Location: unknown
Time: ?????
At the edge of eternity, silence ruled.
Not the silence of a sleeping meadow, nor the quiet of a still tomb, but the silence that comes when even time itself dares not breathe.
The cosmos stretched endlessly, a black canvas upon which creation had been hurled like paint splatters. Galaxies spun in patient spirals, haloes of fractured light bled into one another, and stars—millions upon millions—burned like defiant embers against the infinite void. It was beautiful, as only something ancient could be. Terrible, as only something eternal could endure.
Yet this silence was not empty.
It carried momentum. A current older than existence itself, something so vast and primordial that all who brushed against it were compelled, even against their will, to acknowledge their insignificance. Mortals, immortals, gods, and monsters alike would bow—not in worship, but in instinct. For this was the hush of inevitability, the stillness before the collapse of meaning.
Drifting through that endless night were relics—forgotten fragments of ages long dead. Shattered crowns whose jeweled arches no longer remembered their kings. Spears etched with runes that glowed faintly, as though still eager to kill. Crystals that pulsed with Evo hearts, beating soundlessly, suspended like fireflies. Pieces of memory with no one left to recall them, orbiting around a colossal throne like moons chained to a dead sun.
The throne was chaos clothed in order.
Carved from a single mountain of obsidian stone, it towered as if the universe itself had been forced to build it. Its surface was polished to a cruel shine, reflecting stars like broken glass. Intricate carvings coiled along its arms and legs, etchings so complex they seemed alive—patterns of galaxies compressed into symbols mortals could never comprehend. At times they pulsed faintly, as if the throne itself remembered what it had once seen.
The armrests bore the heads of dragons. Not statues. Not mere carvings. Lifelike. Maw open in frozen fury, as though poised to devour any who dared to approach. From the sockets where eyes should have been, violet flames burned. They flickered but never died, whispering of aeons when flame itself was young.
The seat was broad, deep, molded perfectly for its occupant. Draped over it was a robe of ash-gray velvet, impossibly soft, embroidered with silver threads. Across its back stretched the image of vast wings, each feather rendered in painstaking detail, each glimmering strand of silver thread catching the light of countless stars. It was regal, divine, and utterly alien. No mortal hand could have crafted such a garment. Indeed, it had never been touched by mortal kind.
And on this throne, it sat.
The Erudite of this world.
It was a riddle given shape. Its form shifted, a face without permanence, a mask of contradictions. Sometimes, its visage gleamed with an androgynous beauty too flawless to be human—cheekbones sharp as blades, lips sculpted as though by some cruel divine hand, eyes like twin suns. At other times, its face melted into void, smooth and featureless, reflecting the gaze of the onlooker back at them in fractured distortions. Those who stared too long saw their own soul split apart and rearranged.
Its body was absence made tangible. Hands stretched into clawed silhouettes that could unravel galaxies. A chest hollow as an open grave. Limbs sometimes stretched vast as constellations, other times condensed into something almost human. It did not breathe. It did not move. Yet its stillness was heavier than any storm.
For uncountable centuries, it had sat unmoving. Watching. Preserving, Eliminating.
It was not the Apex, though it had strength enough to obliterate one with but a thought.
It was not a god, though gods were only echoes of its existence.
It was this World's Erudite. A sentinel race created for and bound to protect the cycle itself, not to rule but to endure, not to destroy to eliminate anything inconsistent with it's creator, not to dominate but to ensure that creation was never devoured by its own corruption, it's race was like a world protection mechanism, protecting and watching it from destroying itself and the intervention of external forces.
For ages, it had slumbered upon its throne. For ages, it had dreamed in silence, drifting within the abyss of its own thought. To mortals, such a nap would have meant the death of civilizations, the birth and collapse of nations, the slow crumble of empires into dust. To it, such spans were but the blink of an eye.
But now—
It stirred.
The violet flames in the dragon's sockets flared, sending ripples across the void. The relics that orbited the throne trembled in their paths, their slow drift shivering into spasms of panic, as though they recognized the moment they had waited millennia for. Stars quivered, light bent, and Evo itself wavered.
The Guardian was awake.
Its voice was silence given sound. A vibration that quaked through the marrow of existence. Not spoken through lips of flesh, but through the fabric of reality itself. To hear it was to feel the weight of inevitability pressing on the heart.
And the Guardian said:
---
**"So brief, so fragile. You live and die, and call it life. You kill and consume, and call it power. You betray, bleed, suffer, and cling to the dust, all to sit upon thrones that crumble with the weight of your ambition.
Foolish.
Yet fascinating.
I am no god. I am no king. I am the silence between your screams, the breath between your wars. I am that which endures when all else breaks. I am the Guardian.
I do not rule. I do not command. I do not love. I do not hate.
I preserve.
And yet—"**
The voice faltered. Not with weakness, but with something far more terrible: interest.
---
Far below, in the depths of one small world, something stirred.
Chains clattered. Blood dripped. A boy crawled across a pit of corpses. His skin was pale from hunger, his frame broken from beatings, his spirit hollow from betrayal. And yet his eyes—his eyes still burned, defiant, cruel, hungry. He reached for survival, and survival answered.
The Guardian's gaze shifted downward. The cosmos, vast and endless, folded in on itself, collapsing into a single point. Galaxies twisted and fell like sparks into a dying fire. Stars scattered like dust. The eternal silence of the void fractured into noise: screaming flesh, rattling iron, the guttural groan of beasts unseen.
The Guardian watched.
---
**"I have watched cycles shatter.
Empires rise, rot, and return to dust. I have seen stars drown in their own fire and black holes choke on the silence they craved.
Mortals claw upward with hands too small, convinced their grasp holds meaning. They murder, they chain, they kneel, they rise. Every age, the same. Every age, they name their hunger as destiny.
You are brief. You are fragile. You are unoriginal.
And yet—
you persist."**
---
The relics trembled in orbit. Runic spears vibrated faintly, forgotten crowns quivered as though remembering blood.
---
**"Your kind fascinate me.
Not for what you build. Not for what you destroy.
But for what you endure.
You bleed in pits of stone, and still breathe. You watch your world devour you, and still fight to devour it back. You burn yourself hollow, only to strike the match again.
There is no wisdom in you. No grace. Only teeth. Only fire. Only will.
And perhaps that is enough."**
---
The mask twisted — brilliance collapsing to void, void collapsing to fractured mirror. The cosmos bent beneath the weight of its stillness.
**"I am not god.
I am not king.
I am the gap between beginnings and endings. I do not love you. I do not hate you.
I preserve.
And in my preservation… I observe. I wait. I measure.
And now, something stirs below the silence. A spark crawling from blood and chains."**
---
The flames dimmed. The cosmos shivered. And existence itself bent downward. Stars fractured into dust, galaxies folded into themselves. The endless silence shrieked — collapsing, crashing, slamming from the infinity of void down into filth and stone.
---
The pit.
Dark, wet, rotting. Chains rattled in the dark, corpses slumped against jagged walls. And through it all, dragging his body across rust and bone, a boy crawled.
Skin torn, breath shallow, eyes hollow but unbroken. His name: Azrael.
---
The Guardian watched. The flames flickered. And in the eternal hush of infinity, a single word slid out, flat as death, sharp as fate:
"Interesting."