Chapter Text
Then, for him, the requirement of ending came. The universes cycle had turned enough times to recognize when correction became imbalance. Stars gone too quickly. Spirals collapsing into absence. Entire epochs thinning where they should have deepened.
I stood at the edge of that sensation and read it the way one reads a verdict etched into stone before the stone existed. The worst verdict, the one the lawyer puts in every plea to avoid.
It was elegant.
It was inevitable.
It broke something in me that does not usually break.
For Phantom was not Pariah, he was but improved, improved too vast for mere gods, mere ancients, to grab and contain. There was nothing in this universe that could contain him in slumber. The higher the climb, the steeper the fall.
So instead, across the breadth of existence, a force gathered. Not an army, that would be mowed down by his consumption in an instant. Not gods in shining ranks, whose light he would devour with thrill.
Something older, a ViralHelm, a thing outside of existence itself. The things that made me, made the universe, made the Crown and the Ring. Their creations grown in their evolution far too gorged with power to regulate themselves anymore. A billion jointed deer hand reaching for the Phantom King in all its non-matter and eggshell fur.
From his throne beyond the veil, Phantom tilted his vast awareness toward the disturbance. Smelt the rotten pomegranate berry lure of emulsification and soot. The Infinite Realm around him pulsed in response, towers of stolen starlight shivering as non-entities pressed back.
He mistook incomprehensibility for unmet celestial bodies. “нⷩoͦw s͛ᴛⷮrͬaͣngeͤ. Yoͦuͧ’rͬeͤ rͬeͤs͛iͥs͛ᴛⷮiͥng”.
No anger.
No fear.
Only curiosity. Always that same bright, delighted curiosity over his beloved space.
I stepped into his presence.
Not physically. Not in any way that obeyed direction. I simply chose to be in the same when as him. That was the only way to avoid the Helmed One’s infinite knowing. They do not know they made a mistake when they made me too perfect.
The throne looms as the kingdom hums with its harvested suns. And at its center, the thing that had once been a boy, my dead child, turned its attention toward me.
For a moment.
A flicker.
Recognition.
Not complete.
But enough.
“Yoͦuͧ”, is all he said. Not in question, yet uncertain. A memory trying to assemble itself.
I allowed myself a shape he might most know and remember. Not human. Not quite. The height and face of adult male in robes of purple. Though something defined more by sequence than by form, edges trailing into moments that hadn’t happened yet. Speaking quietly at him, “yes”, as if too much vocalization might break whatever of him remains.
It very well might, I’ve watched it happen and unhappen.
So… I won’t mince words, “they’re going to end you”. No embellishment and no metaphor. No riddles and no puns. No hidden meanings and no unsaid secrets to be discovered.
Just plain truth.
Beyond us, the pressure mounted. I can feel the cycle tightening, the correcting hand approaching like a clock striking an hour that could not be delayed.
Phantom considers this. Then, softly, impossibly, he smiled and spoke, “oͦhͪ”, stuttering through non-memories, a background awareness of what he might have once thought, “ᴛⷮhͪaͣᴛⷮ’s͛ faͣiͥrͬ”.
If grief had bones, mine would have fractured then. “They have to”, because honesty is the only language I have to speak with now. “You exceed the balance. You consume faster than the universe, their creation, can remember itself”.
He looked outward -past me, past the throne, past the realm he ruled- into the thinning tapestry of existence. “Iͥ liͥᴋⷦeͤdͩ iͥᴛⷮ”, he spoke simply.
“I know”. I knew all too well, just as I knew all too well how he would have truly despised what he had become, if any of him had remained.
There are moments when even inevitability hesitates, and this was one of them. A pause stretched thin between what must happen and what I could not bear to lose. As if they had been noticed, as if the ViralHelm had taken note of my actions and decided to see what their creations would do.
And in that pause, I made a decision that had never existed before. Something that broke the rules so utterly that it should have never been allowed. The Observants would have scrambled to stop me, but they’re prisoners behind Phantom’s bars; even in this state the trauma they helped cause him was so great it stuck, so he hurt them back. Them stuck behind a one way mirror awaiting the time they’ll be allowed to exist again.
A time god is not meant to bleed, to break; but oh how I am utterly broken as I am now. Do the Helmed One’s laugh or do they mourn? Their children breaking as they were never meant to.
I am continuity, not substance. I measure the flow; I do not get to participate in it. It’s not my place, it cannot be.
But rules, like moments, can fracture under sufficient pressure. And this pressure, my pressure caused by incorrect closeness, is far too grand to withstand a second more or a second less. A second for a million of his life times I want back.
I reached inward, not to the body, but to the core of what I am, past the clock face and swinging pendulum, and pull. Something came free and it hurt in a way that had no precedent; as a single drop comes free.
If it could even be called that.
It is not liquid. Not light. Not matter. It is duration made tangible, a piece of the core of my existence. A fragment of every second I had ever held, condensed into something that could be given.
Phantom watched, fascinated, “iͥs͛ ᴛⷮhͪaͣᴛⷮ foͦrͬ mͫeͤ?”, sounding almost gentle. Daniel had always had a degree of gentleness with me, for a reason I could not quite place my finger on. Part of the him that caught my attention and snagged my own curiosities. He… Daniel, is my, was my, stars.
