The light did not fade.
It erased.
For a moment that had no duration, existence held its breath.
Then—
Silence.
The battlefield of Dimension Prime was gone. No armies. No voidspawn. No citadels of light. Only drifting fragments of shattered sky, suspended in a pale emptiness where gravity had forgotten its purpose.
At the center of a crater carved into nothingness, Ben knelt.
The Omnigene flickered weakly on his wrist, its glow unstable, cycling through broken sigils. Smoke rose from his armor. His ears rang with a soundless echo — the kind left behind when time itself had screamed.
"David…" His voice cracked.
Ahead of him, the abyss that Neroth had opened was sealed — but not cleanly. A jagged scar hung in reality like a wound stitched in haste. Beyond it, stars flickered uncertainly.
There was no sign of Neroth.
There was no sign of David.
Ben staggered to his feet. He extended his senses through the weave of magic, searching for the familiar current of kinetic divinity — the hum that always accompanied the God of Speed.
Nothing.
Not absence.
Not death.
Nothing.
As if the concept of David had been deleted from the present.
The Omnigene suddenly pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then it projected a fractured holographic interface, glyphs scrambling as if resisting corruption.
CHRONAL ANOMALY DETECTED
PRIMARY HOST SIGNATURE DISPLACED
DESTINATION: UNKNOWN VECTOR OUTSIDE HIERARCHY
Ben's eyes widened. "You idiot…" he whispered — but relief trembled beneath the words. "You didn't die."
The scar in the sky pulsed violently.
From within it, a voice rolled outward — weakened, but unmistakable.
Neroth.
"You have not won, little mage…" the God of Evil hissed. "He did not destroy me. He ran… beyond causality."
Darkness seeped from the wound like ink in water.
"He severed himself from the chain of time. A god who outruns fate outruns existence itself."
Ben clenched his fists. "Where is he?"
Neroth's laughter was thin now, fraying at the edges.
"He is nowhere. He is everywhere. He is falling."
The scar snapped shut.
Silence returned.
Ben stood alone in the ruins of a war erased from history.
Then the stars began to rearrange.
High above what remained of Dimension Prime, the Cosmic Hierarchy stirred.
Ancient entities — beings older than light — turned their attention toward the anomaly.
A decree echoed across the upper planes:
A God Has Breached the Prime Limit.
Divinity Unbound.
Containment Protocol Initiated.
Ben felt it instantly — a suppression wave descending from beyond the visible spectrum of reality.
"They're afraid of him," he realized.
The Omnigene flared defensively as cosmic chains of law began weaving themselves into the fabric of existence.
Far away.
Far below.
Far outside.
David opened his eyes.
He was falling — not through air, but through layers of reality peeling away like pages torn from a book.
Fragments of timelines flashed around him. Futures he had not lived. Pasts he had forgotten. Versions of himself that never existed.
His armor was cracked.
His divinity was unstable.
The Chrono-Arcane Drive was gone.
He tried to move — and for the first time since his ascension…
He was slow.
Below him, a single world rotated in quiet indifference.
Not a divine realm.
Not a cosmic battlefield.
A mortal planet.
Primitive.
Dense.
Bound by linear time.
As he descended, his power compressed violently, forced inward by laws he could not override. Lightning dimmed to sparks. Chronal energy condensed into a faint pulse beneath his skin.
His memories flickered.
Names faded.
Battles blurred.
He reached toward the sky instinctively —
—but gravity claimed him.
The atmosphere ignited around his falling form like a dying star.
And somewhere, on a small continent of that unsuspecting world, a child looked up and saw a silver streak tear across the heavens.
David closed his eyes.
If I must begin again…
Then I will run again.
He struck the earth.
Darkness followed.