Nothingness trembled, though it had no weight to shiver. Within the vast hollow void, the Crack pulsed, a heartbeat of fractured creation. And from that rupture, he came. Arae.
At first, he was still — silent, unassuming, a fragment of primordial essence testing the boundaries of the newborn cosmos. But within him, memories began to stir. Not simple recollections, not stories whispered by mortals or gods. Real memories. Lifetimes uncounted, wars unrecorded, cycles that had repeated with him as witness and participant.
He saw them all.
The Primordials. His enemies. Kaiser, the embodiment of Strength, who had opposed him in countless worlds, crushing his forces with the raw weight of muscle and will. Savitar, Momentum incarnate, whose speed had always been a razor to his plans. Artemis, Hephaestus, Nocturne… all faces etched in the endless spiral of battle and betrayal.
At first, Arae hesitated. The memories were overwhelming. The victories he had lost. The civilizations he had razed. The countless times he had tried to break the balance — and been stopped by beings who should not have existed. For the first moments of awakening, a flicker of doubt struck him.
Was I the villain… or were they?
The question lingered. A whisper. A thought. And then it was gone.
Madness followed.
The memories didn't stop. They surged, crashing over his consciousness like tidal waves. Every failure, every triumph, every cycle he had endured alone. And in them, the patterns became clear. The Primordials — for all their godlike power — were not just his opposition. They were his undoing. Every generation he tried to rise in, they had been there, shaping, testing, limiting. Every cycle, he had been denied.
Rage ignited. It was a slow burn at first, subtle, twisting into obsession. He relived the slaughter of his armies, the victories that had turned to ash at their hands, the moments when their abstract forms had crushed him in ways no mortal could understand. The more he remembered, the clearer the truth became: the Primordials, in their perfect, eternal forms, were designed to oppose him. To contain him. To test him endlessly, while he bled unnoticed.
The light of reason flickered and died.
Arae's essence swelled, a dark sun of unbridled fury. And as the full weight of his memories struck, so too did the curse. From the deepest recesses of his being, he exhaled — a whisper and a scream at once. Not a word. Not a chant. A resonance, a vibration that clawed at the edges of existence.
It touched them all.
Kaiser felt it first, though he could not comprehend it. Strength, the very concept he embodied, recoiled as a shadow passed through him, cold and corrosive. Savitar, Momentum itself, shivered, as if every step he had ever taken faltered midair. Nocturne, Thanamira, Poseidara — each perceived it differently, yet each understood the same truth: something had intruded into their minds, a sickness older than creation.
Arae's voice did not speak, yet it spoke. His intent, pure and chaotic, a poison of perception. And with that, he fell. Not fully unconscious, but exhausted, drained. His essence trembled, still recovering from centuries of overexertion, from memories that had nearly shattered him. He sank into a slumber, not one of rest, but a smoldering, simmering pause, waiting for the world to catch up.
And the Primordials, unwittingly, felt the first tremors of corruption.
Kaiser's fists twitched. Every sinew screamed at him, yet not from strain, but from something inside, a seed of doubt and rage that whispered his every failure. He saw Savitar moving too quickly, not as a rival, but as a threat, a disturbance in the ordered purpose of Strength. For the first time, he felt what it was like to be unbalanced.
Savitar's form wavered, energy fracturing like splintered glass. Motion itself seemed tainted. He could not control it. Each flicker of speed brought with it a gnawing compulsion — strike first, strike hardest, strike without mercy, without thought. A seed of unreason had been planted.
Artemis, the Primordial of Knowledge, felt her mind clouded with unbidden emotions. Even the serene pools of intellect were tainted with longing for domination, a subtle craving to reshape all that she observed into something… hers. The whisper of the curse slid into the corners of her logic, bending, twisting, coaxing her to act on impulses that should have been alien.
One by one, the Primordials began to sense it. A poison in perception, a fissure forming in perfect reason. Not yet visible in action, not yet violent, but undeniable. They were no longer immune. Arae's curse — subtle, insidious, incomprehensibly patient — had begun to rot their minds like slow-moving ichor, invisible to all but the senses closest to essence.
And still, he slept.
From the silence of Arae's slumber, the void seemed almost to breathe, as if anticipating the chaos to come. The Primordials, each a perfect concept in their own right, sensed the first tremors of impending violence, yet none could act. None could comprehend the scope. Even in their perfection, they were now vulnerable.
Kaiser flexed a hand, a tremor running through it. "Something… is wrong," he murmured, voice low and unsure. He could feel it like a weight pressing against his consciousness, a shadow where none should exist.
