The Neither Lord didn't appear—it simply was, and suddenly always had been. Ren's mind struggled to process what his senses insisted on showing him. It was absence given form, hunger shaped into intelligence, the space between thoughts made manifest.
When it spoke, it didn't use words. It communicated in concepts that bypassed language, embedding themselves directly in consciousness:
⌜CURIOUS_CONSTRUCT. YOU_REJECT_PERFECTION. CHOOSE_SUFFERING. WHY?⌟
The symbols hurt to perceive, each one a violation of how information should behave. Ren's nose began to bleed, but he stood his ground.
"Because perfect isn't human," Ren said to the cosmic horror, his voice tiny but determined. "We're messy and flawed and complicated. That's what makes us real."
⌜REAL = PAIN? ILLOGICAL. INEFFICIENT. OTHER_CONSTRUCTS_CHOSE_TRANSCENDENCE.⌟
Images flooded his mind—thousands of civilizations across countless realities, each offered the same choice. Most chose the perfect illusion, living in bubbles of manufactured happiness until their realities collapsed. Others chose dissolution, becoming one with the Neither. A precious few chose to fight, and their lights burned brief but bright before extinguishing.
"Maybe we're not meant to be efficient," Ren argued, blood now running from his ears as well. "Maybe the struggle is the point."
The Neither Lord's attention focused, and Ren felt his atoms considering whether they wanted to remain associated. But something else happened too—that purple energy under his skin, the modification his grandmother had hidden in his genes, flared to life. It didn't protect him, exactly, but it made him... incompatible. Like trying to delete a file that didn't match any known format.
⌜INTERESTING. THE_TAMPERED_ONE. YOUR_PATTERN_RESISTS_INTEGRATION.⌟
"My grandmother's gift," Ren realized. "She didn't just make me immune. She made me fundamentally incompatible with perfection."
Something that might have been amusement rippled through reality.
⌜CLEVER_INSECTS. ALWAYS_FINDING_NEW_WAYS_TO_PERSIST. VERY_WELL.⌟
The pressure increased. Ren felt the Neither Lord's true attention, the weight of a consciousness that could think galaxies into existence. His modified genes screamed, the purple energy forming desperate barriers that dissolved as fast as they formed.
⌜YOU_WILL_FAIL. YOUR_REALITY_WILL_END. I_AM_INEVITABLE.⌟
"Maybe," Ren gasped, falling to his knees. "But we'll try anyway. It's kind of our thing."
⌜THEN_TRY, LITTLE_FAILURE. I_WILL_WATCH. AND_WHEN_YOU_BREAK, I_WILL_BE_WAITING.⌟
The presence withdrew, but its attention remained like weight on reality. As it retreated, Ren caught glimpses of its true nature—not evil, not good, but something orthogonal to human understanding. It didn't hate or hunger in any sense humans could grasp. It simply was, and its existence was antithetical to the small, bright, temporary things that called themselves alive.
But in that glimpse, he saw something else. Fear. Not of him, but of what he represented. The chaos of consciousness that refused to be ordered. The messy vitality that chose suffering over stillness. The human insistence on mattering despite cosmic insignificance.
"You're afraid of us," he whispered. "That's why you offer perfect worlds. To contain us. To make us stop being so... human."
The Neither Lord's response was wordless but clear—not fear, but... wariness. The way a vast system might regard a virus. Not threatening individually, but collectively capable of introducing chaos into perfect order.
Then reality snapped back with violence that made his previous transitions seem gentle.