"What does the end of things hold?"

w

h

a

t

is happening

?

---

The shadows twisted.

It wasn't just the night. It wasn't just paranoia. Something was wrong.

And then the world folded.

A whisper that was not a sound, a presence that was not seen.

The ground trembled beneath their feet, and from the darkness, something stepped forward. No—something emerged.

It wore the shape of a man, but only in the most unsettling, distorted sense of the word—like a shadow cast by something that did not belong in this world. Its form stood tall yet felt stretched, elongated in ways that defied natural proportion. Every movement it made sent ripples through reality, as though the air itself recoiled from its presence, the fabric of existence warping in protest. It did not simply move; it unfolded, its limbs shifting with the unnatural fluidity of something that had never known the weight of a mortal body.

Its skin—if it could be called that—was an abyssal black, not the mere absence of light but something deeper, something consuming. When Juno tried to focus on it, the edges of its form frayed, its silhouette unraveling into tendrils of voidstuff that slithered and coiled before stitching themselves back together, refusing to hold a singular shape for long. Beneath that shifting darkness, faint, pulsing lines of sickly violet light ran like fractured veins, branching and twisting as if a malign force was barely contained within.

Its face was worse. Or rather, the absence of one. A smooth, featureless surface stared back at them, devoid of eyes, nose, or mouth, and yet Juno felt it watching. A pressure. A presence. Something cognizant lurking behind the faceless void, dissecting her with an intelligence that was as ancient as it was unknowable. And then, for the briefest of moments, it shifted. A grin. A mouth that hadn't been there before, stretching far too wide, teeth jagged and uneven like shards of broken glass, as if it was only pretending to understand what a smile should be.

A shiver crawled up Juno's spine—deep, primal, instinctive. The kind of terror that burrowed into the bones, a reaction older than reason itself. The air around them thickened, pressing down like an unseen force, warping space until even breathing felt like an effort. A sickness bled into the atmosphere, something rotten, something corrupting.

It spoke, and though its featureless face remained unmoving, the words appeared in their minds, sinking into their thoughts like ink bleeding through fragile parchment.

"Mortals."

The voice was not sound but sensation—a whisper that unraveled inside their skulls, bypassing ears and language, slipping directly into understanding. It was not simply heard. It was known.

"I, the past aspect of purity, now holds with me the powers of the void of silence and deception."

Juno's fingers clenched tight around the hilt of her sword, her muscles coiling as she fought against the suffocating weight pressing down on her instincts. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to move, to attack, to run. But before she could react, before even thought could catch up to terror—

"Combined, it's one that had ran kingdoms and nations and society in its palms. One that made all kneel with jubilation. One that kept everything in its own death."

It began to change.

The darkness of its form deepened, collapsing inward, folding in on itself like an event horizon devouring light. Its silhouette twisted, limbs elongating, stretching far beyond any humanoid shape. The air itself distorted, the space around them breaking apart like a mirror cracking under unseen pressure.

A silence fell. Not the absence of sound, but the eradication of it. Even the wind, even the heartbeat in her chest, even the whisper of breath—gone. Reality was dissolving, unraveling like a tapestry being ripped thread by thread, perception itself shifting into something else, something no longer hers to control.

Deception curled through the air like invisible threads, unseen hands plucking at what was real and replacing it with something else. The weight of a name—something greater, something vast—settled into existence, rewriting the very laws that bound this world.

"I am Vorlath. The Keeper of Corruption."

A name that did not belong to the thing before them.

A name that now did.

Void Herald Vorlath.

And then the battle began.

The first wave came like a storm of bodies. Figures that were once human, now twisted into horrors with too many limbs, too many mouths that whispered lies Juno couldn't hear but felt.

Exos was already moving, his weapons manifesting in a flash of steel and death, carving through the first wave with brutal efficiency. Selene's daggers shimmered, celestial light sparking as she weaved between enemies, each slash leaving behind trails of constellations that burned into flesh.

Juno gritted her teeth. Her Chronosword pulsed in her hands, the edges flickering with unstable Void energy. The corruption was spreading through it, but she had no choice. She swung.

[Ability Activated: Temporal Rend—ERROR.]