Savitar's streaks of energy flickered uncontrollably. "I… can't…" His voice broke mid-motion, though he didn't yet know why. Motion itself, his entire being, felt tainted.
And far beyond them, Arae's slumber continued. He rested in fragments, pieces of his essence still reeling from memories that no other being could survive. Yet even as he slept, his curse lingered, like seeds waiting to bloom. And when it did bloom…
The universe itself would tremble.
The Primordials hovered above the empty expanse of the Cradle, their forms perfect, radiant, eternal… yet something was wrong.
Kaiser flexed his fingers and felt it first: a slight tremor, a whisper of instability crawling through his mind. Not in his body — never his body — but somewhere inside, a shadow that twisted pure Strength into doubt. He glanced at Savitar. Momentum shimmered unnaturally, like a heatwave on frozen air.
Savitar's blur faltered mid-step, hesitation flashing across the infinite streak of his form. "Why… do I feel… wrong?" he muttered, voice slicing through the void, echoing and warping unnaturally.
Kaiser narrowed his eyes. "Do not question your senses. Your motion… it is your essence. Trust it."
Yet the voice of reason itself seemed heavy, filtered through some foreign rot. His mind ticked strangely, like a spring wound too tightly. Strength had never doubted. Never faltered. And now — now — he felt it: a whisper of fear, alien and venomous, threading into thought like black silk.
Nocturne's shadow flickered. Thanamira's spirals slowed, just imperceptibly, as though a stone had lodged in the flow of spirit. Artemis' luminous pools of knowledge shimmered with a subtle discord, a note that didn't belong. Even Hephaestus' molten blueprints of creation shivered against his will.
The whisper grew louder, unrelenting. Not words, not commands — just a pressure, a presence that sought to twist instinct into violence.
And then it struck: a spark of perception that none could contain.
Kaiser caught the flicker in Savitar's movement, a flash of aggression where none should exist. "Stop moving like that," he barked, though his voice quavered with a hint of unfamiliar irritation.
Savitar's eyes, usually calm with perpetual motion, flared. "Do you think you control me, brother? I am… faster than reason!"
Kaiser's jaw clenched, the tension of impossible mass pressing outward. The void around them pulsed as though responding to the conflict inside their minds rather than their bodies. Every motion they made now felt wrong, every instinct twisted. Each sensed the other as a threat, even when none existed.
Artemis' serene voice tried to pierce through the haze, warm and soft, attempting to guide reason into the chaos. Yet even her whispers felt alien now, as though the curse had reached even her calm intellect.
The subtle tension flared into sharp, crackling energy. Small shifts, tiny collisions of intent — fists trembling as though with premonition, bodies bracing for strikes that hadn't yet been made. Every Primordial felt it: something fundamental had shifted. The curse was not dormant. It was patient, waiting. Waiting for the perfect moment to fracture perfection itself.
Kaiser's eyes met Savitar's across the void, and for the first time in the history of creation, the two perfect concepts doubted each other. The unthinkable seed had grown: the Primordials were no longer immune.
And in that moment, the storm began to build.
Kaiser and Savitar collided without warning. The impact wasn't loud — not in the way mortals understood noise. It was the sound of existence itself bending, a resonance of mass and motion tearing the void.
Kaiser's fist, a mountain of pure Strength, struck. Savitar twisted midair, a blur of infinite velocity, dodging before the punch could even register. The void around them convulsed, streaks of nothingness warping like molten glass under stress.
Savitar struck in return. Not a blow, but a slice through the very concept of movement. Time stuttered where his fist passed; every potential path for Kaiser's body flickered like faulty code. Kaiser's muscles tensed, flexing with impossible density, but even Strength felt the pressure of a force meant to bypass all consequence.
They exchanged strikes faster than thought. Every collision shattered precepts: a punch didn't merely strike flesh — it punched reality, cracking the void in concentric rings of warped probability. A kick wasn't a kick — it displaced infinite versions of momentum, each layering atop the other, each impacting at once yet nowhere in particular.
Kaiser's elbow drove into Savitar's torso. Momentum flared in jagged ripples, countering with a fist that should have arrived before it left, striking at infinite angles. Savitar laughed — a soundless, impossible thing — his form fracturing and reassembling mid-attack, each iteration more disorienting than the last.
