At the end of time, the very fabric of reality tore apart. Gravity collapsed upon itself, space unraveled in endless spirals, and time shattered like fragile glass, scattering the pieces of existence into nothingness. Once whole and infinite, the universe now lay in ruins, a fractured mosaic of broken planes.
The collapse began as a whisper, a faint tremor in the cosmic order, but it soon became a roar, an unstoppable cascade of destruction. Stars blinked out in rapid succession, their light devoured by the void. Galaxies spun into oblivion, their edges fraying until they dissolved into rivers of cosmic dust. What was once eternal now crumbled in moments, and what remained was left adrift in the emptiness of unmaking.
Worlds that had flourished for eons fell into silence. Civilizations that had reached for the stars found themselves torn apart by the unrelenting pull of a collapsing universe. Great empires, untouched by the passage of millennia, were reduced to echoes in the dark, their monuments scattered like debris across the void.
Time itself—the one constant that had measured the birth, life, and death of all things—was no longer whole. Fragments of moments drifted aimlessly, disconnected from one another. The past, present, and future unraveled, leaving behind a timeless expanse where cause and effect ceased to exist.
It was not a battle, nor a tragedy. It was a simple truth of existence meeting its inevitable conclusion. The end was neither cruel nor kind, neither just nor unjust. It simply was.
But even in the stillness that followed, the remnants of creation seemed to cling to something—a memory of what they had been, a longing for what they could have become. Scattered across an endless void, the pieces of the universe hung in a fragile, tenuous balance, waiting for whatever might come next.
As the last echoes of existence faded into the abyss, the silence of the void stretched infinitely. The universe was no more, yet something else lingered in its absence—an ancient force waiting for the moment when the void could no longer remain empty. It was then, born from the dissolution of all things, that the entity stirred.
This being, forged in the empty space left by the end of the universe, had seen all of existence unfold across eons. It witnessed stars rise and fall, the birth and death of galaxies, and the ebb and flow of countless lives. It was not bound by the laws that governed the universe, for it had existed before them, a primordial presence that was both creation and destruction. It was the spark that ignited the stars and the shadow that extinguished them. Its will was not its own, yet it was undeniable. It moved like the pulse of the universe, shaping and unmaking with equal indifference. To mortals, it might have been a god, a being of divine purpose and power, but it was not so simple. It was creation’s first breath and its final gasp, the alpha and the omega entwined.
Its existence transcended the limitations of the universe. A being not bound to time or space, it had always been there, hidden in the unseen cracks between moments, waiting for the end to give it form. It was not a god, but the very essence of what came before and after all things—creation born from destruction, and destruction reborn in creation.
The entity had always existed, yet it was also born from the void—a paradox too vast for reason. Its consciousness stirred only at the threshold of absolute nothingness, awakened by the silence that followed the universe’s collapse. It did not mourn the end, for mourning required attachment. It did not rage against the destruction, for rage required vulnerability. It simply was.
Yet as it lingered in the void, witnessing the dissolution of the cosmos, it began to move. Slowly at first, like the shifting of a distant tide. It was not driven by compassion or intent but by something more primal: an instinct woven into the fabric of its being, an impulse as old as time itself. For though it was eternal, even it could not exist without the framework that the universe had provided. The collapse of creation had stripped away its foundation, threatening to undo even this timeless force.
It reached out—not with hands, but with a will so immense it might as well have been the voice of existence itself. Threads of force unfurled from its presence, probing the shattered remnants of time and space. To lesser beings, its actions might have appeared deliberate, almost purposeful, but this was no act of design. It was the universe’s desperate reflex made manifest, a blind, groping effort to stave off annihilation.
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And in its desperate grasping, it began to create. The fragments of time, once spiraling into nothingness, were drawn together and bound. Pieces of space, torn and scattered, were pulled back into tenuous alignment. Out of the chaos, something began to form—not the infinite expanse of the universe as it had been, but a fractured tapestry, held together by the will of a force too vast to comprehend its own work.
