Chapter 39
The sky ruptured.
Not metaphorically—
the heavens literally tore open like stretched fabric, revealing an ocean of swirling black suns, broken constellations, and infinite light. Every Watcher lifted its head at once, their hollow star-eyes widening as Orion began rising from the ground.
Not lifted by force—
but rising because gravity itself bowed and inverted for him.
A low hum rolled across the landscape, the vibration deep enough to shake the marrow of planets. The Watchers, titans made of laws and star-weaves, stepped back instinctively. Even they knew the danger of interfering with an ascension not sanctioned by their own kind.
The crowned Watcher murmured:
"His core is unraveling the universe to rebuild itself…"
The messenger trembled uncontrollably as time slipped around them—
aging their body, rewinding it, skipping seconds, deleting moments.
"Stop… Orion, STOP—your existence wasn't designed for—"
Orion ignored them.
His twelve wings unfurled further, stretching so wide the horizon bent around them. Half the sky became a star-filled void. The other half burned into a blinding, shifting dawn.
Space shuddered.
Time screamed.
All creation held its breath.
Orion's voice was low—yet echoed like the memory of a star dying.
"Stage Zero…"
The Watchers bowed.
"…is not a power level."
The ground erupted into floating shards of stone as gravity flattened and inverted in pulses around his body.
"It is a return."
A ring of black and white corona fire ignited behind him, shaped like a massive eclipse serpent devouring its own tail. The symbol twisted with cosmic geometry the universe had forgotten how to comprehend.
It tightened around him—
then exploded.
A sphere of pure void light surged outward, erasing mountains as if wiping ink off a page. Space folded into prisms. Time shattered into countless river-threads flowing upward like reversed waterfalls.
Inside the blast, Orion transformed.
His body lengthened, growing sharper, more celestial, more monstrous.
His hair reached the ground in flowing strands of silver and eclipse-midnight.
His skin lost all mortal opacity—now transparent glass shadow, showing entire galaxies inside his flesh.
Where his heart should be—
a collapsed miniature star pulsed slowly, each beat sending shockwaves of light and darkness.
His wings became impossible.
The Space wings cracked open fully, their feathers turning into shifting spiral arms of galaxies—each feather containing thousands of stars.
The Time wings glowed with ancient authority, every feather a timeline looping infinitely, untouchable by causality.
Then something new emerged.
Behind all twelve wings, a vast mantle of spiraling eclipse rings appeared—
neither wing nor halo,
neither light nor shadow,
neither space nor time—
A Crown of the Unwritten.
The messenger fell to their knees as their voice cracked:
"T-that mantle… it's impossible… that's a lineage that predates the Chronarch Lords…"
The crowned Watcher spoke:
"The Unwritten Line returns to existence."
Orion's arms glowed with cosmic veins, light shifting through every color ever born. His claws were half-void, half-holy flame.
His eyes opened.
Left: galaxies rotated inward, pulling existence toward him.
Right: time rivers floated above the iris like golden streams.
And then—
the new eye flared behind them.
A third reflection.
Not physical.
Not bound.
An eye made of pure paradox:
half-white, half-black, shaped like a broken infinity loop.
The messenger gasped.
"That… that's the Eye of the Unwritten. Nobody has ever—"
Orion stepped forward.
Time bent around his foot before it touched ground.
Space twisted to accommodate him.
Even light hesitated, unsure whether to illuminate or bow.
The crowned Watcher lowered its massive form.
"Orion.
You have ascended beyond the ten stages.
You stand now at the plane of the Primordials."
The messenger looked horrified.
"No…
Not a Primordial…"
They pointed with shaking hands.
"He's something ABOVE a Primordial."
Orion's voice emerged deeper, layered—
multiple tones, countless harmonics.
"I remember now."
The air froze.
"My lineage wasn't erased because it was evil…"
His wings expanded further, sending space-time shockwaves that made the horizon ripple like water.
"…it was erased because it had no limits."
A black eclipse ignited behind him, larger than continents.
White light spiraled through it, creating a cosmic ring of perfect contradiction.
Orion raised his hand.
"Try to stop me now."
The messenger stumbled back.
"No—NO—if you move like that in Stage Zero, this whole region will collapse—"
But he already moved.
A single step.
Just one.
Reality broke.
The sky split into six layers.
The earth folded like pages of a book.
The Watchers themselves flickered, unable to appear solid in his presence.
The crowned Watcher whispered:
"The Unwritten One walks again."
Orion looked upward.
Toward the forbidden sky.
Toward the place where the Black Crowned Warden slept.
And he said, quietly—
"I'm coming for you."