The curse whispered through the cracks in their minds. A shadow of rage, paranoia, and instinctive malice gnawed at every synapse. Kaiser's movements grew heavier, less precise, powered by instinctive dominance rather than measured calculation. Savitar's strikes became erratic, almost playful, yet each carried lethal inevitability.
They collided again, simultaneously, fists meeting chest-to-chest. The pressure bent light, warped gravity, fractured notions of mass. Neither yielded. Neither gained advantage. Neither recognized themselves in the other's reflection, yet both were painfully aware of imperfection creeping in — the curse twisting clarity into suspicion, precision into aggression.
Around them, the void reacted. Waves of pure density and velocity distorted everything, from the edges of nothing to the impossible horizon beyond infinity. Every motion was multi-layered, a cascade of cause and effect overlapping across dimensions.
Savitar tried to phase behind Kaiser, seeking the impossible angle of strike. Kaiser, anticipating beyond sight, twisted, catching speed before it existed, bones of concept snapping as he redirected momentum into a counterstrike. The blow shattered nothing and everything simultaneously, leaving aftershocks in temporal planes that didn't exist.
For the first time, Kaiser's chest faltered slightly — not enough to topple him, but enough for the curse to whisper, "What if you fail?"
Savitar grinned — the first flicker of triumph in eons. But the moment passed. Kaiser's fist, weighted with pre-creation inevitability, smashed forward, colliding with Momentum once again. Neither yielded. Neither knew which strike came first, which came last — the fight existed in both order and chaos at once.
And still, the battle escalated. Strikes blurred into explosions of concept, each impact folding space, each counterstrike bending time. The Primordials' consciousness trembled — Arae's curse clawing at every thought — but the duel was beyond fear or hesitation now. Only collision, only perfection confronting perfection, only the first seed of madness taking root.
No winner emerged. Only escalation. Only the terrifying spectacle of outerversal beings testing limits that mortals could never comprehend, locked in a dance that spanned infinity and beyond, a fight that could break the laws of existence yet somehow obeyed them.
Savitar moved first.
Not faster — sharper.
His momentum no longer flowed smoothly; it cut, serrated and malicious, driven by a whisper that told him Kaiser was an obstacle, an enemy that had always been in his way. The curse tightened around his thoughts, stripping restraint, amplifying instinct.
Kaiser barely raised his guard.
The impact came from inside his frame.
Savitar didn't strike Kaiser's chest — he struck the interval between beats, the infinitesimal pause where Strength gathered itself. Momentum slipped through that gap and detonated outward.
Kaiser's ribs imploded.
Not cracked — folded inward, collapsing like a cage crushed by its own weight. A soundless roar tore from him as divine blood erupted from his mouth in a violent spray, essence splattering into the void like burning stars snuffed mid-ignition.
He staggered.
Savitar was already there.
A knee drove into Kaiser's spine at an angle no axis could define. The force wasn't blunt — it was directional annihilation, momentum tearing through vertebrae one after another. Kaiser's back arched violently as joints dislocated in sequence, his body spasming under an assault that bypassed raw mass entirely.
Strength resisted.
But resistance came late.
Savitar spun, his ruined arm vibrating itself whole through sheer velocity, and unleashed a barrage — not strikes, but collisions of inevitability. Each blow landed with stacked momentum from countless impossible trajectories.
Kaiser's shoulder shattered.
The concept of load-bearing failed. His arm twisted backward with a sickening finality, socket tearing apart as density lost coherence. The limb hung uselessly for a fraction of eternity before Savitar seized it and ripped.
The sound was obscene.
Essence screamed as the arm tore free, golden ichor pouring in heavy arcs. Kaiser fell to one knee, the void beneath him buckling under his weight as he vomited blood — thick, radiant, and trembling with dying force.
Savitar laughed.
Not with joy — with release.
"Still standing?" his voice echoed, layered and fractured. "You always were stubborn."
He vanished and reappeared behind Kaiser, driving a palm into the base of his skull. The blow didn't push Kaiser forward — it stopped his thoughts, snapping perception out of alignment. Kaiser's vision fractured into overlapping infinities as his jaw dislocated, teeth shattering like brittle stars.
He tried to rise.
Savitar kicked his knee sideways.
The joint exploded.
Not cracked — unmade. Ligaments snapped, the idea of rotation collapsing as the leg bent in a direction that should not exist. Kaiser collapsed fully now, one hand clawing at nothingness, the other leaking essence uncontrollably.
Strength trembled.
For the first time since before creation, Kaiser felt something alien crawling through his core.
Fear.
