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The endless expanse of the Infinity Realms trembles. A faint, shuddering thing, like a breeze pushing at a thin curtain. Various entities homed within, or connected through the veil all feel it.
For the unknown time he had drifted through, living best he could, half dead as he was. Not really, he’s not half dead. Not a living being, not a dead being, something different, something one of a kind alone. He twisted and aimlessly wandered, a part of him knew something.
He didn’t want to acknowledge it though, so he tried not to. Of course, ignoring things never worked out, and energy kept being devoured within him, releasing again in new form.
Once upon a time he scoffed at the thought of an afterlife. He was a science kid, he didn’t believe in life after death. Then the portal.
Another time, he stumbled across a post on the internet, debating that when people died, their energy simply returned to the earth, that energy dissipated and reformed or remerged with other energy to create something else.
Perhaps new life entirely, perhaps energy drifting amongst other energy.
He could now confirm both were true. There were afterlives, multiple in fact, because enough faith could truly bring something into being. When things died, energy certainly was released, and it was filtered, mixed, reformed, and released back out. Forming something else.
A new energy remade.
However, Danny still relied too much on his human body, too much on it’s warnings and instincts. He forgot, or perhaps didn’t want to accept, he wasn’t human anymore.
Hadn’t been for a long time.
Visiting his previous universe, having run its course, dying out, the horror of realizing he was different was hard enough. Worse was consuming his own birth universe.
Sure, his friends and family had long since passed away, and had long since gone their own way. Energy to energy, heaven, reincarnation.
But it unsettled him greatly, knowing he was consuming this universe, sure the earth had long since died, and any life on it as well, but there might have been other life there, perhaps.
He never went to check, it was a different instinct, one he didn’t know how to fight already consuming. Energy returned, a new universe preparing to be born.
And Danny, Danny was so sure he would simply stop once he was full, surely he wouldn’t eat more than a universe already meant to be consumed.
But he forgot.
His human body was a shell, his existence didn’t know the meaning of ‘full’. It didn’t truly know the feeling of ‘hunger’ either. It was simply instinct, and Danny didn’t know how to understand these instincts.
He was like an ouroboros, constantly consuming himself infinitely, except, there was an end, he didn’t realize he was consuming too much, too much and not replenishing enough.
The Watcher usually didn’t interfere. It’s existence was simply to watch, to watch everything unfold, every action, every consequence, every history, every neverborne, every concept.
The Watcher simply existed to witness existence in all forms.
But Danny was devouring himself, and too quickly. He didn’t know to stop, didn’t realize he had to.
And that led to nearly the End of all things.
The Watcher had to step in then, because there was never to be an End. Existence was never meant to truly collapse, that was not supposed to be possible.
Danny was not supposed to be possible, and yet, there he was, Everything.
The fabric of reality, the glue of all universes and dimensions, the Truth.
And he must not unravel, not even at his own hands.
So The Watcher stepped in, gathering it’s little King, and it sought stability.
The rapid way everything nearly Ended when he devoured his human shell, The Watcher worried he had unstabilized himself by accidentally breaking his favorite shell.
Naturally, being so young, it’s only obvious that he would react badly, however The Watcher didn’t expect he would try to consume himself to the End of Everything.
Shouldn’t his instincts have warned him? Was his grief that strong? What a strong, but young mentality. Once he grew, he would be something The Watcher had never seen, would never again see.
Neither of them knew that Danny had simply not known he could not be full, had not known that eventually, this ouroboros would eventually begin consuming beyond it’s tail.
He was meant to consume energy, devour the dead universes to open way for the new ones, energy was to pass through him, filter, merge, change, and be released to create something new.
He devoured, he created, and yet, he failed to realize that he needed to know when to stop.
He was only devouring, the creation was minimal. Naturally, things unstabilized.
It was different from human eating, he didn’t know that there was no such thing as ‘full’. Too many memories, too much ‘human’ that he failed to understand his own self. He was no longer human, and human needs and limits were no longer part of him.
The Watcher observed his little King. Sure, he might have devoured much, but now, soothed and content, creation began anew. No longer shackled by his human memories of his past before his new existence, he would grow with his instincts.
He would no longer only think ‘human’. Now, even as he grew in this mortal realm, he would know he wasn’t truly human. He would grow, and understand deep within, that he was beyond this shell.
One day, he would outgrow it, but not any time soon.
He was only a baby, still far too many millenia young. He had a great many, many more to grow. This would one day be barely even a blip.
However, that was neither here nor there.
The Watcher resumed watching. It was different from Kronos, from the Observants. It saw much more, from far before them, and will see far after them. The Watcher perhaps was second only to the Little King.
Nothing would outlast it, it and the little King would forever walk together, it watching, the little King devouring and creating. Perhaps one day, the little King will merge, instead of leaving most of his focus in his condensed form, living in a flesh shell.
Perhaps he would never tire of his flesh shell, The Watcher would one day know.
After all, that was their entire purpose.
To Watch.