"Welcome, Rania Eunuella...
No-
Rania Eon Augthorth."
With that name, something inside me broke.
Or shifted.
Or... dissolved.
Every thread tethering me to mortality unraveled in an instant.
Faces, memories, emotions-still there, but distant, as if viewed from behind unbreakable glass. Not gone... but no longer mine in the way they once were.
Anathasia left after declaring my new name, her form vanishing into the luminant haze around us.
Or rather, what I used to think was a haze.
Now, with my new senses awakened, I saw the truth.
What had once been an endless white void was not empty at all.
It was a structure. Vast, packed, alive.
A lattice of impossibly delicate spheres stretched into forever, each one shimmering, each one containing multiverses, folded atop each other like stacked reflections.
Bubble multiverses.
Uncountable. Incomprehensible.
And yet... visible to me.
Anathasia's explanation still echoed in my mind:
"Okay, so-your world, Aegea? Tiny. One atom in an infinite particle. That particle is your universe. Put all those particles into a grain of sand-that's your multiverse. Multiply that by infinite grains, infinite beaches holding infinite sands. Those beaches are the bubble structures. And congratulations, you're in charge of the coastline that holds all of them. Easy, right?"
I blinked. Or attempted to.
My new form didn't exactly blink anymore.
"Easy," she said.
Right.
I was the Third Outer God now.
And I still had no idea what, exactly, I had become.
With my new senses awakened, my perception stretched across structures I didn't even have names for. I thought maybe, maybe, this would make my responsibilities clearer.
It didn't.
If anything, it made the chaos impossible to ignore.
"What—why are those bubbles collapsing? Why are those structures breaking apart?!"
My voice echoed across the lattice of existence, swallowed by the vastness.
Images of the First Outer God flickered in my mind, her tired smile as she faded, her hand brushing my cheek.
"Finally... someone else can handle this."
My eye twitched.
"Is this what she meant by dumping the responsibility of maintaining this layer onto someone else...?"
I stared helplessly as several bubble multiverses unraveled like threads pulled from a cosmic tapestry.
She's an irresponsible manager! A cosmic-level slacker!
"What am I even supposed to do here?!"
She didn't even bother showing me the ropes! Not even a pamphlet!
More bubbles imploded in the distance, whole structures folding in on themselves like dying stars. I panicked and grabbed at the glowing threads linking them together, pulling instinctively.
"Why do I have to deal with this?! At least show me how it's done—!"
The moment the words left my mouth, the entire structure... stopped.
Not slowed.
Not paused.
Stopped.
Every collapsing multiverse froze mid-collapse.
The fraying structures snapped back into place.
Bubbles that had popped rewound themselves, light stitching back into shape as if obeying an invisible command.
No, a command from me.
"...eh?"
I stared, wide-eyed, as the infinite lattice rebuilt itself effortlessly.
"What... just happened...?"
A voice suddenly echoed in my head-then my vision flickered, replaced by a scene of Anathasia sprawled on a couch, stuffing herself with some kind of chips while staring at a flashing box.
A... television?
"A television," her voice chimed. "A form of entertainment from a small blue planet inside a certain universe, planet Earth, to be exact."
I blinked.
Did she just... read my mind from there?
"Looks like you got the hang of it," she continued, her tone dripping with patronizing approval. "Great job."
I felt my eye twitch.
"Now then... good luck, Miss Augthorth. I'm sure you'll be a splendid ruler of the Collective Sphere. Babye~"
And with that, the voice was gone. No guidance. No explanation. No onboarding.
Just... gone.
I stared into the infinite lattice of bubble multiverses stretching across eternity.
"...."
"Wait—! Don't just leave me here!" I snapped at the empty space. "Are you not even going to explain what my role is? Why I'm here? Or why I can do—" I jabbed a finger toward the totality bubbled that had obediently reconstructed itself earlier, "that?!"
"And the girl who took me earlier... who was it? Or what was it?"
A long, weary sigh drifted through my mind.
She paused, stared at me, yawned.