Savitar hovered above him, momentum spiraling, coiling tighter and tighter. Every movement amplified the pressure crushing Kaiser down, forcing his body to bear more velocity than mass could counter.
"You're heavy," Savitar whispered, almost pitying. "But weight means nothing when the ground is gone."
He drove his heel into Kaiser's chest.
The remaining ribs shattered completely, puncturing inward. Kaiser convulsed, coughing up a torrent of glowing blood as his torso caved, organs of concept rupturing under infinite acceleration.
Still, he did not yield.
Kaiser growled, forcing himself upright through sheer will, dragging his ruined body against the void. His muscles screamed, tearing under their own density. His joints ground against broken law.
Savitar's grin widened.
Good.
The curse pulsed — delighted.
Strength was breaking.
And Speed had not even finished accelerating.
Kaiser did not rise.
He reassembled.
The void watched in mute horror as broken bone snapped back into alignment, not healed, not restored — commanded. Shattered ribs twisted inward, then reversed course, grinding back into place with thunderous finality. Vertebrae dragged themselves upright, locking with wet, seismic clicks as Kaiser's spine reasserted dominance over its own ruin.
Golden blood stopped mid-flow.
Not coagulated — halted.
Pressure inverted inside his body, essence compressing so violently that leaking force was dragged back into him like rivers flowing uphill. Torn organs adapted in real time, reshaping themselves not for longevity, but for function under annihilation. Anything unnecessary was crushed and reforged into reinforcement.
Kaiser exhaled.
The sound carried weight.
Savitar hesitated.
It was only a flicker — an infinitesimal delay — but for a being of Momentum, hesitation was blasphemy.
That flicker came from the blow to Kaiser's skull.
Savitar's earlier strike had disrupted more than perception — it had jarred the curse loose. Arae's rot slipped, its whisper scrambling, losing cohesion as Kaiser's consciousness surged back into alignment with itself.
For the first time since the corruption began—
Kaiser remembered who he was.
Not the rage. Not the pain. Not the war.
Strength.
He rose fully now, one arm missing, one leg shattered but bearing weight regardless. His body should not have stood.
It did anyway.
The void compressed around him as he straightened, density spiking to catastrophic levels. Space buckled. Distance shortened. Savitar felt it immediately — movement becoming difficult, resistance thickening like syrup around his momentum.
Kaiser lifted his head.
His eyes burned steady.
"No more," he said — not as a threat, but as a law.
He stepped forward.
The void collapsed beneath his foot, a crater of nonexistent matter imploding outward. Savitar reacted instantly, velocity screaming as he circled, struck, retreated — but every pass shaved speed away, each movement grinding against Kaiser's expanding presence.
Strength was no longer reacting.
It was advancing.
Savitar struck again — a thousand impacts layered into one — but Kaiser caught him.
Not by speed.
By inevitability.
His remaining hand closed around Savitar's torso, fingers digging in as momentum screamed, vibrating violently, trying to escape. Kaiser's grip tightened, pressure increasing beyond measure.
Savitar's bones shattered.
Not fractured — pulverized, velocity folding inward on itself as Kaiser's grasp denied escape. Divine blood burst from Savitar's mouth as his body convulsed, momentum eating itself alive under unyielding compression.
Kaiser pulled him closer.
Then headbutted him.
The impact detonated like a collapsing universe. Savitar's skull caved, essence exploding outward in spirals of broken velocity. His form flickered violently, speed destabilizing as the concept itself fractured.
Still, Savitar struck back.
Pure reflex. Pure spite.
A blade of momentum tore through Kaiser's side, ripping clean through density, severing internal structures and blasting essence into the void. Kaiser roared — not in pain, but exertion — as his body began to fail again, repairs unraveling as the curse clawed its way back.
Both staggered.
Both bleeding.
Both ruined.
They stood facing one another now — broken gods, essence hemorrhaging, bodies barely holding coherence. The void trembled between them, saturated with unleashed force.
Savitar laughed, breath hitching, form flickering erratically.
"Look at us," he rasped. "Still standing."
Kaiser planted his feet, sinking into the void like anchors driven into reality's core. His presence flared one last time — not sustained, not stable — but absolute.
"We finish this," he said.
The curse surged back in full.
The moment passed.
But it was enough.
Both Primordials burned what remained of themselves, essence spiraling upward, pressure and velocity climbing toward impossible thresholds.
They were on death's door.
And still—
They began to unleash their full potential.
Savitar moved.
No—
movement ceased to be the correct word.