The impact distorted time itself. The creatures staggered, slowed, but so did she. Her own movements lagged, the backlash of her unstable power pulling at her mind like unraveling threads.

Not good. Not good at all.

Selene faltered, doubt flashing in her expression for just a second. And in that second, a clawed hand reached for her.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Juno moved without thinking. The world stuttered as she forced her power to work, reality shivering as she rewound herself into position. She caught Selene's arm and yanked her back just as the creature's strike cleaved through empty air.

Selene blinked, startled. "You—"

"Don't hesitate," Juno snapped. "Not now."

Selene's grip on her daggers tightened, and then something shifted in her eyes. A realization. A pattern in the chaos. And for the first time, her blades sang with a resonance Juno hadn't heard before.

Exos, on the other hand, had made a decision of his own.

His aura darkened, the air around him vibrating with something forbidden. His weapons burned brighter, but at a cost. A cost he had already accepted.

He moved.

And the battlefield exploded.

There are no true voids in the universe. Even nothingness carries weight.

The sky fractured.

Selene's scream burned into the cosmos as her daggers wove a pattern that should never exist—a forbidden constellation, a map of lost stars that had never been named, never been seen, never meant to be drawn. And yet, as her blades carved those ancient paths into reality, the heavens obeyed. The sky convulsed, turning an obsidian so deep it swallowed even the concept of light.

Something stirred in the vast beyond.

The moment the constellation ignited, the world became wrong.

Exos exhaled sharply. His final weapon materialized in his grip—a sword that was not just a sword. It was a reflection, a wound in time, a blade forged from every moment of suffering he had endured. Its edge glowed not with power, but with memory. His pain, his failures, his endless battles, crystallized into an instrument of absolute severance.

And then the second Herald stepped forward.

It had no name. No shape. No logic. It was not a creature, nor an entity, nor even a presence. It was an absence made manifest, an intrusion of a concept that should not be understood. The world around it warped—not in the way a mirage wavered in heat, but in the way a story rewrote itself mid-sentence, erasing what had been to replace it with something fundamentally different.

A wrongness.

Juno's breath hitched. The air thickened, crushing down with the weight of unrealized possibilities. Her system flickered.

[WARNING: Unidentified Entity Detected.] [VOID HERALD CLASSIFICATION—UNKNOWN.] [ANOMALY STATUS—CONCEPTUAL EXISTENCE ERROR.] [SYSTEM STABILITY—RE-INITIALIZING… ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.]

Not good.

Vorlath was already something beyond comprehension, but this new presence? It was something that had never belonged to any timeline, any history. A threat beyond the Void, beyond existence itself.

The moment it set its gaze—if it even had eyes—upon them, reality screamed.

Juno staggered. Selene's constellation flickered, her own body shaking from the sheer effort of forcing the heavens to recognize something forbidden. Exos gritted his teeth, his weapon humming with the weight of every war he had ever fought.

And then Vorlath completed its metamorphosis.

Eclipsion. The Void Herald's final form.

It was no longer a being. It was a declaration. The embodiment of the Void's philosophy, the erasure of all meaning, the dissolution of all boundaries. Its voice was no longer a sound but an understanding, an absolute truth unraveling in their minds.

"Reality is an illusion bound by mortal arrogance," Eclipsion whispered, and in that whisper, entire lifetimes unraveled. "The Void does not destroy. It liberates. It returns all things to their purest state—nothingness."

Juno tightened her grip on her Chronosword. The edges of the blade flickered, unstable, corrupted by the very force she wielded it against. She felt the paradox of her existence pressing in. If she used her power, she risked unraveling herself. If she didn't, they all died.

[WARNING: CHRONOENERGY DESTABILIZING.] [CALCULATION ERROR. REBOOTING—] [CONSEQUENCE BRANCHING—INFINITE RESULTS.]

There was no time to think. No time to plan. The battlefield itself was shifting, no longer solid, no longer definable. The ground beneath them fractured into floating shards of past and future.

Selene moved first. Her celestial daggers burned with the fury of collapsing stars. "We're not letting you rewrite this story."

She launched herself at Eclipsion, her blades trailing cosmic fire. The moment they clashed, the universe itself fractured.

