An unknown void. No signs of matter, no light, no life, and no hope.
Nx drifted entirely alone, pulling his form against the dark space to find a crack or gap.
The single thing driving him forward was the raw energy burning inside his core. His will.
{I've tried going in every direction. It's been eight months,} Nx hung motionless in the black space. {The familiar connection with the princess is gone.}
He drifted through the empty space.
{Is it even worth trying? In the end, I'm just an anomaly. Maybe she has already forgotten about me. No more stories. No more teasing. Just me by myself.}
Then memories flashed back, bringing up the frozen time, the strange entity, and the brutal curses meant to erase him completely from existence.
{But I felt it. Even with time stopped, I understood everything that thing tried to do to me. How unjust. I will kill it.}
A wave of hot anger turned his smoke shape into a dark, solid shade.
"Calm down, I finally found you." A voice cut through the quiet emptiness.
Nx pushed his will outward, vibrating the space around him to shape words. "Who are you? Are you the one who trapped me here?"
A tear ripped open right beside Nx, grabbing him by the edge and dragging him inside with a violent pull.
He slammed down onto solid stone. Nx pushed himself up from the cold floor, his eyes scanning a barren world covered in broken ruins. An ancient stone slab stood right before him. Fresh grooves cut deep across the rock face:
"Welcome to the Eighth Heaven. There is no longer anyone here, so you are free to do whatever you wish."
"Show yourself!" Nx blasted his voice at full volume.
The carvings on the slab smoothed over, rewriting themselves with new words:
"I am right in front of you. If you are wondering why you are stuck here, it is because of your essence. It is unstable and outside of their control. Any godlike entity will try to rid the heavens of you."
Nx stayed still, turning his gaze across the broken stone columns. He looked back at the slab. "Tell me what I am. And what harm am I even causing them just by existing?"
New grooves cut into the rock:
"I cannot answer all of your questions. But stay here. It is for your own safety. If the Gods get their hands on you, they will not be able to destroy your essence, but they will weaponize it to corrupt everything."
"Tell whoever ordered you to keep me here that I am not staying as a prisoner." Nx shifted his smoke form into a sharp point.
"I will not stop you." The stone etched new letters across its center. "But you cannot leave. I am stuck here just like you. The only way to escape this place is to reach a dimension called the supreme world."
Letters carved into the surface in quick succession:
"Be warned. If your consciousness is weak, the journey will erase your existence entirely. You must find a way to make your soul stronger. When you are ready, I will help you."
Nx didn't hesitate, sharpening his form into a point.
Nx spent the next two years in complete solitude, testing the limits of his essence. Through constant trial, he learned that will held two opposing sides, one positive and one negative.
...
"I'm ready. Now what do I do?" After two full years passed, Nx hovered in front of the slab again. {If erasure is negative and I train my Negative Will, I can negate existential erasure as long as my Will remains.}
"Interesting. I do not know what strategy you devised, but I still doubt it is enough." Words appeared across the gray stone.
"Trust me." Nx held his form steady. "I know what I'm doing."
The ground shook hard as two massive stone pillars pushed up from the rubble, shining with blinding dimensional power.
"Be aware. Even if you succeed, the cost is absolute." The carvings flashed a harsh red light. "Once you cross over, you must immediately merge with a living creature's soul. It will alter your essence enough to hide you. If your fusion slips for even a single second, The Gods will sense the anomaly and find you."
"As long as you're in the supreme world, you're at risk of being erased at any second."
"Alright." Nx let the warning settle into his core.
The pillars shot out blinding white light. A heavy force yanked Nx upward, throwing him through a storm of wormholes across countless realms, dimensions, and the whole transinfinity.
...
"Interesting. I'm finally done preparing ten chapters for my novel." A young man stretched his arms back in his desk chair.
[Username: L. Y. Alkhawf. | Status: Online.]
The floor jolted without warning, causing his hand to slip and hit the delete button, wiping out the entire folder.
[The file is now deleted.]
"E..." He let out a flat breath and stared at the blank monitor.
"What was that?" He jerked his head toward the window.
A streak of white light dropped from the sky, smashing straight through the ceiling tiles and slamming into Alkhawf's chest before he could dodge.
"Hm? What's going on..." Alkhawf clutched at his shirt collar.
Darkness rolled over his eyes, and his legs gave out as he slumped onto the wooden floorboards.
In the space between worlds, the ancient stone spoke one final time as both souls slammed together.
"To decrease the strain, half of the human's soul has been severed. Because you are missing half of your essence, the two of you will form one complete soul."
"And once your fusion is completed, your essence will suffer the endless pain of everything in existence at every given moment."
The dimensional pillars pulled the soul of Alkhawf into the eighth heaven and snapped shut around them, locking an unbreakable seal in place. The force dropped them into a modified realm, keeping both mind states bound to their original forms while fused as one.
"I will reward you with a mortal body, but it is incredibly weak, and it will take time to seize control. Try not to die, or you will both be trapped in a place even I cannot reach."
...
Nx locked his focus onto merging his essence into the human form. The energy bound together.
But in that same second, Nx felt it.
The sheer pain.
Agony hit him, as if the fabric of all existence were tearing his essence apart for eternity.
He could sense nothing. He could move nothing.
Through the heavy pain, cool air brushed his skin for the first time, and he felt solid dirt under himself.
{I finally...}