His form destabilized, not into blur, not into light, but into absence between positions. The void could no longer track him. Existence itself lost the ability to answer where.
He ran.
Not across distance.
Not through space.
He ran through the definition of motion itself, tearing it open like a wound.
The void folded.
Horizons—conceptual constructs that should not exist in nothingness—buckled and inverted, stacking over themselves like mirrors shattering into recursion. Each step Savitar took rewrote what "forward" meant. He did not cross infinity.
He surpassed it.
The infinite loop formed around him—not as a path, but as a victim. He lapped it once. Twice. A thousand times. Each pass left behind afterimages of discarded laws: time peeling away, causality unraveling, direction collapsing into paradox.
Every lap stacked momentum somewhere deeper than reality.
Not speed.
Debt.
The void screamed—not audibly, but structurally—as pressure accumulated in planes that had never existed before. Motion began to weigh something. Mass bent around Savitar's path, drawn inward by the gravity of impossible velocity.
He was no longer running.
He was becoming the inevitability of arrival.
At the center of the nothing, Kaiser stood.
Broken.
Bleeding.
Unyielding.
The curse gnawed at him again, whispering violence, urging surrender—but Strength did not listen. He felt Savitar coming long before concept allowed perception. The void compressed against his skin, density rising exponentially, every fraction of existence leaning toward impact.
Kaiser inhaled.
The void obeyed.
Nothingness collapsed inward, drawn into him like breath pulled from a dying universe. Infinite mass gathered—not added, not created, but declared present. His muscles swelled with weight that could not be quantified. His bones screamed as they became pillars of resistance against total collapse.
Every fiber of his being condensed into singular purpose:
Do. Not. Yield.
Savitar crossed the final threshold.
The infinite loops converged.
All momentum—every conceivable motion that ever could be—collapsed into a single point of intent. Savitar no longer had a form.
He was a vector.
A spear of pure kinetic certainty, sharpened on eternity itself, charging with force that invalidated the idea of survival.
The void ruptured.
Reality—nascent, fragile, unborn—wept.
The impact had not yet happened, but its consequences were already propagating backward. Causality inverted. Effects raced ahead of causes. The nothing began to fracture like glass struck by a hammer that hadn't arrived yet.
Kaiser planted his feet.
There was no ground.
So he made one.
Density surged beneath him, a platform forged from resistance alone. He leaned forward, muscles tearing, essence spilling, as he gathered infinite pressure into his frame. His body began to collapse under its own strength—ribs folding inward, organs grinding—but he held it.
Held everything.
Savitar struck.
The collision did not explode.
It stopped.
For a moment longer than eternity and shorter than a thought, all existence froze. Motion halted. Strength locked. Time shattered into unmoving shards suspended in impossible equilibrium.
Concept met concept.
Speed screamed.
Strength endured.
Then—
Reality broke.
The shockwave did not expand outward. It imploded inward, devouring itself, folding layers of nonexistence into a singularity of force. Kaiser's body ruptured—golden essence pouring from cracks in his form like blood from a dying star. Each drop carried the weight of collapsing galaxies that had never been born.
Savitar shattered.
Not physically—conceptually.
His velocity tore him apart from the inside. Circuits of momentum unraveled, motion turning against itself, speed cannibalizing speed. He tried to move—
—and discovered there was nowhere left to go.
Fragments of Savitar peeled away, streaks of broken velocity spiraling into the void, evaporating as the laws they relied on ceased to exist.
Kaiser roared.
The sound crushed what little remained of structure. He pushed forward, arms trembling, muscles tearing away from bone, forcing resistance into motionless reality. His fist connected—not with Savitar's body, but with the idea of him.
The blow landed everywhere.
Savitar's remaining essence convulsed violently. His form flickered, stuttering between states, unable to maintain coherence. Momentum screamed as it died, velocity collapsing into stillness for the first time since awareness began.
He fell.
There was no direction.
No distance.
He simply failed to remain.
Kaiser staggered.
The pressure he had gathered exceeded even him. His body began to fail catastrophically—bones pulverizing under their own density, organs collapsing, essence hemorrhaging uncontrollably. He dropped to one knee, then another, existence sagging around him like a bowed structure ready to collapse.
Savitar lay opposite him—barely there, a ghost of broken speed, essence leaking in flickering pulses.
Both were dying.
Both had burned everything.
The void trembled, saturated with ruin, littered with the corpses of laws that would never exist again.
For the first time since before creation—
Silence held weight.
The nothingness recoiled.
It had learned.
