The sky was vast.
A velvet dome of quiet stars, stretched from horizon to horizon, blinking gently above the tree-fringed hills. To Lucien, it seemed impossibly wide—as if the heavens themselves had pulled back in awe. For so many years, his world had consisted of four walls, white and humming with sterilised silence. Now, with the ruined carcass of the facility smouldering behind him, the open air felt... alien.
But it was not the cold wind on his skin, nor the dust of freedom in his lungs, that drew Lucien's gaze upward.
It was the sky. And the fact that he could see it again.
He stood at the edge of the collapsed earth, a shadow amid rubble and ruin. Beside him, stumbling like a sleepwalker, came Elian—his younger brother, thin as parchment, bruised, and blinking against the light of a world he barely remembered. His steps were halting, his breath quick, but he was walking. Alive.
And for Lucien, that was enough.
Elian reached out, grasping at the sleeve of his brother's tattered coat. His fingers trembled, and when he spoke, his voice was the voice of a ghost.
"L-Lucien… are we… are we free?"
Lucien turned, the last breath of white fog escaping his lips. His eyes—white as bone, white as memory—did not glow, but seemed to drink in the starlight like wells of absence. There was no power in them, not in the usual sense. Just the void. A quiet, waiting stillness.
He nodded.
"Yes, Elian. We're free."
Then, slowly, Lucien lifted a hand and placed it over his brother's chest. Beneath his fingers, Elian's ribs trembled—fractured from beatings, testing, surgery. Pain carved into him by scientists who'd called themselves gods.
A shadow slid forth from Lucien's palm. Not dark in colour, but in nature—a hush, a silence, something that erased rather than touched. It passed through Elian's body like oil through cloth, softening bones, knitting flesh, smoothing over agony.
"You don't have to be strong anymore," Lucien whispered. "I'll make the world soft for you."
---
The Echo of Ash
Far behind them, the mutant facility was gone. Not demolished. Not burned. Gone.
Where its twisted towers and underground vaults once lay, now there was only a scar—a space where space itself seemed frayed, as though reality had tried to look away. The trees around it bent at odd angles. Light shimmered the wrong way.
Lucien hadn't destroyed it.
He had rejected it.
And the multiverse, in quiet surrender, had accepted the loss.
Across the globe, systems failed. Satellites blanked. Surveillance turned static. The world's most powerful agencies chalked it up to malfunction.
But somewhere, in the deep chambers of hidden governments and hidden gods, someone knew the truth.
Oblivion had moved. And Oblivion left no footprints.
---
The Forest Between Worlds
The brothers walked through a pinewood forest, leaves crunching softly beneath Elian's bare feet. Lucien, oddly, made no sound at all. His presence was weightless, like fog—or a dream one couldn't quite recall.
Elian glanced sideways, brushing pine needles from his hair.
"How did you do it?" he asked, voice uncertain. "How did you… destroy all of it?"
Lucien did not look back. His expression was unreadable.
"My power…" he began, almost gently. "They thought it was a mutation. Something they could map. Inject. Sell."
A pause.
"But it's not a substance. Not even energy."
He stopped beneath a crooked tree, resting his fingers against the bark as though testing its memory.
"It's memory, Elian. Conceptual memory. Every character I ever saw—every ability, every idea—lived in me. Comics. Games. Cartoons. Anime. Fiction. My mind made them real."
He looked up at the stars again, their soft shimmer catching in the branches.
"And when they broke me—when I had nothing left—I built something no cage could hold."
---
A Brother's Gift
Lucien turned to Elian again.
"But I didn't just make something for myself."
He extended his hand.
Floating above his palm was a black orb, no larger than a plum. It shimmered like molten shadow, threaded with flickers of starfire and impossible geometry—a seed that refused to be understood.
"This," Lucien said, "is a mutation seed."
Elian reached for it cautiously, as if it might burn.
"It doesn't choose. It doesn't judge. It doesn't ask permission. It simply... gives."
His voice dropped, quiet as snowfall.
"They wanted to regulate powers. Define them. Control them. But now, anyone can become anything. Heroes. Monsters. Concepts."
"The universe has had too many rules for too long. It's time... for chaos."
Elian stared at the orb.
"And if I eat it?"
Lucien smiled faintly, brushing a hand through his brother's ragged hair.
"Then you'll be part of what comes next."
---
The First Bloom
Elian swallowed the seed.
For a moment, nothing happened. The forest stood still, owls silent in their trees. Then came a low hum—like wind inside the bones of the earth. Elian gasped, eyes wide.
Light—pure, colorless light—shone from within his chest. His veins shimmered. His eyes flashed gold, then violet, then spiraled into hues unknown to mortal vision.
Then he collapsed.
Lucien caught him easily.
When Elian opened his eyes again, they were calm. Lucid.
"I feel…" he murmured. "Awake. Like everything finally fits."
Lucien nodded.
"Perhaps one power. Perhaps many. It's different every time. That's the brilliance."
"You," he said softly, "are the first."
---
Whispers in the Dark
In the coming days, whispers spread across Earth and beyond.
Of two boys seen walking from fire without a mark.
Of black orbs traded in backrooms and black markets—gifts that rewrote the soul.
Of a white-eyed phantom who could not be harmed, touched, or even named.
And in every tale, one name returned like a curse.
Lucien.
The boy who did not escape the system.
He unwrote it.
---
A New Order
Lucien stood atop a hillside, the stars burning fiercely above. Elian stood beside him, still glowing faintly, the seed's power coiling in his veins.
Lucien's gaze swept the heavens.
"We'll plant them everywhere," he said. "Seeds of change. In every timeline. Every empire. Every god-kingdom that ever dared to believe it was safe."
He paused.
"The multiverse has lived too long without disruption."
He turned, eyes cold.
"Now... Oblivion watches."