CHAPTER 1: THE LAST QUESTION
The clock had died screaming.
Betaal didn't remember when it stopped.
But he remembered the sound—that delicate tick-tick-tick that meant the universe was still ticking forward, still alive.
Now, only silence.
For him, the silence had become everything. White noise.
A lullaby.
A lie that took three centuries to perfect.
He stood in the courtyard of Ashvan City, watching the woman breathe.
Just that.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Her chest rose like a trapped bird learning to surrender.
"You cannot give me the answer," she whispered.
Not a question.
A statement of fact.
Of despair.Betaal's lips curved upward.
Not a smile—something that had forgotten how to be a smile.
His eyes were grey.
Not the grey of wisdom.
The grey of a mirror with nothing left to reflect but hunger.
"Why would you say that, Priya? "She flinched. Hard.
Her body went rigid like a struck tuning fork.
Names were power.
Names were chains.
She had never told him her name.
"Because," her voice steadied despite the tremor in her hands, "if I answer your riddle wrong... I die."
She paused.
Forced herself to continue.
"But if I answer it right, I have to become you. Another judge.
Another god.
Another warden watching people suffer.
"The wind moved through Ashvan City like it was apologizing.
Dust rose from cracked streets in patterns that looked almost like urgent handwriting—messages from the earth itself.
Above, the sky had become that impossible shade of blue that only existed when something holy was dying.
The broken clock tower cast a shadow that extended too far, touching buildings it had no right to reach, as if time itself had warped into geometry that shouldn't be possible.
Around them, the city held its breath.Merchants had shuttered their shops. Children pulled inside before nightfall.
The only sounds were wind and the distant clink of bells from the Temple of Forgotten Names—where people went to disappear.
Priya stood barefoot on the stone platform, circled by white chalk. A ritual ground.
A trial ground.
A grave-to-be.Her grey dress—ash-grey, future-grey—hung like the shadow of someone still living.
"I won't answer," she said, and her voice cracked like ancient clay finally breaking.
"I refuse.
"Betaal's expression didn't shift. But something in the air did.
The wind stopped moving.
Shadows sharpened into knives.
Even the dying light seemed to understand: this was the moment that mattered.
"Everyone answers," he said.
"That's the only rule.
The only law.
""Then I refuse your law.
""You can't refuse.
""I can die.
"For a moment—so brief that even Betaal might have imagined it—something flickered across his face.
Not doubt.
Betaal didn't doubt anymore.
Doubt was a human weakness he'd refined away centuries ago.
But recognition.
He had seen this before.
This refusal.
This choice to die rather than live under his judgment. And each time, it had left a hairline fracture in something he'd buried so deep he'd convinced himself it didn't exist.The woman—Priya—was staring at him with eyes that had suddenly gone very still.
Not afraid anymore.
Sad.
Sad for him.
Sad for the god who had forgotten why he'd become a judge in the first place.Because I wanted to save people, a voice whispered from the depths of his memory.
Because I wanted to show them truth so they could choose better.
Could be better.When had that become punishment? When had mercy become cruelty?He didn't know.
Couldn't remember.
The centuries had blurred that line so completely that it no longer existed.
His hand moved toward her.
To catch her as she swayed.
To comfort her.Then he stopped.Why did I stop? he thought, and the thought itself—that tiny crack in his certainty—was when everything broke.
The sky opened.
Not gradually.
Not with warning.
It simply tore.
Light poured through the wound—not gold or purple, but every color that existed and colors that shouldn't.
The light was vast.
Conscious.
Searching.
For him.
Priya screamed.
Her hands flew up to shield her eyes, but the light wasn't meant to be blocked.
It was meant to penetrate.
To invade.
To see everything.
When it found Betaal, it didn't ask permission.
The courtyard began to dissolve.
Ashvan City became translucent.
He could see through buildings, through earth, through the very bones of his own creation.
And beneath it all—threads.
Countless threads of light connecting every universe to every other universe.
Most of them were breaking.
"What is—" Betaal started.
A voice cut through him.
Not from the air. From inside his mind.
From the core of his being.
From the part that remembered being born into divinity.
[BETAAL]
[REGIONAL DEMIGOD OF KORATRI UNIVERSE]
[MASTER OF RIDDLES]
[KEEPER OF FATES]
[JUDGE OF THE FORGOTTEN]
[YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUIRED]
[THE GRAND INTEGRATION IS UPON ALL WORLDS]
[RESISTANCE WILL RESULT IN DIMENSIONAL COLLAPSE]
The light pulled harder.
His molecules were beginning to separate.
Beginning to drift toward something beyond comprehension.
Priya was on her knees now, her grey dress spreading around her like spilled ash.
She looked up at him with eyes that had finally learned to cry.
"What happens to me?" she asked.Betaal looked down at her.
The courtyard was dissolving into nothing. Soon there would be no Ashvan City.
No trial ground.
No broken clock.
No him.
"You choose," he said, and his voice sounded different now.
Softer.
Like a god remembering how to be human. "That's all I was ever trying to teach you.
""Choose what?""To live.
To die.
To become a judge.
To refuse.
To be something more than what I've condemned you to be.
"The light was pulling harder now. His last moments were fragmenting.
Priya stood up slowly. And in that moment—in that final second before everything changed—she did something neither of them expected.She smiled.
"I choose to remember you as someone who once cared.
"The light flashed.
And Betaal—the god who had judged thousands, who had held the fate of an entire universe in his hands, who had forgotten what it meant to feel—vanished.
Behind him, Priya remained, standing alone in a courtyard that was rapidly becoming a memory.
The broken clock was still there.
But now, impossibly, it had begun to tick again.
And with every tick, the threads connecting her universe to others were beginning to break.