Volume 4 — Chapter 5: "The Last Thread of the Origin"
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Silence.
Not the kind born from peace but from absence.
The realm that once shone with infinite light was now… blank.
Colors didn't exist. Concepts had ceased to breathe.
Erevan stood at the center of the white void, his cloak whispering through nothing.
Kairos floated nearby, pale and exhausted, his wounds slowly knitting themselves under Erevan's light.
> "Is it over?" Kairos asked quietly.
Erevan didn't answer right away. He could still feel something something buried deep beneath existence.
A faint pulse.
A thread humming at the edge of perception.
> "No," Erevan said finally, his voice steady but low.
"There's still one string connected to me… something that never broke."
He raised his hand, tracing the air and the fabric of creation rippled like water.
From that ripple, a single golden thread emerged, stretching endlessly in every direction.
It vibrated with power not cosmic, not divine, but authentic.
The kind of energy that creates gods.
Kairos frowned.
> "That… feels older than anything I've ever sensed. What is it?"
Erevan's expression darkened.
> "The last thread of the Origin. The thing that binds all stories even mine."
The air twisted.
The thread began to glow brighter, faster, trembling like it was alive.
Then a voice.
Soft.
Eternal.
Unfathomably calm.
> "You've done well, Erevan. You've surpassed your bounds. You've even rewritten your reflection."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
Erevan's aura flared instantly. His divine code responded to a force it couldn't comprehend.
> "Who are you?" Erevan demanded.
"Show yourself."
The voice laughed gently, like wind over a quiet ocean.
> "You already know who I am."
And then the light shifted.
A figure appeared, cloaked in pure concept not a body, not a soul, but an idea wearing form.
Its eyes shone with colors Erevan had never seen.
> "I am the one who wrote the first word," the figure said.
"The one even you were born to complete."
Erevan's heart froze.
> "You… you're the Origin."
The being smiled faintly.
> "Every story, every god, every law all began as fragments of me. You were the final fragment that grew beyond me."
Erevan's aura shifted, reality rippling beneath his feet.
> "If you're the true Origin… why reveal yourself now?"
> "Because," the Origin said simply, "you've reached the limit of existence. And when one surpasses the limit… they threaten the thread itself."
The golden thread began to quake violently. The void shook. Kairos fell to one knee, clutching his chest.
> "What's happening?!" he gasped.
> "Your friend," the Origin said gently, "was never meant to exist beyond the story. His heartbeat depends on your defiance."
Erevan clenched his fists his aura flashing between divinity and raw emotion.
> "So if I continue to live… he dies?"
> "If you continue to rewrite," the Origin corrected.
"The story collapses."
For the first time in an eternity, Erevan hesitated.
He looked at Kairos broken, breathing, alive.
The one being who reminded him what it meant to feel.
> "There has to be another way," Erevan said.
The Origin's tone softened, almost sympathetic.
> "There is. You can return the thread. Become one with it again erase your individuality, and the multiverse will remain stable."
> "You're asking me to stop existing," Erevan said.
> "No," the Origin whispered.
"I'm asking you to go home."
The realm trembled as Erevan's aura ignited again.
Golden flame, black lightning, cosmic storms every force he'd ever commanded roared to life.
> "I've seen the end of gods," Erevan said.
"I've destroyed the idea of death. I've transcended everything you built. You think I'll surrender that?"
> "I think," the Origin said calmly, "you're afraid. Because even a being beyond infinity doesn't want to be alone."
Erevan froze.
For the briefest moment, his light dimmed.
Kairos, bleeding, looked up.
> "Erevan… maybe she's right."
> "No." Erevan shook his head. "If I vanish, everything we've done everything we became it'll be forgotten."
Kairos managed a weak smile.
> "Or maybe… it'll finally be remembered by something greater."
The golden thread pulsed faster reacting to Erevan's emotions.
Light cracked through the void.
The Origin stepped closer, her voice tender.
> "Choose, Erevan. Continue rewriting, and the thread will snap destroying everything. Or return to me… and the stories will live forever."
Erevan closed his eyes.
He could see every world he'd created.
Every being that had ever spoken his name.
Every life his existence had touched.
And he realized he wasn't afraid of ending.
He was afraid of forgetting.
> "Then," he whispered, "I'll make sure no one forgets."
He reached for the thread not to give it back, but to merge with it on his own terms.
> "I won't end," Erevan said, eyes blazing.
"I'll become the memory that keeps everything alive."
The Origin smiled not with pity, but with pride.
> "Then you are truly my heir."
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Light erupted.
Kairos was thrown back as every layer of reality dissolved into a single flash.
The last thread wove itself into Erevan's heart and the universe was reborn once more.
But this time, the first sound wasn't silence.
It was a heartbeat.
> Thump.
And a voice whispering softly:
> "Remember the name Erevan."
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Titles Earned:
Erevan, the Last Thread
Heir of the Origin
Keeper of Eternal Memory