The hum had grown louder.
At first, it was nothing — a soft vibration beneath creation, too faint to disturb even angels.
Now it pulsed through every atom of Heaven, threading through light and sound, warping the rhythm of eternity itself.
Asmodeus felt it beneath his throne — not a sound, but a presence.
Something that didn't belong.
He opened his eyes.
Stars flickered inside them, rearranging as he thought.
The Throne responded in kind, its marble veins pulsing once with divine awareness.
> "It grows persistent," he murmured.
Athena looked up from the base of the dais, her expression guarded.
> "You said it was a remnant of the old god's death."
> "I did."
> "And now?"
He tilted his head, the faintest trace of curiosity brushing across his face.
> "Now… I'm not sure it's dead."
Before she could speak again, the air changed.
The walls of Heaven didn't tremble — they forgot themselves.
Light folded. Space inverted.
A line of distortion split the sky open like parchment being unrolled by invisible hands.
And through it stepped a man.
He wasn't divine, not infernal — something other.
Reality struggled to remember him, rewriting its own rules every time his foot touched the ground.
He adjusted a pair of strange, shifting spectacles, squinting at a scroll that seemed to age and renew itself with every second.
> "Let's see, let's see…" he muttered, pushing the scroll close to his face, then farther away. "Ah! Here we are. Asmodeus Morningstar, self-proclaimed God of Sin, immortal, omnipotent, et cetera, et cetera."
He nodded as if checking off an inventory list. "Well, that saves me the trouble of introductions."
Athena's eyes narrowed. "You walk through Heaven uninvited. State your purpose before I—"
Asmodeus lifted a hand, and she went silent.
Not from force — from command.
He stood, wings unfolding like night reborn.
> "Who are you?"
The man smiled faintly.
> "Designation: Dimension. Temporal Field Agent, Time Association."
The name rippled through the chamber like an echo in an empty tomb.
> "You've… interfered," Dimension continued, consulting the scroll again. "Killed a deity, altered six hundred causal constants, and broken the faith field of your entire universe. Normally we'd let that sort itself out, but—"
He flicked the parchment once. The script twisted into new words.
> "You've tampered with the progression of time itself."
Asmodeus's eyes narrowed. "Time is a toy. I can twist it as I please."
Dimension raised a brow. "Yes, well, we're the ones who built the toy box."
For the first time in epochs, the throne room's light dimmed.
> "You dare imply hierarchy?" Asmodeus asked quietly.
> "No," Dimension said, smiling politely. "I'm simply here to restore balance. Official order of neutralization. Nothing personal."
Athena took a step forward, her blade half-drawn. "Neutralize him?"
> "Oh, not kill," Dimension said cheerfully. "That'd be rude. Just… erase."
The air imploded.
Before he finished the word, Asmodeus raised a hand.
Reality bent — the space between heartbeats thickened into molten glass.
The ground vanished. The universe stopped.
And Dimension was gone.
Erased.
Asmodeus lowered his hand slowly, his gaze calm.
> "An amusing visitor."
Athena exhaled in relief — until the air shimmered again.
The same man stood exactly where he had been, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulder.
> "You omnipotent types," he sighed. "Always trying the same trick first. Never works."
The chamber cracked. Not from power — from disbelief.
Asmodeus stared at him. "Impossible."
Dimension tilted his head, inspecting his own hands as if they were mildly interesting.
> "Not really. You operate on a closed system — divinity within a bounded multiversal node. I operate outside the system entirely. You can't erase what was never written in your version of existence."
The words struck harder than any blade.
Athena's expression faltered. "Then… what are you?"
Dimension smiled. "Correction, not what. When. I'm from before."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Asmodeus took a slow step forward. Every movement distorted the air like a storm brewing inside time itself.
> "Before what?"
> "Before all of this," Dimension said simply, gesturing vaguely around. "Before your laws. Before His. Before the light and the dark decided they were enemies."
Asmodeus's power flared instinctively, collapsing Heaven's edges into shadow.
"Nothing exists before me."
Dimension's grin widened. "Then I suppose I'm nothing."
The marble cracked beneath Asmodeus's feet.
Every star in Heaven dimmed as the weight of his divinity bore down, focused on the single anomaly standing before him.
> "You trespass on omnipotence."
> "No," Dimension corrected lightly, rolling up the scroll. "I audit it."
Then the scroll snapped shut — and the hum that had haunted creation for two hundred million years roared to life.
The Throne Room fractured.
Not shattered — divided. Layers of overlapping realities peeled away like paper, exposing the machinery of existence itself.
Dimension stepped onto nothing, the world beneath him bending to his tempo.
> "Now," he said, glancing up, "shall we discuss the terms of your neutralization… or would you prefer to make a mess first?"
Asmodeus's wings ignited, the light of a trillion suns bending to his rage.
> "I will unmake you," he said. "Even if I must burn through reality itself."
Dimension sighed, tucking the scroll under one arm.
> "And they always say that too."
The world screamed.
Two impossibilities collided.
Heaven bent. Time broke. And for the first time in creation's history, God met something he could not define.