The void was divided.
Endless darkness pressed against endless white, neither yielding, neither advancing—two absolutes locked in silent contradiction. Between them, a throne manifested. Not forged. Not summoned. It simply asserted itself, as if the void had been incomplete without it.
Upon it sat a being.
To call him a person would be an insult to meaning itself.
He lifted a single hand. The dark and the white collapsed inward, losing all distinction, all opposition, merging into a vast gray expanse. Neutral. Obedient. Another motion—barely a gesture—and the gray void shattered like glass that had been waiting to break. Fragments became laws. Cracks became dimensions. From the ruin, time began its first hesitant flow, and space learned how to exist.
A world was born.
Silver light coalesced beside the throne, forming into a woman. Golden hair cascaded down her back. Crimson eyes lowered the instant she took shape, and she knelt without hesitation.
"Thank you, Master Noah."
Noah exhaled, resting his chin against his hand. His expression was flat, almost disappointed.
"It was nothing. Too easy."
The woman hesitated, sensing the boredom that clung to him like a shroud.
"Your authority is beyond all measure," she said carefully.
Noah waved her off with the same hand that had just birthed a universe. "Yes, yes. You may go, Elonore."
She bowed deeper, forehead nearly touching the nonexistent ground. "I will govern this world according to your will."
Then she was gone.
Silence returned, thick and suffocating. The throne dissolved beneath him, and Noah reappeared elsewhere—a higher void, where white, black, and gray existed simultaneously, layered rather than opposed.
He observed them with the same mild disinterest one might show a half-finished painting.
"These worlds still remain unfinished." His voice carried no echo here. "As King of Kings, I suppose I should resolve them."
He extended his hand. The voids fused, collapsing into a dark gray singularity that hummed with compressed reality. He shattered it. The fragments reattached themselves, reforming instantly. Noah frowned. Again—this time, he erased it entirely, unmaking it from every layer of existence.
It reformed anyway.
His expression finally changed.
"...Impossible."
There was no time here. No space. No causality to reverse, no foundation to unmake. Slowly, Noah looked upward into the layered nothing above him.
"I see," he said quietly. "So you've finally decided to interfere."
The void rippled like disturbed water.
A figure emerged from the distortion—faceless, radiant in alternating patterns of white and black. Only a mouth existed on that blank canvas, curved in obvious amusement.
"Relax, Noah." The voice was light, almost playful. "Your reign ends here."
The name surfaced in Noah's mind like poison rising in still water.
"Dragonforce."
A pen materialized in the entity's grasp, looking absurdly mundane against the backdrop of infinite void.
"With a single stroke," Dragonforce continued, examining the pen as if admiring a favorite tool, "I will reduce you to a fragment. Cast you into the Abyssal Worlds. Limited. Bound." That smile widened. "Entertaining."
Noah stood. The throne did not return—it didn't need to. Authority radiated from him regardless.
"Write if you dare," Noah said, and his voice had gone cold enough to freeze the void itself. "And I will show you what happens when a story learns how to read its author."
The pen descended.
Noah moved.
His hand closed around something that shouldn't exist—fingers wrapping around a neck that had no physical form. The void rippled violently. Dragonforce vanished, dispersing across countless layers of reality.
Noah smiled. "Did you really believe distance or absence would protect you?"
The next moment, Dragonforce froze. His body had dispersed completely, scattered across the higher narrative—yet the pressure remained, tightening around where his throat had been. Slowly, impossibly, he looked down.
Noah's hand was still there. Still clutching. Still squeezing.
Amusement twisted into irritation on that faceless mouth.
"Do you truly think," Dragonforce said, voice strained for the first time, "that you can defeat me?"
Noah answered by tightening his grip.
Existence folded inward around them. The avatar shattered—its form crushed into absolute nothingness, dispersed so thoroughly that not even the concept of it remained.
Silence.
Then laughter echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
"Well done," Dragonforce's voice returned, untroubled. "You destroyed my avatar."
The void began to tremble.
"But this is where it ends."
A weight descended—not on Noah's body, but on his definition. On what he meant to reality itself.
"I cannot erase all that you are," Dragonforce continued, his tone calm and measured now. "So I will erase what gives you meaning."
Noah laughed softly, the sound sharp and cold. "Seal my memories if you wish. I am not bound by recollection."
"Oh, I know."
The pressure deepened, becoming something that transcended physical force.
"I am not sealing your memories, Noah."
Something shifted inside him. Not power—that remained. Not consciousness—that stayed sharp and clear. But authority. The fundamental truth of what he was began to waver.
