The universe did not collapse.
It hesitated.
For the briefest moment—shorter than a heartbeat, smaller than a thought—everything paused. Stars froze mid-burn. Time forgot to move. Even causality seemed unsure of what it was supposed to do next.
That hesitation was not an accident.
It was recognition.
And at the center of that impossible pause stood a single being.
Aerion.
He was standing on land that no longer belonged to any world. Beneath his feet, the ground was fractured into endless floating shards, drifting slowly through a void filled with dim, colorless light. Gravity existed only when it felt like it. Distance meant nothing. Direction was a lie.
Above him, the sky was wrong.
It wasn't empty.
It was layered.
Worlds overlapped one another like transparent reflections—burning cities, frozen empires, oceans suspended in midair, civilizations collapsing in slow motion. Some skies were red with war. Others were peaceful… moments before annihilation.
Aerion stared upward, his chest tight.
Every instinct screamed at him to run.
But there was nowhere to go.
His memories were blurred, as if someone had taken his life and smeared it across time. He remembered being ordinary. He remembered fear. He remembered pain.
But he could not remember how he came here.
Or why this place felt… familiar.
The air pressed down on him, thick with something ancient. Not magic. Not energy.
Judgment.
Aerion looked down at his hands.
They were clean.
Yet he felt as if they had held weapons meant to kill gods.
"This isn't real," he muttered, his voice echoing strangely, as though reality itself was listening. "This has to be a dream."
The moment he said it, the ground reacted.
Cracks spread beneath him—not breaking, but opening, revealing glimpses of scenes buried beneath existence itself. He saw warriors kneeling before lightless thrones. He saw monsters born from ideas rather than flesh. He saw universes ending, not with explosions, but with acceptance.
Aerion staggered back, clutching his head.
"What is this place?!"
The answer did not come as sound.
It came as pressure.
The skies shifted. The layered worlds aligned, slowly rotating until they formed a single, overwhelming symbol etched across reality itself.
Infinity.
Not a word.
Not a number.
A presence so vast that Aerion's thoughts began to unravel just by acknowledging it.
His knees buckled. Blood roared in his ears as his heartbeat synchronized with something immeasurable. Invisible threads wrapped around him—not restraining, not harming, but examining.
"You exist," a voice finally spoke.
It was calm. Endless. Neither male nor female.
"You should not."
Aerion forced himself to look up. "Who are you?"
"I am not a who," the voice replied.
"I am what remains when all limits are reached."
Aerion's teeth clenched as pain lanced through his body. Symbols—ever-shifting, impossible to comprehend—began to burn themselves into the air around him.
"Then why am I here?" he shouted. "Why me?!"
The pressure intensified.
"Because you reached where others could not."
Fragments of memory slammed into his mind.
He saw himself in different forms, different ages, different worlds. Sometimes a warrior. Sometimes a prisoner. Sometimes something far worse. In every vision, he was reaching—grasping at power, truth, salvation.
Infinity.
And every time he touched it—
Everything broke.
"No…" Aerion whispered, shaking his head. "That's not me."
The voice paused.
"For now."
The threads tightened.
Aerion screamed as knowledge—not memories, but truths—were carved into his existence. He understood then, not with his mind, but with his soul.
He was not chosen because he was special.
He was chosen because he was possible.
A flaw.
A loophole.
A being who could exist where no rules should allow him to.
"You are an anomaly," the voice declared.
"A contradiction that infinity cannot erase."
The symbol above pulsed violently.
"You will walk beyond worlds."
"You will fight concepts, not creatures."
"You will break laws that gods depend on to survive."
Aerion gasped, barely conscious. "And what happens to me?"
Silence.
Then—
"You will never be whole."
The pressure vanished.
Aerion collapsed onto the fractured ground, gasping for breath. The skies returned to chaos, the symbol fading as if it had never been there.
Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself up.
Something had changed.
He felt it in his bones.
In his blood.
In the way reality now felt… thinner around him.
He looked down at his right hand.
A faint mark glowed softly on his palm.
His breath caught.
"So that's it," he whispered. "That's my curse."
Or perhaps—
His fingers curled into a fist.
"My beginning."
The realm began to collapse. Floating shards dissolved into light, the layered skies tearing themselves apart. A powerful force wrapped around Aerion, pulling him away from the threshold.
As he was dragged into blinding brightness, the voice returned one final time.
"Survive, Warrior of Infinity."
"When the universe reaches its end…"
"…you will be standing there."
Aerion screamed—
—
And opened his eyes.
He was lying on cold stone.
A ceiling of unfamiliar black metal loomed above him, etched with faintly glowing runes. Alarms blared in the distance. The air smelled of smoke and ozone.
He wasn't alone.
Footsteps echoed nearby.
Aerion sat up sharply, his heart racing.
"Where am I…?"
A shadow fell across him.
And somewhere far beyond this world—
Infinity watched.