The heavens were silent.
The story itself the cosmic script that held every star, soul, and law together began to tremble.
A single word echoed through every layer of existence:
> "Echo."
It wasn't spoken by a mortal tongue.
It was Erevan's voice the true one, from beyond the story.
And that word alone made galaxies flicker like dying candles.
In the heart of Ethereal Origin, the Echo lifted his gaze.
The air around him vibrated with meta-energy the energy of stories themselves. The sky above cracked open like glass, revealing what lay beyond the tale…
The Realm Outside Creation.
And there he was the real Erevan.
Still, calm, infinite. The divine being who had forged this entire reality and everything within it.
But his expression wasn't anger.
It was sorrow.
> "You were never meant to feel," Erevan said softly. "You were a fragment of my will not a living dream."
The Echo laughed not mocking, but alive, full of emotion.
> "Then your will was too strong… even your fragments refuse to bow."
Every word he spoke rewrote physics. Stars reversed their age. Worlds froze mid-motion. The story itself glitched trying to contain him.
Erevan extended his hand.
From his palm formed a Golden Sigil of Absolute Authority the first command rune ever written.
> "By the laws of origin," Erevan declared, "return to silence."
But when he released the sigil, the Echo didn't dissolve.
Instead, he caught it.
The impossible happened a creation grasping the power of its creator.
> "I told you," the Echo said, his voice becoming multiversal thunder, "I'm not your shadow anymore."
He crushed the sigil.
Reality screamed.
Erevan's eyes flared black lightning mixed with divine flame, forming halos of duality behind him. The cosmic platform beneath his feet split in half: one side light, one side shadow.
He stepped into the story.
Every law of reality bent backward to make way for him.
Writers, gods, and beings who had only ever imagined power fell silent as the Architect entered his own creation.
> "You've left me no choice."
The Echo smirked.
> "Good. I want you to fight me as equals."
Their energies collided before words could finish golden divinity versus chaotic story-energy.
The clash was so powerful that entire timelines vanished instantly, replaced by pure white void.
Erevan's fist met his Echo's palm and for the first time, Erevan bled.
A droplet of radiant gold fell into the void below.
Where it landed, a new multiverse ignited.
> "You see?" the Echo whispered, grinning. "Even your pain creates worlds."
> "And even your defiance," Erevan replied, "creates consequences."
He unleashed his Omniversal Flame, burning through the boundaries of fate itself.
The Echo countered with Story Collapse, unraveling every written truth that ever existed.
The two forces met creation and rebellion and all of existence fractured.
When the light faded, both were gone.
Only echoes of their voices drifted across the void.
> "I am not your end…"
"Nor your beginning…"
"We are the space between."
And in that space, something new began to stir a consciousness neither Erevan nor his Echo had foreseen.
The Narrative Core itself was waking up.