The Beyond was no battlefield.It was endless whiteness, infinite in every direction — no planets to crumble, no suns to collapse, no galaxies to burn. Only the emptiness of a canvas meant for gods. Yet the moment Aiden and the Beyonders clashed, the void itself seemed to tremble as if unwilling to hold the weight of so much power.
The first Beyonder struck like a tidal wave of pure existence, a blast that could have erased Earth without leaving a memory behind. Aiden twisted space around himself, vanishing sideways into a fracture in reality. He reappeared with flames dancing across his arms, not flames of heat but of concept — fire that gnawed at the idea of being, making the Beyonder's own form flicker.
"Enough of this!" Aiden roared, his voice carrying across eternity itself. "I didn't come here to fight you! Oblivion is the threat!"
But the rabid cries of the inciter drowned him out."LIAR! He speaks of saving while plotting to seize our realm! Slaughter the Celestial before he devours US!"
The horde descended.
Hundreds of Beyonders, beings whose casual gesture could erase civilizations, surged like a storm. Their energies painted streaks of impossible colors across the white expanse, ripping and folding the fabric of the Beyond.
Aiden met them head-on. His draconic wings unfurled, stretching like black-gold constellations, each feather sharp enough to slice the void. He spat a torrent of Draconic flame, but it wasn't mere fire — it was hunger given form, burning reality itself. Three Beyonders dissolved, their humanoid forms collapsing into raw static as his flame erased the foundations they stood on.
Yet the retaliation was immediate.A hundred hands raised, and from each poured an ocean of annihilation. Bolts of uncreation, blades of null-light, floods of energy that could drown an entire galaxy. The Beyond lit up like a trillion dying stars.
Aiden carved through it all. Space shattered as he wove through impossible angles, dodging blasts by slipping through slivers of dimensions. His fist met a Beyonder's skull, and with the weight of his draconic might amplified by Infinity's gift, he crushed it into nothing. The shockwave rippled across the white expanse, hurling bodies of gods away like meteors.
"LISTEN TO ME!" Aiden's mental voice ripped through the battlefield as he unleashed his newly-sharpened mind powers. His psychic roar split through dozens of their minds, staggering them. For brief, precious seconds, mental gaps formed — windows of hesitation. Aiden surged forward, his claws glowing with the essence of Nemesis, and ripped open a Beyonder's chest, the being screaming as its essence bled into the void.
"Do you see!?" he thundered. "If I wished your extinction, you would already be GONE!"
For a moment, hesitation flickered. But the voice of the instigator Beyonder cut through like venom."Don't falter! That is the Celestial's trick! Strike before he bends you under his will!"
The swarm resumed, even more ferocious.
They came at him in tides, hundreds overlapping their powers — some tearing the laws of physics apart, others wielding chains of antimatter storms, others summoning void constructs sharp enough to pierce dimensions. Each blow Aiden dodged or countered would have annihilated a lesser god. Still, his body bled light from the strain, the sheer clash of energies searing him inside.
He roared and spun mid-void, his draconic tail lashing out, shattering three Beyonders into dust. He opened his maw and released another flame — this one so bright it split infinity into fractures. The flames wrapped around dozens, burning them into collapsing paradoxes.
And then, he raised his hand.Reality itself twisted. The stones and Nemesis's gifts surged, collapsing the Beyonders' energies back onto themselves. One by one, their attacks were reflected, turned inside-out. Explosions of godly scale rocked the Beyond, tearing vast cracks of light into the white.
Still, they kept coming.Monsters. True monsters. If even a handful of them had been unleashed on Earth, Aiden's world would have been nothing but ash and forgotten whispers. And now he was locked against hundreds.
.....
He watched the next Beyonder's light gutter out—then vanish.Not torn, not burned. Erased. Absolute extinction. No echo. No afterimage. A hole where a god had been.
Aiden raised his head.
Across the white expanse, where the war was a cyclone of annihilation, Knull danced through the host like a slaughtering god. He moved with terrible joy—each strike finished with a laugh, each severed form a plaything. Three Beyonders—monsters that should have taken armies—fell from a single sweep of his blade and folded into nothing. No grief. No hesitation. Only celebration.
Aiden felt something cold settle in his gut. He knew Knull's old power—awful, catastrophic—but that had been when Celestials backed him like a battering ram. Reborn, he shouldn't have been able to carve gods from existence like wheat. Yet here he stood, smiling as he murdered.
"How is he doing that?" Aiden muttered, just as a spear of concentrated dark-matter screamed past his face. He twisted through a crack in reality and came up on the Beyonder who had been egging the crowd on—the one wearing a human mask, arrogant and laced with contempt.
Aiden's eyes narrowed until they were white-hot. "This—this is your doing," he said. The words were a blade.
The Beyonder clicked his tongue, delighted. "I am honored you noticed," he purred. "Yes—my handiwork. Does it not thrill you? These fools only starve their minds with knowledge. They study, they catalogue. How dull. Once, they were conquerors. Glory, war—such poetry. Now they are scholars of the void, and I grew tired of their piety."
Aiden's jaw tightened. "You watch your people be erased and you reminisce about their old ways?"
The Beyonder shrugged, the motion almost casual in the infinity of the Beyond. "I never liked them. I always wanted them dead, but our nature forbids inter-Beyonder slaughter—rules hard-coded into us. So I found a solution: a demon from another order, a Celestial with the hunger for ruin. Gift him power, and the deed is done. He does the killing; I enjoy the show."
Aiden looked at the face beneath the human shape—too smug, too small for the hatred it carried. "Why the human form?" he asked, razor-quiet.
The Beyonder's grin widened until it was a cut across a star. "Because it is deliciously ironic. Humans are cunning, vicious—so bold in their cruelty. I was born in a pocket and slipped out early. I landed in your universe and tasted it: the lies, the bargains, the petty savagery. Spectacle. Entertainment." He licked his lips as if savoring a memory. "They amuse me. To save your world? No—no. I will erase it. Why? Because I can. Because their suffering is exquisite. Oblivion? If I survive that, I shall laugh in its face. But if I do not—well, at least I will have watched the theatre of their end."
Fire gathered in Aiden's chest, a white-hot core fed by every horror he'd seen the Beyonder commit. The draconic flames along his arms flared until the very idea of heat bowed. He stepped forward, a column of judgment.
"Not if I erase you long before Oblivion does," he said.