In the metaphysical expanse beyond all countable infinities, where even the concept of distance loses meaning, there lies the Deep Warp: a silent, lightless abyss of absolute cessation.
There was raging emotions, no howling daemons and no kaleidoscopic torrents of stolen souls; only the perfect hush of a graveyard that has already digested every possible universe. Here, energy itself unravels, matter forgets its own name, and time collapses into a single, frozen instant of ending. Even the Chaos Gods—those vast and hungry malignancies—dare not linger. To them, the ordinary Warp is a roaring banquet; the Deep Warp is the silence that follows when the fire has consumed the fuel, the scream, and the throat that made it.
This is the final shore where broken realities come to die.
Yet something that should never have been now burned at its heart.
A single mote of golden fire—warm, defiant, alive—spun itself into existence. At first it was no larger than a dying star's last sigh, but it refused the darkness. It turned, coiled, and fed upon nothing, growing brighter, hotter and wilder.
Soon it became a maelstrom of molten gold, a blinding wound in the fabric of oblivion, roaring without sound, singing without voice.
And the things that dwell in the Deep Warp took notice.
They were not daemons.
They were not gods.
They were the leftover silhouettes of laws that once governed realities now long erased, the negative spaces where existence used to be. To gaze upon one is to watch geometry commit suicide: impossible limbs of black-glass angularity unfolding from nowhere, surfaces that reflect futures already aborted, mouths that open sideways into yesterday. Their substance is the color of a scream frozen mid-throat; their size is measured not in length but in the amount of meaning they erase by existing. A single one could eclipse the memory of an entire galactic age simply by drifting across it. Where they pass, even entropy forgets its purpose and falls still.
These titanic absences, these devourers of conclusion itself, stirred from their aeons-long vigil. Jointless appendages longer than the diameter of dead cosmos uncurled. Eyes that were not eyes—merely holes through which the concept of sight had bled out—fixed upon the golden anomaly. With a hunger older than causation, they surged forward, a silent tidal wave of anti-form, eager to smother the impossible light and return the Deep Warp to its perfect, unbroken nothing.
Yet the golden storm only grew brighter, as though it welcomed the end of all ends.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You… who are you?"
In the endless void where even silence had no meaning, a question rippled through the darkness.
A thought trembling through nothingness — its origin as unfathomable as the void itself.
Every syllable drifted from everywhere… and nowhere.
"Who am I…?"
A second voice responded — younger, steadier, carrying an unsettling lucidity that denied innocence.
Its echo flickered, then dissolved like dying embers falling into an immeasurable abyss.
"Where… am I?"
This time, the voice had a source.
A faint shimmer pierced the suffocating dark — a breach of light widening until it revealed a child, softly glowing at the center of the void. He knelt with his small hands open before him, as though expecting them to answer the questions he could not.
Hair white as stellar plasma.
Eyes burning gold like the hearts of dying suns.
Slowly, he rose.
Slowly, he looked around.
The space should have been empty. Yet to him… it wasn't.
Where the void stretched infinite and cold, he saw a desert — a vast, blistered expanse of ash-colored dunes shimmering beneath a merciless sun. An endless deathland, cracked and parched.
And far ahead, painted onto this lifeless canvas by some impossible grace, was a patch of green: trees whispering with unseen breezes, cool mist curling above clear water.
A paradise.
He began walking toward it.
shff… shff…
Each step rustled with sand only he could perceive, as if his reality and the void's reality were layered but never touching.
whrrr… iam rrr… imperhhh… sav..hsh…
Whispers followed him — drifting, elusive, like the last sighs of a million forgotten souls.
He turned sharply, heart pounding.
Nothing.
Only the boundless deathlands stretched in every direction — lifeless, silent, unforgiving.
A small crease tightened his brow. Fear trembled beneath the thin armor of childlike resolve.
He was alone.
Utterly alone.
Surrounded by nothing but sand and sky.
His gaze shifted to the distant green.
There — faint, so faint he wondered if he imagined it — he heard a familiar melody. A lullaby. Something buried deep within him, something that stirred a longing he couldn't name.
He licked his cracked lips and kept moving.
Perhaps answers waited in that oasis.
Behind him, the desert convulsed.
Fwooooom… fwooooOOOM…
The sands heaved. The air shrieked. A storm spiraled violently into existence — a towering column of sand and wind hurtling after him with ravenous hunger. Within the gusts, distorted cries bled through:
— kaaahh—
— rrruuughh—
— Aeaaar uuuus—
He quickened his pace, shielding his face as the winds ripped at him.
Needles of sand stung his skin.
His eyes watered.
At last, he reached the oasis.
Warm air kissed his cheeks.
Moisture brushed his skin like a mother's hand.
But he stopped at its very edge — just one step away.
Hesitation rooted him.
The lullaby was gone.
He looked from the green haven to the nightmare storm rising behind him.
WHOOOOSH—!
A violent gust struck the desert, and he spun around.
The storm surged forward, dust clouds rising into titanic spirals.
Its winds howled, tugging at his hair, its voice a deafening wail of rage and desperation.
And then—
"Come here, child… come."
A single voice cut through the chaos.
Soft.
Feminine.
Warm.
He turned.
She stood within the oasis — radiant, serene, a stranger whose presence washed calm through the turmoil in his chest. Her eyes glowed with a love so deep it felt older than time.
She opened her arms slowly, a tender smile curving her lips — as though she had waited for him across countless eternities.
"Come," she whispered.
The child blinked, confusion wrinkling his brow. He searched his mind for recognition… for memory… but nothing surfaced.
Behind him the storm closed in —
—KRSHHHH—RAHHHH—WOOOO——
A wall of shrieking dust and swirling shadows bearing down on him like a furious, dying god.
At her beckoning, he stepped forward.
The instant his foot touched the grass, her arms wrapped around him — warm, gentle, unyieldingly protective. She held him as though he were the last fragment of her heart.
"My dear love," she murmured, voice trembling with immeasurable sorrow,
"how I have missed you. Do not stray from Mother ever again."
Her fingers combed through his white hair with aching tenderness.
Yet her eyes gazed at the storm behind the child.It came with terrifying tenacity but stopped at the edge of the oasis, as if blocked by an invisible barrier.
THOOM—THOOM—THOOOOM—
A cosmic wrath unable to cross even one blade of grass.
A dying god pounding against a door forever closed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~`
At the same time, in a cavern temple somewhere beyond the mortal realm…
The only sound to be heard was the gnashing of teeth, as a giant in blackened armor knelt with his gauntleted hands clutching at his head, wheezing in agony.
His eyes barely revealed the glowing red pupils beneath his almost-closed lids — pupils that flickered, for brief moments, with a touch of gold… then purple.
Locks of white hair fell over his agonizing expression as he struggled, desperately, not to scream.
But that effort wasn't enough, for his very presence seemed to have disturbed whatever dwelled within this temple of statues and broken pillars, a place built atop a sea of lava that flowed through the crevices below.
~hissss—
A loud hiss echoed, followed by multiple lower ones.
Something heavy dropped in the shadows, dragging itself through the temple's ruins.