Exos followed, his sword carving through timelines, through moments that should never have intersected. His expression was grim, his resolve unshakable. He had already decided—this battle was not just about survival. It was about defiance.

But what does defiance holds when it's corrupted?

There were battles where the tide shifted, where hope flickered even in the darkest of moments.

This was not one of them.

The air itself recoiled under Vorlath's corruption. The battlefield had ceased to exist in the way reality understood—it was now a fractured plane, where direction lost meaning, where time bled into itself, and the concept of space had been twisted into a labyrinth of impossible geometry. Blackened spires rose and fell in a breath, the sky above seething like a living wound in the fabric of existence. And beneath it all, Juno, Selene, and Exos fought against the inevitable.

They were losing.

Selene's forbidden constellation blazed above them, the remnants of its celestial fire burning her hands raw. She had etched it into the void itself, a defiant scar against corruption, but Vorlath's power was relentless, smothering even the stars. Her daggers felt heavier, her limbs sluggish—the weight of a reality being rewritten pressing against her will.

Exos had drawn his final weapon—a blade not of steel, but of memory. It hummed with the echoes of battles long past, a fragment of his soul sharpened into a killing edge. Every strike carved through the false world Vorlath had imposed, severing its illusions, but with each cut, the corruption seeped deeper into him. His weapons flickered, his breath grew ragged. The cost was catching up.

Juno had nothing left but time.

She had rewound more times than she could count, resetting herself, pulling herself out of certain death, but every iteration was wearing her down. Her Chronosword, unstable and laced with Void energy, flickered in and out of existence in her grip. Her mind ached from the sheer strain of her broken system keeping up with the battle. Every second was a losing game, every movement pulling her closer to an end she could no longer avoid.

And then Vorlath—no, Eclipsion—spoke.

"This is not a battle," it said, its voice no longer a whisper, but a force that cracked through existence itself. "This is the end of understanding."

The void lurched. Juno felt it before she saw it—her system glitching, her vision distorting. The ground beneath her ceased to be solid, reality twisting as if it had finally given up on pretending to be real. Selene was thrown backward, her daggers slipping from her hands. Exos' weapon shattered mid-swing, his body collapsing under the weight of an unseen force.

Juno barely had time to react before something cold wrapped around her throat.

Eclipsion loomed over her, its form no longer humanoid, but a vast, unraveling thing that had abandoned shape altogether. A thousand unseen hands clawed at the edges of her being, pulling her apart at a level deeper than flesh. Her vision darkened. Her system screamed.

[CRITICAL STATE DETECTED] [Chronoenergy Depleting—] [Rewind Engaging—ERROR.] [VOID INTERFERENCE DETECTED.] [Rewind Failed.]

Her mind froze.

Failed?

No. That wasn't possible. Rewind always worked. She would always return. It was the one rule she had left, the only thing she could count on. She had died so many times, and each time, she had clawed her way back. She was supposed to be untouchable, always one step ahead of death.

But now—

[Rewind Failed.]

Her body convulsed as Eclipsion tightened its grip. She could feel herself being erased, her existence unwritten, and for the first time since this nightmare began, she had no escape. The system stuttered, its messages glitching into unreadable chaos. She struggled, but her limbs felt like they belonged to someone else, her vision flickering as her mind refused to accept what was happening.

There was no way out.

She saw Selene on the ground, struggling to rise. She saw Exos, trying to summon another weapon, his body trembling from the toll of his power. And she saw herself reflected in the void—small, powerless, undone.

And then—

The void stared back.

It was not Eclipsion. It was something deeper, something older. Something that had been waiting for this moment.

[Juno.]

The voice did not come from her system. It did not come from anything she could name.

It came from the space between seconds, from the stillness between breaths.

[Do you understand now?]

Her system convulsed, entire lines of code unraveling before her eyes. Warnings flashed and died, replaced by something else.

[You cannot win.] [You will not be saved.] [Time does not belong to you.]

And for the first time, Juno knew fear—not the fear of dying, not the fear of failure, but the fear of being erased. The fear of knowing she was losing more than just her life.

She was losing the fight to exist.

And this time, there was no coming back.

The void whispered one final message, and as darkness swallowed her whole, she understood.

[Rewind Terminated.]

Everything shattered.