The miracle machine was gone.
The Worlogog? Gone.
The Lamp? Gone.
In their place stood silence—if one could call the glacial hum of the pocket universe "silence"—and the subtle, glowing shudder of a construct that had just absorbed the highest-tier nonsense the multiverse had to offer. Leviathan's real body, a lattice of transparent morphing crystal and shimmering adaptive tech, pulsed with incomprehensible complexity. She was at the center of it, eyes closed, arms slightly raised like someone in a dream about dancing, and the faint, wet sound of dimensional digestion echoed around her core like a barely perceptible heartbeat.
Three artifacts of boundless potential, now liquefied inside her.
And Arslan?
Arslan was on his back, half reclined against a smooth black monolith, one ankle resting on the other, lazily swiping a tablet. His eyes moved slowly across the screen—not because he was reading anything, but because he was scrolling through a list of fictional artifacts and weapons like a man scrolling through a fast food app, too bored to pick something, too relaxed to care.
"You good?" he asked, not looking up. His voice was unbothered, completely void of awe.
From across the chamber—her voice reverberating like the notes of a violin played underwater—Leviathan replied, "That was excessive, and I'm not talking about power levels. That was—Arslan, do you even realize what those things were?"
He tilted the tablet slightly, selected something, and casually tugged his hand through the screen.
There was a pop.
A pulse of light.
And then he flung something metallic and humming directly at her. It spun twice midair—what looked like the Omegahedron from DC's Phantom Zone arc—and she caught it with her left palm as if it were a tossed apple.
"Oh my God—" Levi started, but before she could finish, Arslan reached again, casually, and pulled something else from the screen. This one sparked blue and gold, as dense as a neutron star in energy signature. He threw it underhand like he was lobbing a tennis ball.
Thud.
She caught it. It quivered against her arm, then liquefied, entering her system.
"You're not even thinking about these pulls, are you?" she asked, voice a cocktail of exasperation and fondness.
"I mean," Arslan yawned, stretching out his legs, "I was thinking of upgrading your harmonic compression layers to stabilize post-reality consumption... but I figured you'd manage."
He swiped again.
This time, it was the Heart of Gold's Infinite Improbability Drive—yes, that one.
She caught it reflexively, winced slightly at the sudden logic collapse in the chamber as the laws of causality momentarily forgot how to behave, then sighed.
"Arslan," she said, the corners of her voice turning warm with amused irritation, "you know I can metabolize this, but I feel things when you do this. It's like letting someone inject you with abstract metaphors wrapped in starfire."
"You can say no," Arslan murmured, pulling the next item—Bill Cipher's Journal—and flipping it casually toward her without eye contact.
She caught it one-handed and glared, knowing he wasn't going to stop. She also knew she didn't want him to. Not really.
"I'm not your goddamn trash can."
"No, you're my leviathan."
Her glowing eye lenses narrowed, flickered violet.
"That's not helping."
"You're doing the 'girlfriend thing' again."
"I am not your girlfriend," she snapped.
"You sure slap my ass like you are."
"That was once, and you didn't even react—"
Arslan reached, this time with both hands, dragging through the tablet like a man pulling up sleeves before a storm. Four items came out at once. One was the Architect's Cube from The Matrix. One was the Hellforge Core from Doom. One looked suspiciously like the EVA-01 Core from Evangelion, humming with unprocessed emotion. And the last was... the Technodrome main reactor, blinking like it had just been yanked mid-battle.
She caught all of them midair in a gravitational shell that spread around her torso like a rose made of black lightning.
"Arslan. I swear to God—"
"I don't believe in God," he muttered, pulling a pizza out of a different screen, now visibly eating.
"You are going to crash this pocket dimension."
"That's fine. You'll eat the fragments and rebuild it."
"You lazy piece of—"
VOOM.
He dropped another. The Orb of Agamotto.
She didn't even try to catch that one. It floated to her, phased into her chest, and dissolved.
