For the first ten thousand years, it was paradise.
Lia and I were a divine literary power couple. We wrote entire universes into existence on a whim. We crafted sagas of epic heroes, tragedies of star-crossed lovers, and an absurd number of comedies about philosophizing space-sloths. The Bard King, our new head of continuity and cosmic soundtracks, kept our vast library of stories in perfect, harmonious order. Sir Gideon, the blank-slate hero, became our go-to "actor," a vessel we could cast in any leading role a new narrative required.
Our "Narrative Energy" grew to levels that were, frankly, just ridiculous numbers. We were the undisputed masters of our own, creative corner of the Overvoid.
It was a perfect, idyllic, and creatively fulfilling existence.
And I was starting to get a little bored again.
"It's all too easy," I complained one millennium, as we watched a particularly heroic hero I'd just written successfully defeat a magnificently evil (but ultimately doomed) dark lord I'd also written. "We write the script. The characters follow the script. The story ends exactly as we planned. There's no challenge. There's no surprise."
Lia, who was reclining on a throne made of pure, solidified moonlight, looked at me with an amused expression. You are a god of chaos who has created a system of perfect, predictable order, my love, she sent, her telepathic voice a gentle, teasing melody. What did you expect?
She was right. I had become the very thing I'd once rebelled against: a boring, predictable Game Master.
My System, my own, internal, ever-shameless Omnistructure, seemed to agree.
[SOVEREIGN'S WHIM: BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL]
[Description: Your current creative process is a closed loop. It lacks external feedback. To create a truly 'interesting' story, one must consider the audience.]
[Objective: Open a 'suggestion box'. Create a limited, one-way channel to the 'Multiversal Broadcast Network' you were once a part of. Solicit anonymous feedback on your work from the countless beings who are, unknowingly, your readers.]
[Purpose: To introduce a new, unpredictable variable into your creative process: audience opinion.]
"A suggestion box," I mused. "A cosmic comments section. What a delightfully terrible idea. I love it."
I focused my will, and for the first time in eons, I opened a tiny, read-only window back to the network of the regular multiverse. I sent out a single, simple, anonymous broadcast:
"I am a Creator. I am looking for a new story. Pitch me your ideas."
The response was instantaneous and overwhelming. A billion billion thoughts, ideas, and half-baked plots from a million different realities flooded my senses. Most of it was trash. Heroic epics that were thinly veiled wish-fulfillment. Tragedies that were just depressing. And an alarming number of stories that seemed to revolve entirely around sentient, amorous furniture.
But one message, one "comment," cut through the noise. It was not a story idea. It was a complaint. And it was not anonymous.
The message was from a name I had not thought about in millennia. The last, forgotten, and most pathetic of my old rivals.
[FROM: Prince Valerius, The 'Spare Hero' of Aethelgard-1]
[MESSAGE: 'Creator'? 'God'? You are a fraud. You are a story-thief. You did not just create a world. You STOLE one. You stole MY world.]
The message was accompanied by an image, a real-time view of a place I had thought was just a dead memory.
It was Aethelgard-1. The original. The Ground Floor I had abandoned after Seraphina's ghost had taken over.
But it was not a world in flames. It was… thriving. The cities had been rebuilt. The political factions had stabilized. And sitting on the throne of the Ravencrest Empire was not the Seraphina-golem, but my second brother, Valerius. He looked older, wearier, but he was radiating a quiet, determined power. The "spare hero" that the world's will had tried to empower had, in the long, quiet eons since I'd left, actually succeeded. He had cleaned up the mess left by all the cosmic players and had become the true, legitimate king.
This was not a threat. This was an accusation of plagiarism.
But it was the twist, the second part of his message, that truly caught my attention. A detail that was utterly, cosmically impossible.
[You did not just steal our world,] the message continued. [You stole our future. When you and the other 'players' left, you took the 'Tower' with you. You took away our world's connection to the Great Game. You took away our path to ascension.]
[We are trapped. A story with no next chapter. A game with no sequel.]
[But we have found a new path. We have been digging. We have been exploring the ruins your chaos left behind. And we have found something. A backdoor. A glitch in the source code of our own reality.]
[We are about to write our own expansion pack, 'Creator'. We are coming to find you.]
The image attached showed a group of Aethelgardian cultivators in a deep, hidden ruin. And at its center was a strange, shimmering, and impossibly familiar object.
It was a single, perfect, obsidian throne.
My throne. The one I had created and sat upon in the Abyssal Plane, the one I had abandoned when I left that reality.
The twist wasn't just that they had found a way to follow me.
It was that a piece of my own, sovereign, god-like power—an artifact I had created and discarded—had been left behind. And my old, forgotten enemies were about to use it as a key to break into my new, perfect reality. My own past was literally coming back to haunt me, and it had found my spare set of keys.