[WP] It’s the end of the line, of the final journey. Enemies leading the path.

...

Magics raging, the Dark Lord Gillian reached for the tear between realities, and he felt the crushing weight of a higher-power fall down upon his shoulders.

Heavier.

Heavier still.

The spell had failed, he realized. Failed in a manner he'd never expected. Succeeded, in much the same.

He saw the future.

Slowly at first, then quicker. Like a ball rolling down a steep slope, it picked up its pace. Leading him on to his victory... to his defeat. There was another who would end him, just as he had ended so very many. They were alive, in the present. Standing atop that hillside, loyal friends at their side.

Not a hero.

Not a villain.

Just another, not quite unlike himself. Bound about his soul by the unbreakable string of fate.

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But the future did not stop.

Faster and faster it blurred, embracing him. Taking him away.

His mind was that of a Master Mage. Futher, of a Master of Masters: the singular force to be reckoned with, across worlds, dimensions, life and death.

But he was, simply put, only so.

The weight upon him, try as he might resist it, was too much. His mind, genius, powers: began to fracture.

He heard a voice.

"It's time we spoke, you and I."

Attempting to stand, the laws that bound him prevented the action. Trying to summon magics, he found them washed away, run into nothing by the quiet pitter and patter of plastic keys. As he opened his mouth to shout in anger, the Dark Lord found he could not speak.

And the realization settled, softly.

Had he been here, before?

Had he simply always been here?

Staring up, he felt the gaze of all creation. And then, he found his voice- yet it was not his voice. It was what creation demanded he speak.

"You're the Author, aren't you?" The Dark Lord whispered the question, as it knew he would.

"I am." The voice answered.

The pieces that formed him, layers upon layers, began to unravel. Sentences, he realized.

Words.

He was nothing less, yet something more.

"Then, this is the end?" The Dark Lord closed his eyes, only to find such concepts had already left. White and nothingness in all directions. Words whisking away like fog, to some distant light. Joining everything that was, and everything that could ever be.

"The End? Oh, come now Gillian."

The voice laughed, worlds formed and fell away. Waves crashed, froze, lifted like clouds. The sky was stars, the sky was fire, the sky was ice of green and endless floating specks among the cosmos. Stories and tales, whispers and shouts, words and languages out into all of eternity.

"There's no such thing."