Swallowing, I speak, “they will erase you. Not destroy. Not reduce. Erase. You will not have been”. They will pluck him out of time itself, I won’t get to keep him even in memory, he won’t get to reside anywhere in anyway. The universe was too effective with his creation and evolution.
The ViralHelm’s, the universe they made, created but forgot to feel.
Phantom tilted his head, considering that with the same quiet curiosity he had met everything else, “oͦᴋⷦaͣy”. He knew it was right, that something, someone, so far gone had to be put down like a rabid mutt. Then, like he’s more himself, “рⷬleͤaͣs͛eͤ,̓ foͦrͬgeͤᴛⷮ mͫeͤ”.
The once-boy could not have said anything worse. I move closer, at him rather than to him; speaking as if my words can carve a new law into reality itself, “I refuse, I will not allow you to be unkept”. Obsession. This is obsession, I know this. I don’t stop it. instead I offered it to him, the drop of time, my blood, my core. He can’t say no, he’ll stay with me or disappear; there’s no in between.
For a fraction of a fraction of a moment, the universe itself seems to hold its breath. Even the cycle hesitated, as if uncertain whether this act was permitted.
(It wasn’t. It absolutely was not).
Then Phantom reached, and like me he did not reach with hands, rather with everything he had become. With metal and carbon, pieces of fused silica glittering and eager, polymers touch its surface. The drop entered him; and for the first time since his transformation began, something changed that had not been preordained.
Time took root inside him. Two creations, so utterly different, mingled. Not as a process, as a sanctuary. A hidden chamber within his impossible spacefaring architecture, a place that did not belong to space, or energy, or stars, or consumption. Not to life and not to death.
A place that belonged only to when. To memory. To continuance without existence. A far more true impossibility than the boy had ever been before.
And with that, the cycle resumed as it had to. A hand, a skull, shifting through matter with absolute precision, sending everything in its wake scattering into oblivion. A child stuffing its hand in a doll house to mess with its insides. Phantom’s kingdom shuddered, then his throne fractured, its accumulated energy contained within that small segment of existence collapsing inward, unraveling faster than he had ever unraveled anything else. The throne cracked, light spilling out in catastrophic silence as the dimension itself began to unwrite one being’s place in it.
Phantom did not resist, he watched, felt, accepted. Some part of him just sane enough to want this demise. He’d always rather be harmed than do harm. And now all that defined him was the harm he’s done.
I whisper as I back away to watch, as I must, “galaxies tremble”, though now it was his own form that mirrored those collapsing spirals. His vast metal structure folding in on itself, seams closing, opening, dissolving, reconfiguring faster than even I could comfortably track.
He spoke, “the universe bows”, voice thinning as layers of his existence were peeled away by necessity due to the universe over creation; his last transmission. Rabbit fingers in their deer hooves treating him as an orange, the internal peels snapped up in alligator teeth and acid tongue. Pomegranate grape vines draping over the castle, dissolving the structure with their wine, as rib bones spread like wings to reabsorb the materials.
Nothing was ever wasted. The recycler, recycled.
Then…
Nothing.
No explosion.
No remnants.
No trace.
The devourer was gone.
The imbalance corrected.
The story, from the universe’s perspective, had never occurred.
But I still stood there, because I remembered. I always remember. I’ve made sure I’ll remember. For within me, within the place where I have anchored that impossible act. Rocking back and forth like an infant in a crib, in my pendulum bob, there resides… something.
There was a boy who was a prince, who became king and god, he took away all my boredom and my loneliness. Became the focus of my positivity and creativity. My favourite character, in my favourite book; my child, my only friend. If things had been different we could have watch this world side by side, instead I am once again lonely and hallow; growing to be a numb watcher as his presence around me ceases, though I’ve protected him in the only way I can.
A chamber outside of existence.
A bob of preserved when.
Inside it, no stars burned. No galaxies spun. No hunger reached outward.
There was only a quiet presence.
Contained.
Held.
He was smaller there.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
No longer a human.
No longer a ghost.
No longer a king.
No longer a devourer.
No longer a god.
But not erased.
Never erased.
Daniel.
That sweet child of mine.
He stirred, faintly, within that timeless refuge; not aware of the universe. Not aware of what he had been forced to become. But… content. In the way a moment can be content when it is allowed to simply be, without needing to lead to anything else.
I can not visit him, how I wish I could. Though often I send sensations, a fleeting thought, a joke hummed as a nursery rhyme, the impression of an image of the stars he loved so. Though ‘often’ has little meaning where he now resides. I replay fragments of who he was, who I was. Let them echo through that small, protected eternity.
There’s a laugh, a thought, a quiet curiosity about anything new; only that, and nothing more. For nothing more remains, and nothing more will ever come of him. He was one perfect spark in the cosmos existence, snuffed out but not completely. I’ve stored his face, his voice, his soul, inside my core until the end of time; forever locked inside of me until the end of me.
Forever unmade.
Hush, Daniel, don’t reach for the stars,
Time will fold you behind its bars.
And if those distant fires still call,
Time will dim them, quiet them all.
And if that silence fractures through,
Time will build a world for you.
And if that world should start to fray,
Time will hold its threads in place.
And if those threads begin to part,
Time will keep your smallest heart.
And if that heart forgets its name,
Time will whisper it the same.
And if that whisper fades to none,
Time will keep what you’ve become.
And if all else is lost, undone,
You are still my chosen one.
End.