"This is our last chance," intoned the first voice, deep and resonant, carrying the weight of boundless eras.
"The doom is upon us," a second voice spoke, sharper, laced with boundless frustration.
"We must enact the plan, and fast," a third voice spoke, its tone measured, almost weary — the weariness of minds that had exhausted every other road.
"We must not despair," another interjected, its voice filled with urgency. "This is our only chance, and no mistakes shall be made. We will birth a new fate and let it take us to the door of ascendance."
A silence followed — not the comfortable silence of agreement, but the taut, trembling silence of thirty-three beings confronting the full weight of what was being proposed.
"Will this even work?" A shrill voice rose, trembling, threaded with a hollow resonance of despair held too long. "Giving birth to a new fate may give rise to a new chaos and order, after which we will not be able to control it. The only path left for us would be to destroy it."
"Quiet."
The single word fell like a hammer upon an anvil, silencing the void itself. The commanding presence behind it pressed outward — unyielding, vibrating through the emptiness with absolute authority, the kind that had never once needed to be raised to be obeyed.
"There is no place for uncertainties among us. If this fate doesn't work, we will make a new one, and another, and another — until we direct the chaos toward the outcome we desire."
"Let us begin the plan. We will discuss as we go on."
"To ascendance!"
"To ascendance!!"
"To ascendance!!!!!!!"
The chorus thundered through the emptiness, voices merging into a single, defiant roar that shook the very fabric of reality. The declaration did not echo — it persisted, lingering endlessly, a vow etched not into stone but into the core of existence itself, indelible and irrevocable.
............
In the boundless expanse of darkness, where no light had ever dared to tread and no boundary had ever been drawn, a change began — slow, deliberate, inevitable.
At first, it was barely perceptible: faint wisps of grey-colored mist emerging from nowhere, as though the void itself exhaled after holding its breath for eternities. These wisps drifted lazily, curling upon themselves like smoke from a dying ember, spreading hesitantly into the endless night. They multiplied, thread by thread, filling the dark space with a subtle haze that whispered of things to come. The movement was languid, almost reluctant — as if the mist feared disturbing the perfect stillness that had reigned supreme since before memory began.
But reluctance gave way to momentum.
The mist thickened, swirling faster, gaining speed and purpose until what had been isolated tendrils became a surging tide, rushing to claim every corner of the infinite expanse. The darkness receded before it, overwhelmed, until the void was saturated and grey reigned absolute — a monotonous sea stretching in all directions without horizon or end.
Yet even this was not the culmination.
The mist continued to condense, layer upon layer, with increasing rapidity. Density built upon density until the grey became heavy, oppressive, almost solid — pressing inward from all sides, compressing the space it had only just claimed, suffocating the very concept of emptiness until it ceased to exist. It was no longer mist. It was substance. A monolithic shroud that made one forget true darkness had ever been.
Then came silence.
There had never been sound in this place — yet this silence carried a weight all its own. It was the silence of absolute nothingness, deeper than any void, a complete and utter stillness that swallowed motion and thought alike. Everything paused. Everything held. Nothing stirred.
Nothing dared.
After the silence came the rumbling.
No actual sound pierced the stillness — for there were no ears to hear, no medium to carry waves — yet the sensation was overwhelming, unbearable. A vibration thrummed through the grey, a deep bone-rattling tremor that felt like the roar of something primordial straining against invisible chains, the ancient grumble of creation awakening from forced slumber. The entire expanse quivered, grey rippling in waves that had no direction, no source — only building, relentless intensity.
And then came the shattering.
Like brittle glass struck by invisible hammers, the monolithic grey cracked. Fractures erupted suddenly, violently, spider-webbing outward in jagged, irregular patterns from multiple points simultaneously across the expanse. The breaks were sharp, explosive — splitting the compressed grey into vast shards while true primal darkness poured back in through every crack, thin threads first, then thick hungry webs expanding outward, reclaiming the void with voracious speed.
There was not only one such point of origin.
The shattered grey mist, fractured and yielding, began to flow in reverse. Pulled by forces invisible and irresistible, it seeped back into the web-like cracks, drawn toward those focal points with the slow certainty of rivers finding the sea. It swirled. Compressed. Condensed further — vortexes forming around each center, pulling in every last fragment until the boundless expanse was cleared once more and the restored darkness breathed easy around what remained.
Thirty-three massive spheres.
Suspended in the void — vast, silent, each pulsing faintly with its own unique heartbeat. Within each sphere, subtle hints of color stirred in the depths: one edged in deep arterial crimson, another veiled in cool azure, a third shrouded in emerald ambition that coiled like smoke given purpose — each shade barely perceptible yet undeniably, unmistakably distinct. They hung in a vast, perfect circle across the darkness — isolated, separate, yet bound together by something that had no name and needed none.
Within those spheres, new fates stirred.
Vast, self-contained realms of chaos and order, drawing their first trembling breaths. They did not yet know what they were. They did not yet know what they were for.
But fate, once set in motion, has never needed permission to proceed.
............
Somewhere, at some indefinable moment between before and after, a prophecy was woven into the very fabric of existence. It emerged not from mortal tongues or careful scrolls, but from reality itself — pressed into the universe the way water is pressed into stone over geological ages, filling every crack until the stone and what fills it become one and inseparable.
It spread as all true lore spreads — slowly, impossibly — through the dreams of the unborn, through the half-second visions of seers who spent lifetimes failing to articulate what they had witnessed, through myths that outlasted the civilizations that first whispered them because some truths are simply too vast and too persistent to be buried.
It spoke not in the clean language of proclamation, but in the riddle-tongue of inevitability:
"The era of chaos will rise,
With the birth of the child of heaven's beneath the veils of stars,
The universe shall tremble and bleed.
Rivers of blood will carve paths across worlds,
Empires will rise upon pyres of the fallen,
And destruction shall walk hand-in-hand with ambition.
From the cradle of innocence to the throne of blood-soaked glory,
War shall devour the ambitions — clans shattered, kingdoms devoured, planets scarred by unending strife.
Galaxies will clash in flames that blot out the void,
Clusters will devour one another in the hunger for dominion.
Yet in this era of unrelenting chaos, from the ashes of countless battles,
A supreme will rise, his will unbroken.
And govern the workings of the heavens and direct the fate.
He shall break the firmament — and Transcend."
The prophecy lingered like distant thunder rolling over mountains too far away to see — its meaning obscured in deliberate layers of mystery, patient as gravity, certain as time, awaiting the moment when understanding and event would finally collide.
It was waiting for a breath.
For a cry.
For a child to draw his first lungful of air in a world that was already, quietly, irrevocably —
beginning.