of a universe reflected the stability of its atum. The more harmonic its structure became, the brighter it shone against the void.
And one burned brighter than almost all the others.
His home.
It radiated with immense intensity, vastly stronger than most surrounding realities. Perhaps even among the three strongest universes still accessible within existence itself.
Farther away, two others shimmered with equal brilliance.
But something about them felt wrong.
Untouchable.
They existed, yet simultaneously could not be reached, as though some force beyond even the Abyss itself prevented contact with them entirely.
It did not surprise him.
The gods had spoken of this long ago.
Their universe had been granted extraordinary power, the ability to reshape reality through visora organs, in exchange for a singular purpose:
To destroy the lesser spawn before they could spread further.
That truth had never been made public. Only the highest levels of the Rosemary Organization and the G.V.O. knew it existed. Revealing it would destroy civilization itself. Panic alone would collapse entire nations.
But none of that mattered now.
Barbatos focused once more on Vale's strand of hair and reached deeper, no longer searching for a place, but for a presence.
Time lost all meaning within the Abyss.
Perhaps seconds passed.
Perhaps longer.
Then suddenly,
A golden thread formed.
It stretched outward from the strand in his hand, piercing through the darkness with absolute certainty like a line drawn through reality itself.
Barbatos smiled faintly.
"Found you."
Without hesitation, he followed it.
He surged through the Abyss at tremendous speed, guided entirely by the glowing thread. But the farther he traveled, the stranger the void became. The darkness thickened unnaturally around him, pressing against his body, slowing his movement as though reality itself resisted his advance.
Something was wrong.
As Barbatos followed the golden thread deeper through the Abyss, the pressure around him began to change. The void itself grew heavier, denser, as though reality were resisting his presence. Then he finally saw the source of it.
A universe.
But unlike the countless others scattered throughout the darkness, this one flickered violently. Its light shifted constantly between opposing states, never fully stabilizing into either harmony or chaos. It existed in contradiction, balanced impossibly between two incompatible forms of atum that should have annihilated each other long ago.
Barbatos narrowed his eyes.
"Harmonic and chaotic atum… existing together?"
That should have been impossible. No realm could sustain both simultaneously without collapsing under the strain, yet this universe somehow endured in a fragile, unstable equilibrium that looked ready to shatter at any moment.
And the golden thread ended there.
That was the destination.
That was where the students had been taken.
Without hesitation, Barbatos surged forward through the Abyss, only for an overwhelming force to strike him instantly. The impact slammed into him like the collision of worlds, sending him hurtling backward through the void before he barely managed to stabilize himself.
"What the hell was that…?"
Then he saw her.
A woman stood silently before the unstable universe.
At first glance, she appeared human only in shape. Beyond that, Barbatos could not comprehend what he was looking at. Her body was formed entirely from radiant light, her figure elegant and almost divine, yet her mere existence distorted the surrounding Abyss. Reality itself seemed unable to fully process her presence, as though the laws governing existence struggled to define what she truly was.
Barbatos froze.
The woman tilted her head slightly, studying him in silence before calmly raising one hand.
In the next instant, chains of light erupted from the Abyss itself and wrapped around Barbatos from every direction before he could react. They bound his limbs effortlessly, locking his body in place with absolute restraint.
Nearby spawn fled immediately.
Not cautiously.
Fearfully.
The creatures scattered through the darkness as though her presence alone terrified them beyond reason.
Barbatos strained violently against the chains.
Nothing happened.
The realization hit him immediately and with brutal clarity.
He was the strongest warrior on his planet, a man capable of leveling nations and destroying worlds through sheer force alone.
Yet here, before this being,
He could not move at all.
The woman approached him slowly, her expression unreadable beneath the radiant light composing her form. Then, with surprising gentleness, she reached out and placed her hand against his cheek.
Her voice echoed everywhere simultaneously.
Inside him.
Around him.
Through him.
"So… you have gained Father's acknowledgment."
Barbatos' eyes widened instantly.
"What…?"
His thoughts spiraled.
She knew about the acknowledgment. Worse still, she had referred to someone as Father.
Barbatos forced himself to focus despite the immense pressure crushing against his mind.
"I don't have time for this," he said urgently. "There are students trapped inside that realm. Children. They don't belong there, and I need to reach them before something happens. Please… just let me through."
The woman observed him quietly for several moments before answering.
"If I allowed you to enter, you would be the first to die."
Barbatos froze.
"But," she continued softly, "I am pleased to see you again."
A strange warmth entered her voice as she studied him more carefully.
"You have grown well… on that planet."
His expression tightened immediately.
"You know me?"
She ignored the question entirely.
"The students are alive," she said instead. "I witnessed their arrival."
Relief hit Barbatos instantly, but it vanished just as quickly when she continued.
"I still cannot allow you to enter."
Barbatos clenched his jaw hard enough to ache.
"Then what am I supposed to do?!"
The woman remained silent for a moment before finally responding.
"There is someone capable of granting you access."
Hope surged through him immediately.
"Then take me to him."
"I cannot."
Her gaze shifted briefly toward the unstable universe behind her.
"He chooses his visitors."
Silence followed.
Then Barbatos noticed something horrifying.
His body was beginning to fade.
Thin fractures spread across his form as pieces of him dissolved into radiant light, drifting away into the Abyss itself.
His eyes widened.
"What is happening?!"
The woman smiled softly, the expression somehow carrying both warmth and sadness despite her incomprehensible nature.
"You are fortunate," she whispered.
Her glowing eyes narrowed slightly.
"He has chosen you."
Barbatos tried to speak again, but the words dissolved before they could leave his mouth. His body fractured further, breaking apart into streams of light as the Abyss itself vanished around him.
Then suddenly,
Barbatos his eyes snapped open.
His breathing came fast and uneven as he looked around sharply, only to find himself standing within an endless white expanse devoid of walls, sky, or ground. It was a place without distance or direction, a void so empty that even reality itself seemed absent.
Nothing existed there except a single desk positioned calmly within the infinite whiteness.
And behind it,
Someone sat writing.
For several long moments, the figure simply continued moving the pen across the page before finally turning the chair toward him. A small grin formed across my face as Barbatos stood frozen in confusion, trying to comprehend where he had been brought.
A chuckle escaped me.
"Now, now… there's no need to look so terrified." I leaned back slightly, studying him with open amusement while tapping the pen lightly against the desk. "Honestly, this story was starting to become painfully predictable."
My smile widened slowly.
"So… why don't we make things a little more interesting?"