Crinkle. Crack. Pop. Pop. Pop. Riiiiiip. RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP.
A weeping sound began to spread throughout the cosmos, as if the universe itself was crying over its future.
A dark being stepped out of the rift. He stood tall, towering over all with his broad, muscular frame, his skin as dark as midnight and his eyes like blazing red stars. His armor gleamed with an eerie black light, adorned with intricate patterns of twisted bone and sinew that seemed to writhe and pulse with a life of their own. A Dagger, a twisted thing of jagged edges and wicked curves, glinting with a malevolent energy that could rend even the strongest of defenses was by his side. As he gazed out into the cosmos, his eyes glowed with an otherworldly hunger, a thirst for power and dominance that would stop at nothing to be quenched. His presence alone was enough to strike terror into the hearts of even the bravest of warriors, for he was a being of pure, unbridled darkness, with the power to snuff out the very light of the universe itself. His armor swirled, and as it moved, the space-time continuum around him twisted with it.
“Ahh, it feels great to finally be able to show power. The feeble beings of this universe are in no way my match.”
As the figure moved through the cosmos, gravity flipped. As the being strode through the galaxy, the very stars and planets trembled in fear at his approach. With each step, the ground shook and cracked, and entire worlds were rent asunder as if they were nothing more than brittle husks. As he continued on his path, galaxies shattered into a million pieces, their debris flying out in all directions like a rain of stardust. The very fabric of space and time seemed to warp and twist under the weight of his power, and black holes that had once been thought to be impenetrable were torn asunder like so much tissue paper. The screams of dying stars echoed through the void, and the cries of entire civilizations were snuffed out in an instant as it passed by. All around him, the very universe seemed to be unraveling, entire celestial bodies were drawn into his ethereal body with every breath, and thousands of rifts opened, as if the cosmos was the webbing between one's fingers and the being was a piece of paper.
Eventually, he got to the point that he was looking for.
With a smile that would put a shark to shame, he exclaimed.
“Finally, the Celestial Compass.”
Suddenly stretching to the size of a galaxy, he reached into the supercluster the same way a child reaches into a full bathtub for a toy.
However, his joy was short-lived.
A RIIIIIIP spread throughout the silent cosmos, followed by a blast of heat and light that would’ve put the Big Bang to shame.
This was the Herald, a god-like figure that seemed to have stepped out of the very essence of light itself. His armor was made of pure energy, crackling with power and radiating with a brilliance that was almost blinding to behold. His sword was forged from the Core of a dying reality, and it glowed with an intense heat that was almost unbearable to stand near.
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As he emerged from the rift, a wave of heat and light washed over everything in the cosmos, causing entire galaxies to tremble and collapse in on themselves. The very fabric of reality seemed to bend and warp under his immense power, and the laws of physics themselves seemed to falter in his presence. His eyes blazed with an intensity that could melt even the hardest of metals, and his voice boomed across the void like thunder.
“So, is this what your greed has amounted to, Nightbringer. For as long as my essence remains in the cosmos, you will never touch the Compass”
“Oh, Herald. You always looked down on me. I know that you want the Compass for yourself. Don’t pretend to love the cosmos and its creations when your mere words cause the fragile nature of the cosmos to be exposed.”
“That may be true. But that is irrelevant compared to what will happen if you gain access to the Compass.”
Nightbringer smiled, a soulless grin that quite literally sucked the soul out of the cosmos.
“My mere presence in this one universe has caused it to lose itself. I wonder what will happen once I gain the power of the Compass? The Old Man will have nothing on me then.”
The Herald grimaced.
“The Old Man? You speak of the Old Man? You will not come close to your insane desire if I have a speck of my soul left”
The Nightbringer threw his galaxy-sized head back in laughter, destroying a massive section of the supercluster in the process. “Less talk, more fight?”
The Herald materialized behind the Nightbringer, the Sword swinging down with black holes opening and closing on its edge with the force.
With a smirk, the Nightbringer met the Sword head on with the Dagger, striking through the weak point of the attack and neutralizing the force.
Blow after blow, exchange after exchange occurred between the two. They slipped in and out of reality, jumped through time, fought through black holes, pushed each other in and out of rifts in space time.
The eternal fight began to cause damage to both of them. An inky black eternal river, containing the souls of the damned, spread throughout the infinite cosmos, mixing with and fighting back against a swirling river of laws, of orders, that drew in entire galaxies for its sustenance.
Fighting all the way back to the original supercluster, the two beings, now with little more power than mortal men, stood a solar system length from each other–once a distance only as significant as the space between atoms is to a mortal man. Both of them were left with too little power to remain in a humanoid form, rather turning into abstract bodies of mass.
“Herald, have you convinced yourself of your loss?”
“Nightbringer- I have not yet lost my essence. You will not touch the Compass”
“Perhaps. But I will make sure that I live on. And another eternity later, I will be back for it.”
“Perhaps. But who is to say that I will not also live on?”
The cosmos was on edge, having been ravaged for millions of years by the fight between the two. But with the dissipation of both of the now disembodied masses, the cosmos breathed for the first time in an eternity.