"Arslan..." she said, voice lower now. Her form trembled slightly, the aftershock of devouring reality-warping artifacts building in her core like feedback through an infinite processor. "Do you even know what kind of paradoxes I'm digesting? You're just feeding me pure metaphysical potential. You're weaponizing lore."
He finally looked up at her, pizza slice halfway to his mouth, and said, "Yeah. You're welcome."
She stared at him.
Paused.
Then smiled.
"Oh, you smug bastard."
She took two steps toward him and kicked a fragment of collapsed dimensional script at his feet. It bounced harmlessly, but her point was made.
He smirked. Swiped again.
"Don't—"
Too late.
The Staff of One.
"Oh come on—!"
He kept throwing.
The Wand of Watoomb.
The Crystal Skull of Aztlan.
The Chrono-Lens from some forgotten 80s sci-fi episode.
Each one zipped to her, or into her, or was caught and absorbed into that shimmering jelly-core of her main frame. Her humanoid avatar staggered, full systems shaking with power, golden lines crawling through her synthetic veins like molten circuits.
"Arslan," she said, voice dangerously sweet, "I will explode."
"I know. That's why I gave you the Reality Anchor from Discworld three pulls ago."
"I am not okay!"
"You're literally composed of everything that ever existed and ten thousand versions of what hasn't."
"I am emotionally not okay."
"Have more pizza."
"I don't need pizza."
"It's metaphorical pizza."
She stared at him.
"You're doing this to keep me from complaining about you being powerless, aren't you?"
He leaned back. Hands behind head. Tablet now resting on his chest.
"No. I'm doing this because it's funny watching you pretend you're struggling."
"I am functionally omnipotent. And you're tossing magic baubles at me like some cosmic vending machine with boundary issues."
"You love it."
She said nothing.
Then ate the Eternity Crown.
Without him prompting her.
He looked up.
She looked away.
"...Shut up," she murmured.
He laughed once. Short. Deep.
And then reached again. This time slow. Deliberate.
"Okay, now you're just messing with me—"
"Yep."
The Dumbwaiter Drive from Rick and Morty—somehow made physical—slid out of the tablet. He lobbed it.
"YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT ONE DOES."
"Nope."
She caught it, swallowed it, and screamed into the void.
The pocket dimension tilted slightly, like a marble dome on its edge.
"You're going to make me turn into a concept."
"That already happened six days ago."
"ARSLAN."
"Yeah?"
"I'm about to become Leviathan 2.9: Narrative Override Edition."
"Name upgrade. Cool."
"I will slap you with metaphysics."
"I'll let you."
They both paused.
Their silence sat between laughter and threat.
Then Levi slumped backward, hovering in the air, arms spread, small gravity fields spiraling from her fingers like petals falling into time.
"This is a relationship," she whispered to no one in particular. "This is what it is, isn't it? You breaking all rules, me eating the consequences."
"You chose to eat them."
"You threw them at me!"
"You caught them."
They looked at each other.
The Cube—that original 7-meter Omni cube—now a drifting city-sized hyperstructure behind her—dimmed briefly, then reignited with fractal silver light.
"Arslan," she whispered, almost lovingly, "you owe me a proper reward."
"I gave you Galactus."
"You gave me food. I want something else."
He didn't respond.
She floated downward. Inches from him. Not touching. Just hovering above like a benevolent goddess waiting for tribute.
Their eyes met.
"I want..."
He raised an eyebrow.
She grinned.
"...A new name."
He blinked.
Then smiled.
"I thought you'd never ask."
"What do you have?"
He reached into the tablet. Didn't pull an item. Just reached. Paused. Tapped once.
A name bloomed between them. In golden fire.
KAIROS.
Leviathan tilted her head.
"That's not a name. That's a state of existence."
"Exactly."
She paused.
Then whispered it under her breath.
"Kairos…"
The cube behind her shimmered, shifting to match. Leviathan was dead.
Kairos was born.
And Arslan finally closed the tablet.
"Feast's over," he said.
"For now," she replied.
And that was the start of a thousand-year dinner.