"The meaning behind your title," Dragonforce whispered, and the words felt like they were being carved into reality itself. "The concept that allows existence to recognize you as King."
Noah's smile faded.
For the first time in an eternity—
He understood.
His throne rejected him. The void itself rejected him. His existence lost its weight, its gravity, its fundamental truth. Noah's form began to drift, pulled downward and away from the higher narrative like a stone finally acknowledging the pull of earth.
Then—
Impact.
Cold ground bit into his skin. Pain—actual, physical pain—lanced through his body.
Noah's eyes snapped open.
A physical body. Flesh and bone. A spiritual core, contained and limited. Both constrained by laws he had once written himself.
Rage surged through him like molten fire.
"...You bastard."
He pushed himself up from the dirt and looked around. An Abyssal World. He could feel it in every particle of the air—inferior, limited, bound by primitive laws. He raised his gaze, and far above, beyond layers of dimensional distortion, he could still sense Elonore's world.
Intact. Untouched. Governed as he'd commanded.
"...I will reclaim it." The words came out as a promise and a threat. "The title. The meaning. All of it."
He stepped forward, emerging from the cavern into harsh sunlight. Grass swayed in the wind. A sky stretched overhead that felt suffocatingly small, like a ceiling pressing down on him. In an instant, he relocated—space bending to his will despite his diminished state—appearing near a town.
Power surged instinctively. Enough to erase this entire Abyssal World, to scatter its atoms across the void. His hand began to rise—
Noah stopped.
"...No."
Destroying this place would send ripples upward through the dimensional layers. It would damage Elonore's world. Unacceptable.
The sky turned red.
It happened in an instant—the blue bleeding away like watercolor in rain, replaced by a crimson that pulsed with malevolent intent. The air grew heavy, oppressive. Noah's eyes narrowed. He could sense it immediately, the signature behind this phenomenon.
The King of this world. Acting under orders. Direct orders from Dragonforce.
"So that's how it is," Noah murmured. "Since he cannot erase me directly, he creates hurdles instead."
A roar shattered the air—deep, primal, wrong in ways that made reality itself flinch. The crimson sky tore open like rotting fabric, and something massive descended. The monster that emerged was an abomination—flesh twisted into impossible geometries, too many limbs, too many eyes, dripping with an aura of pure destruction.
The townsfolk screamed.
The creature's first step obliterated three buildings. Its tail swept through the market district, and bodies—demon bodies, Noah noted distantly—were flung through the air like broken dolls. Blood sprayed across cobblestones. A mother clutched her child, both of them crushed beneath a falling wall. Fire erupted where the monster's claws touched, spreading with unnatural hunger.
Within seconds, half the town was gone. The screaming had already begun to fade—not because people had stopped dying, but because there were fewer people left to scream.
Noah watched it all with cold calculation.
The monster turned toward him, multiple eyes focusing with predatory intelligence. It opened a maw filled with rows of spiraling teeth and charged.
Noah flicked his finger.
The world held its breath.
Then everything within a mile radius simply ceased to exist. The monster, the destroyed buildings, the corpses, the blood-soaked earth—all of it unmade in an instant of absolute erasure. Not destroyed. Not killed. Removed from the narrative of reality itself.
Where the town had been, there was now only a perfect crater of nothingness.
Noah exhaled slowly, looking at what he'd done. His hand rose, and time shuddered. It flowed backward, reality rewinding like thread on a spool. Buildings restored themselves. People returned to life, gasping as death released them. The market reformed, walls rebuilt, blood evaporated.
But the monster did not return.
Gasps filled the streets as people realized they were alive. A demon child with small horns tugged at his mother's sleeve, eyes wide with confusion.
"Mother... where did it go? The monster—it was right there, and then..."
Noah turned away. Their gratitude, their confusion, their relief—none of it touched him.
"This world," he murmured, "is tedious."
He began walking toward the castle that loomed in the distance. If he wanted access to the higher worlds, if he wanted to reclaim his title and meaning—he would do it without burning everything to ash. There had to be a path upward, and he would find it.
A figure collided with him—a young woman who'd been running without looking. She stumbled back, eyes going wide as she registered who she'd bumped into. Power radiated from him even in his diminished state, impossible to miss. She bowed frantically, stammering an apology he didn't hear, then fled.
Noah watched her go, his expression unreadable.
"...So this is life without meaning."
He sighed, the sound carrying more weight than the destruction of the monster had.
"Boring."
And he continued forward, toward the castle, toward whatever came next.