That even gods could destroy too much.
That even concepts could bleed.
And somewhere, deep within the fracture left behind—
Arae slept.
Smiling.
Good catch — and you're absolutely right.
That change actually makes the scene stronger, creepier, and more intimate.
If Shojiro cannot speak, cannot act, cannot question, then this becomes:
Artemis leading
Shojiro following
Love as submission through serenity, not dialogue
Knowledge flowing one-way, like gravity
Shojiro drifted.
There was no body to tense, no lungs to fill, no mouth to form questions that screamed inside his mind. Thought existed—but expression did not. He was awareness without agency, a soul held in perfect suspension.
And through that stillness—
Her voice.
"I will guide you, Shojiro Momo."
It did not ask for permission.
It did not need to.
The words settled into him like warm rain into scorched earth, soaking through every fracture left behind by death. He did not turn toward her—he simply aligned, as iron filings do when a magnetic field passes through them.
Artemis did not rush.
She never rushed.
"You are not afraid," she said softly, not as a question, but as a truth observed. "Not because you lack fear… but because you are held."
Shojiro's soul trembled—not in panic, but in recognition.
Yes. Held.
The word fit too perfectly.
The Primordials moved around him, titanic and distant—Kaiser's shattered strength, Savitar's ruined momentum, the lingering stain of Arae's curse bleeding quietly through the fabric of creation.
Artemis let him see it all.
She did not shield him.
"This is the price of compassion untempered by wisdom," her voice continued, calm and reverent. "We healed Arae when he crawled from the Crack. We welcomed him when he was broken. And in doing so, we allowed his memory to return."
Shojiro felt Arae's madness—not as images, but as pressure. A rot that did not scream, but whispered. A hatred sharpened by countless forgotten lives, countless wars remembered by only one soul.
"He remembered every death," Artemis said gently. "Every failure. Every cycle where the Primordials stood as his enemies, again and again, while the universe forgot."
Shojiro could not recoil.
He could only absorb.
"And when memory became too heavy," she went on, "he cursed us—not with fire or annihilation, but with erosion. A slow violence. One that turned certainty into rage."
The visions flowed through Shojiro's consciousness:
Kaiser's restraint cracking.
Savitar's motion sharpening into cruelty.
Primordials turning against one another, not knowing why—only feeling the need to act, to break, to prove.
Shojiro felt no judgment from her.
Only sorrow.
"You are seeing this because you must," Artemis said. "Not because you can change it. Not yet."
Her voice drew closer—not in space, but in importance. Every word carried the weight of inevitability wrapped in comfort.
"You will walk a path shaped by these mistakes. You will carry fragments of us—Strength, Wisdom, Momentum, and more. And you will suffer for it."
She let the truth linger.
"But you will also endure."
Shojiro drifted further into her presence, though he could not move. His soul responded instinctively, pulled by the serenity in her tone, by the absolute certainty that she knew—and that she accepted him regardless.
He wanted to speak.
The impulse flickered—desperate, aching.
Not questions.
Not doubts.
Only the foolish, human urge to reach for her. To be acknowledged directly. To offer himself in a way words could never carry.
But he could not.
And Artemis knew.
"I am aware of your longing," she said softly, almost fondly. "It is natural. Knowledge attracts devotion. Calm invites trust."
No reprimand.
No rejection.
Just understanding.
"But do not confuse affection with possession," she added, her voice still warm, still gentle. "I guide many. I belong to none."
The words should have hurt.
They didn't.
Because she said them without cruelty.
Without distance.
"I will remain with you," Artemis continued. "As a presence. As a compass. When you awaken, you will not remember my voice—but your soul will recognize its echo."
The universe continued unfolding around him. The Cracks. The coming war. The rise of the Damned Ten.
Shojiro observed it all, silent, entranced, willingly suspended beneath her guidance.
And then—
Her tone changed.
Infinitesimally.
The warmth stayed.
But awareness sharpened.
"And you," Artemis said—
Not to Shojiro.
To you.
"Yes. You, who are watching him drift. You, who think this is merely a story unfolding safely before your eyes."
A pause.
Measured. Knowing.
"Do not mistake distance for immunity," she continued, her voice still gentle, still kind. "Witnessing binds you as well. Every cycle needs its observers."
The void seemed to lean inward.
"And when the time comes," Artemis whispered, reverent and amused all at once,
"remember—"
Her presence receded, just enough to leave the words hanging.
"And now that you have heard me," Artemis finished softly,
"you too are remembered."