Free Web NovelChapter 236: Chapter 236: The Primordial Silence
Centuries lost all meaning. Time was a rigid construct designed by lesser beings to measure their own inevitable decay. Khaos did not decay. He simply existed as the absolute antithesis of existence.
The mortal world that had birthed him was entirely gone. The Golden Capital of Solaris had been his first victim, but it was far from his last. After the continent collapsed into a roaring ocean, the remaining nations united in a desperate, pathetic attempt to slay the Archmage of Chaos. They sent millions of soldiers, thousands of high clerics, and every legendary champion the world possessed.
Khaos did not even bother to fight them. He simply removed the concept of breathable air from the lower hemisphere.
The floating city of Arcania had been the final stronghold of the mortal realm. Archmage Vespera and the Grand Council used the entire central core of the city to fuel a planetary shield. It was a beautiful, shimmering dome of absolute positive mana. Khaos flew up to the black needle of his former teacher’s spire. He placed his hand on the barrier and remembered the first lesson she had ever taught him. Magic required absolute rules.
He pushed his intent into the shield and ordered the rules to break.
The planetary barrier shattered into a rain of harmless white sparks. The Grand Council fell to their knees in sheer despair. Vespera did not beg. She simply looked at the boy she had tried to control, her glowing white eyes filled with profound sadness. She told him he was no longer a student, nor a boy, nor a mage. He was the absolute end of the song.
Khaos unmade the planet. He did not blow it up. He degraded the physical structure of the globe until the entire world turned to grey ash and scattered into the freezing vacuum of space. freeweɓnøvel.com
Stepping off the dead remains of his home world, Khaos entered the cosmic ocean.
He discovered very quickly that the universe was incredibly loud. The void of space was not actually empty. It hummed with the strict, mathematical laws of cosmic order. Stars burned with perfectly calculated nuclear fusion. Planets orbited in flawless gravitational rhythms. Nebulas birthed new solar systems according to ancient, unbreakable celestial blueprints.
Khaos hated the noise. It reminded him of the arrogant scholars in Arcania. It reminded him of the brutal soldiers of Atrai. The universe was simply a larger kingdom trying to impose its strict rules upon him.
So, he decided to unmake the universe.
His physical body began to change. He was no longer bound by human biology. He did not need oxygen to breathe, nor did he require warmth to survive the absolute zero of deep space. His pale skin hardened into a shell of solidified void. His jet-black hair merged with the ambient darkness of the cosmos. His bright violet eyes had long ago turned into bottomless pools of dark matter. He retained the general silhouette of a human, but he was entirely woven from pure, unadulterated Chaos.
He traveled across the first galaxy simply by stepping through the fabric of spacetime. The physical distance of lightyears meant absolutely nothing to him.
He encountered a massive, burning blue supergiant star. It was millions of times larger than the sun of his dead home world. The intense gravity of the star tried to pull him in and incinerate him. Khaos raised his hand and pinched his fingers together. He forced the massive star to compress, bypassing the laws of thermodynamics entirely. The blue supergiant instantly collapsed into a microscopic singularity and blinked out of existence.
The destruction of the star sent a violent ripple through the cosmic ether.
The masters of the universe finally noticed him. They were the Primordial Celestials. They were ancient beings of pure starlight and cosmic dust, holding the very pillars of reality upon their colossal shoulders. They were the architects of the gravity, time, and light that Khaos was so casually destroying.
A dozen Celestials descended upon him. They were the size of entire solar systems. Their voices echoed in the telepathic frequency of dying quasars. They commanded the anomaly to submit to the Universal Order. They threatened to erase him from the tapestry of time.
Khaos looked up at the colossal gods of the cosmos. He felt the familiar, heavy black door in his soul. It was no longer a door. It was an infinite ocean of hunger.
"Your order is very boring," Khaos told the Celestials. His voice traveled through the vacuum of space, vibrating directly into their celestial cores. "You build worlds that burn innocent people. You make rules that only protect the strong. I am going to break all of your toys."
The war between the Primordial Celestials and the Archmage of Chaos lasted exactly one second.
The gods attempted to strike him with beams of concentrated gamma radiation, attacks powerful enough to cleanse entire galaxies. Khaos did not even raise a shield. He opened his mouth and consumed the cosmic energy. He swallowed the raw light and digested it into absolute nothingness.
