Marcus watched the carnage through the monitors in Nyra’s office. The Celestars had joined the battle—Alyx, Teroy, Nyra—all gone, leaving him behind. He had wanted to fight, but they told him it wasn’t his time yet, that he wasn’t ready.

So he sat, watching in horror as Finisterra soldiers tore through the pyramid. They showed no mercy. Families, children, the elderly—innocents slaughtered under the brutal regime of propaganda. The Collective fought back but this assault was so large and so numerous. This wasn’t a battlefield; it was a massacre.

As the chaos unfolded, Marcus’s heart sank deeper. Every life lost pulled him further into despair. He wanted to do something, anything. But fear held him back, fear of getting in the way, of not being strong enough. That fear, mixed with his hopelessness, let the sinister presence creep closer. He didn’t feel it until it was too late. He was falling again.

This time, Marcus plummeted straight into the black void. It was as if the darkness had been waiting for him. The air thickened, heavy and suffocating, pressing down on him. The presence was no longer distant. It was there, all around him, on him, watching him with a suffocating intensity.

Marcus fell to his knees, unable to resist the weight of the void. His breath was shallow, his mind frantic. But as he struggled to lift his head, he saw it. Himself. The older version. Not physically older, but his eyes told the story of millennia.

The figure loomed over him with unsettling calm. It didn’t need to speak for Marcus to understand its authority. The air around them rippled with time itself, spiralling, tightening, suffocating.

“Hello, Marcus,” it said. The voice wasn’t heard, but felt, deep in his mind.

Marcus tried to speak, to respond, but the words caught in his throat. He was trapped, bound by the presence of the other him, powerless.

“Come with me,” it said, stepping through the endless black void. “It’s time you learned what you’ve stolen from me.”

As though pulled by invisible strings, Marcus stood. He wasn’t in control of his own body anymore—the entity had him. Helplessly, he followed.

“You remember when you first came here?” the voice continued. “You escaped me. I drive everything toward an inevitable end—everything must age, decay, and die within me. But you escaped. You move past me now, outside my reach. I can not touch you anymore.”

As the figure spoke, Marcus felt the spiralling sensation intensify. But now, with every word, there were flashes—visions breaking through the void. He saw stars being born and dying in seconds, entire galaxies collapsing in the blink of an eye. Civilizations crumbled and faded into dust. He wasn’t just seeing time pass faster; he was seeing the very fabric of reality unravelling.

Thirteen point eight billion years of the universe’s history flickered before him in moments. And then—nothing. Silence. Darkness. As if everything had reached an abrupt and final end.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“You’ve made me quite angry, Marcus,” the voice continued, pulling Marcus back into the present moment. “I am a necessary force. Without me, nothing changes. Without me, there is no end.”

Marcus’s heart raced. These visions—this wasn’t just time speeding up. This was… wrong.

The entity spoke again, “You could be useful to me. I’ve never had a physical link to your plane before. But through you, I could extend my influence. Imagine it—complete control over time. I could bring about the rise and fall of an entire empire in a heartbeat.”

More flashes. This time, the universe itself was collapsing. Stars flickered and died, planets crumbled, and light vanished. But something deeper churned beneath it all. The visions began to slow, and Marcus could see it—the timeline itself, ripping apart. Events that should have followed one another blurred, merged, and then… disappeared. Marcus gasped. The end he was seeing wasn’t just death. It was erasure.

“You see, Marcus, I’m not satisfied with the state of the galaxy,” the entity continued, oblivious to what Marcus was experiencing. “I need things to move quicker. The universe is stagnating. I’ll help you—let me into your world, and we can speed things up.”

Another flash—this time, even more disturbing. It wasn’t just the end of time. It was the end of existence. The entity was accelerating the universe’s progression toward its inevitable heat death, but there was something it didn’t realise.

Marcus now saw the truth. By tampering with the natural flow of time, the entity would cause a paradox. Time and space would not just collapse. They would fold in on each other, spiralling into a singularity that wasn’t just the end—it was the erasure of everything. The universe wouldn’t just cease to exist; it would be as though it had never existed. No past, no future—no trace that anything had ever been.

The weight of the realisation hit him like a tidal wave. The entity wasn’t just wrong—it was blind to the consequences of its actions. It thought it was speeding things up to fulfil its purpose, to bring about the inevitable end, but it didn’t understand the damage it would cause. This wasn’t just the end of life; it was the end of reality itself.

Marcus’s heart pounded in his chest. He could see it now, clearer than ever—if the entity succeeded, nothing would remain. No history. No memory. The universe would unravel and fold back into nothingness.

“No,” he whispered, his voice barely audible but growing with strength. “No.”

The entity paused, sensing Marcus’s defiance. “What?”

“I said no,” Marcus repeated, louder this time. He felt the entity’s grip loosen as his strength returned. He could see it—the way out. He could feel the real world calling to him, just beyond the void. The grey floor, the sandstone ceiling, everything that anchored him to reality.

The entity’s presence flared with anger. “You would resist me? You’ve seen what I can offer!”

Marcus felt the time spiral closing around him, the entity’s influence trying to drag him back into the abyss. But this time, he wasn’t afraid. He had seen the truth.

“I won’t let you destroy everything,” Marcus said, his voice firm, resonating with newfound power.

He focused on the world that should be around him—the sounds, the sights, the people. Slowly, the void began to fracture. The vision of the universe collapsing fought to pull him back, but Marcus resisted. He wasn’t just fighting for his survival—he was fighting for existence itself.

With one final push, Marcus broke free from the void. The blackness shattered, and he was back in Nyra’s office. The monitors were still flashing with images of war, but now, Marcus knew the stakes. The entity hadn’t just been trying to manipulate him—it was trying to use him to bring about the end of everything. An end that would erase the universe as if it had never been– and it didn't even know it.