"That girl was me," she said. "My interface, rather."
"But anyways, let's review," she muttered. "I already explained your role, yes?"
"An Outer God," I said.
"And I already explained what that means, correct?"
I nodded. "Complete control over the Collective Sphere and everything below it."
"Right. So all you need now is the how and the why, yes?"
"Yes, I need to understand at least that much."
Another sigh, this one deeper, like I'd asked her to stand up and pick up a piece of litter she dropped three meters away.
"The Authorial Rule," she said at last. "It governs what it means to be, what is, and what is not."
I froze, a strange familiarity slamming into me, like I'd heard those words whispered in a dream before I was ever born.
"All living beings within the smaller aspects of existence can tap into it," she added casually. "Though mortals like humans, only ever touch the diluted version."
"Think of it as a fundamental adhesive," she went on, "something scattered across the layers by The Constant herself, altering how existence interacts. Forever."
"The Constant...?"
Silence.
Then, a shudder.
The entire layer convulsed, every bubble structure straining in opposite direction. Some recoiling in terror, others collapsing to their knees in forced obedience. It wasn't anything like how they reacted to me earlier.
This was fear.
Raw, ancient, instinctive fear.
"The Constant," Anathasia's voice boomed-no longer the voice in my head, but something reverberating through the marrow of the Collective Sphere. "Was an Outer-God-like being with boundless potential. After she fought the higher-layer entities and defeated them alone, her ascent reshaped all of existence."
I spun around—
And Anathasia was suddenly there.
Standing behind me.
Wearing the same dress she had on when she renamed me.
Except now... her presence pressed against me like a cosmic tide.
I didn't sense her. Not even a flicker. How-?
There was something in her... a shadow, a resonance...
Something that felt like an echo of whoever The Constant had been.
Something that should never be opposed.
"Though, as we speak," Anathasia continued lightly, as though discussing weather, "The Constant is still 'fighting' the higher-stratum beings and the higher stratums themselves... and winning."
The space around me dissolved, washed over by white ink until every direction bled into a blank horizon.
Yet something inside me whispered that this wasn't the same void as before.
This one... watched back.
"Anyway," Anathasia chimed, dusting her hands as if wiping away the topic of an unending cosmic war, "I'll circle back to The Constant later. For now, let's focus on the Authorial Rule, okay?"
She smiled sweetly.
"The Authorial Rule is divided into two sub-properties. Namely, Traces and Fragments."
Then she sat.
On something I couldn't see.
Not a chair, not a construct, not even a distortion in the fabric of this place-just a seat that existed beyond the limits of my new perception.
Even as an Outer God... I couldn't discern it.
"Simply put," Anathasia began, crossing one leg over the other, "Traces are what people from your world call magic. They allow for small alterations in the lower layers. Nothing large-scale. Of course, it doesn't work in the Collective Sphere, your territory."
"You dumped it on me—"
"Traces," she steamrolled right over me, "let lesser beings—humans, spirits, your archmages, all of them tweak tiny aspects of their reality. Inertia. Thermal flow. Elemental composition. All the little building blocks that make spells function."
Did she... just brush me off...?
"However," she added, wagging a finger, "only the newer universes can actually use Traces. The older ones have... outgrown them."
She didn't elaborate.
I wasn't sure if I wanted her to.
"Now for the Fragments..." she continued, brushing invisible dust off her dress.
"They allow for far larger changes. Existential ones. Cosmic ones. The sort that erase multiverses, rewrite fundamental laws, or remove someone's existence entirely."
Her tone was disturbingly casual for the magnitude of what she was describing.
"That's why they're inaccessible to anything below the Outer Gods. Mortal gods, mortals, archmages. They can't even comprehend the threshold, much less cross it."
A bag of chips popped into existence in her hands with a soft fwip.
She tore it open and began munching without breaking eye contact.
"There are four Fragments in total," she went on between bites.
"All four have integrated themselves fully into their bearers."
She pointed at me with her chip bag.
"You, Rania, are one such bearer.
All four Outer Gods are."