Before the Celestials could react, Khaos unleashed his Aura of Despair on a universal scale.
He projected his absolute grief, his infinite anger, and his complete rejection of reality into the bodies of the gods. The Celestials began to rot. Their glowing starlight turned a sickly, bruised purple. Their cosmic bodies degraded into fine grey ash. The immortal architects of the universe screamed in terror as they were reduced to floating debris. Khaos reached out and crushed their celestial cores in his hands, absorbing their primordial authority.
He was no longer just the Archmage of Chaos. He had become the living, breathing embodiment of it. He was the Primordial Villain of the Universe.
His power was now completely vast and utterly immeasurable. He could casually weave dead nebulas into the shape of giant, sugary sweet buns, only to watch them decay into black holes. He could reach his hand into the river of time, pulling entire civilizations backward just to watch them un-invent their own technology. He could alter the fundamental constants of the universe, making light move slower than a crawling insect, or making gravity push objects away instead of pulling them together.
For thousands of eons, Khaos roamed the expanding universe. He hunted down every glowing empire, every cosmic federation, and every celestial guardian. He dismantled the great gears of the cosmos piece by piece.
Eventually, the inevitable happened.
The universe stopped making noise.
Khaos floated in the direct center of existence. He sat upon a massive, jagged throne forged from the compressed cores of a billion dead galaxies. The cosmic sky around him was completely devoid of light. There were no stars left to burn. There were no planets left to spin. There were no gods left to enforce their arrogant rules.
He had achieved absolute, unchallenged supremacy. He had unmade everything that could ever hurt him.
He was perfectly safe.
And he had never felt more alone.
The crushing silence of the dead universe was entirely deafening. It was heavier than the gravity of any star he had ever destroyed. Khaos sat on his dark throne, resting his chin on his fist. His dark matter eyes stared out into the endless, empty abyss of his own magnificent creation.
There was nobody left to fight. There was nobody left to threaten him.
But there was also nobody left to talk to.
There was no blind monk to scold him for eating too much sugar. There was no strict, white-haired Archmage to challenge his understanding of magic. There was no terrified king to beg for mercy at his feet.
Most painfully, there was no mother to knit him a warm blanket. There was no father to smile at him and tell him he was strong.
Khaos raised his hand. He commanded the residual cosmic dust floating around his throne to gather together. He manipulated the absolute fabric of reality, forcing the atoms to bind, shift, and take human form. He recreated the exact physical structure of his father. He formed the broad shoulders, the calloused hands, and the warm, tired eyes. He clothed the construct in a simple woven tunic.
The replica of his father stood before the dark throne. It was physically flawless.
"Tell me I did a good job," Khaos whispered. His voice was no longer a terrifying cosmic boom. It was just the small, pathetic voice of a lonely nine-year-old boy.
The construct did not move. It did not smile. It simply stared forward with dead, empty eyes.
Khaos had the power to manipulate time, space, and matter. He could build a body from the ashes of a star. But he could not create a soul. Chaos could only break things apart. It could never bring them back to life. The absolute paradox of his existence finally crushed the last remaining shred of his humanity.
With a slow, agonizing wave of his hand, Khaos let the cosmic dust scatter back into the void. The replica of his father vanished.
Khaos reached into his dark robes. He pulled out a tiny object. It was the only physical thing in the entire universe he had chosen not to destroy. It was the small wooden pig, painted a ridiculous shade of pink, given to him by Brother Silas on his ninth birthday.
He held the small toy in the palm of his hand. It was a completely meaningless trinket. It held no magic. It possessed no cosmic authority. It was just a piece of carved wood.
Yet, as the Primordial Embodiment of Chaos stared at the toy, a single tear formed in his dark, bottomless eyes. The tear fell, striking the wooden pig. It froze instantly in the absolute cold of the dead universe.
He had won the war against reality. He had proven that his power was the ultimate truth of existence. But as he sat alone on a throne of dead galaxies, surrounded by an infinite ocean of nothingness, Khaos finally realized the cruelest joke of all.
He had destroyed the entire universe, only to find that he had nothing left to live for.