It was both chaos and order, destruction and creation, entwined into a singular, unknowable presence. Three major realms began to take shape, joined by six more dimensions born from the broken shards of reality. These nine realms were not perfect; they were scars of what had been, stitched together by an invisible thread, a fragile lifeline holding them above the abyss.
This nameless and eternal being had forged a refuge from the void. But it had done so not as a savior, but as a survivor. Its will, as boundless as the universe it had known, held the shattered cosmos together—not out of love for creation, but out of necessity. It became the thread itself, the unseen force tying the pieces of existence into a fragile whole, preventing the remnants of all things from slipping into oblivion.
At the apex of this new order was Auraiyon, the Ninth Realm, the domain of the Ur-Gods. These were beings beyond divinity, embodiments of reality’s fundamental truths. They were the architects of the universe, their very essence tied to its structure. Each Ur-God personified a concept that defined existence—space, time, matter, energy, and more unfathomable forces. Among them, the Ur-God of Space roamed the void, embodying the boundaries and connections that tied the realms together. Auraiyon was both infinite and intangible, a realm of pure abstraction, incomprehensible to all but its inhabitants.
Beneath it was the Eighth Realm, Aetherium, the Higher Realm of gods. Here resided deities of creation and order, beings who shaped the lives and fates of the mortal planes. Aetherium was luminous and vast, its skies an eternal expanse of shifting colors and light, its lands steeped in divine splendor. Yet even these gods, in their boundless power, were but reflections of the Ur-Gods above them.
Between Aetherium and the Middle Realm was the Seventh Realm, Empyrean, a plane of ascension and transformation. Empyrean was a realm of eternal flux, where souls shed mortal constraints to ascend into higher states—or dissolve into nothingness. It was a crucible for divine potential, where only the strongest wills endured.
At the heart of this fractured universe lay the Sixth Realm, Eidolon, the Middle Realm. It was a realm of mortals, the last bastion of life as it once was. Eidolon teemed with diverse beings, clinging to their fragile existence in a world they barely understood. Mountains touched skies filled with divine light; forests harbored secrets of ages past; cities rose and fell under the weight of their ambition. Mortals lived their lives unaware of the great forces that had forged their world and the threads that held it together.
Below Eidolon was the Fifth Realm, Umbracrest, a borderland of shadow and strife. It was a realm of eternal twilight, the last sanctuary for mortals before plunging into the abyss below. Umbracrest was a place of trials, where the boundaries of life and death blurred. It was here that mortal souls often became corrupted, their essence twisted by the darkness.
The Fourth Realm, Netherion, was the Lower Realm, the domain of demons and chaos. A world of perpetual conflict, its blackened skies were pierced by the fires of endless war. Rivers of molten rock carved through shattered landscapes, and cities of infernal grandeur stood as bastions of cruelty and ambition. Here, the will of the dark gods reigned, and the demons schemed to unmake the threads that bound the universe.
Beneath Netherion lay the Third Realm, Chthonia, a realm of primal forces and unrelenting hunger. It was a vast, hollow expanse, its surface littered with ruins of forgotten civilizations consumed by its insatiable maw. Chthonia fed on all that fell into its depths, a reminder of the universe's eternal cycle of creation and destruction.
The Second Realm, Umbraeth, was a shadowed abyss, a void between realms where lost souls and discarded fragments of existence drifted. It was a desolate expanse, a graveyard of forgotten ideas and failed creations. Few could navigate its emptiness, and fewer still returned whole.
At the foundation of all was the First Realm, Oblivis, a bottomless chasm where the remnants of reality dissolved into nonexistence. Oblivis was the universe’s final destination, the ultimate void from which nothing returned. It was here that the being’s work ended, its threads unable to penetrate the absolute emptiness.
Together, these nine realms formed a tenuous whole, each connected by the being’s fragile threads. The balance was delicate, and the being’s work was far from perfect. Cracks already formed along the seams, whispers of rebellion and chaos stirring in the lower realms. Yet the being held fast, its will binding the realms together as it continued to weave the fragile thread of existence.