The Nullpoint was not a place.
It was an absence. A subtraction of reality so absolute that Ethan could feel it gnawing at his skin even from the TARDIS threshold. The light beyond wasn't darkness — it was anti-light, the memory of illumination erased before it could exist.
Jason's voice was low. "We breach in three minutes. Past here, even Endless bleed."
Sherlock adjusted the TARDIS controls. "Past here, nothing exists. Keep that in mind, Ethan."
"I'll keep it in mind," Ethan said, stepping toward the boundary. The Carnitrix was already running subroutines, its voice taut in his head.
> Warning: Host presence will destabilize beyond threshold. Recommend upgrade protocols.
"Upgrades?" Ethan muttered.
> Upgrades.
---
The First Gate — The SCP Omega Breach
The boundary rippled — and something pushed through.
It was SCP-096, but wrong. Taller. Skin stretched thin over a Lovecraftian frame of impossible angles. Its face was an ever-shifting mask of the viewer's deepest guilt. Ethan's stomach twisted; he knew this was one of the "Omega-Forbidden" reclassifications Jason had warned about.
Jason's sword flashed once, carving a line of Presence through the void, but the thing didn't die. Ethan knew it wouldn't. This was Nullpoint space. Killing here meant nothing. So he shifted — Diamondhead form, refracting shards of crystal into endless jagged spears.
SCP-096 screamed.
But the scream wasn't sound — it was deletion. Segments of the platform blinked out of reality as it charged. Ethan shifted mid-strike to Chromastone, absorbing the anti-light and hurling it back as a raw, unfiltered beam.
Jason finished it with a cut that split the thing along two timelines at once.
Sherlock didn't look up from the controls. "Gate One cleared. Gate Two in sixty seconds."
---
The System Speaks
The air… if it could be called that… folded in on itself. Ethan froze.
A voice spoke, not in sound, but in the architecture of thought itself.
> [Dimensional Override: Host Eligible]
Congratulations. You have reached an anchor point where higher-dimensional upgrades may be granted.
[Three Rewards Selected]
Ethan blinked. "Wait. Who the hell—?"
> [Upgrade 1: Carnitrix Integration — New Transformation Acquired: Naljian]
[Upgrade 2: Emotional Spectrum Alignment — White Lantern Ring Accepted]
[Upgrade 3: Genetic Overwrite — Hindu God — Shiva Bloodline (Partial)]
The Carnitrix at his wrist flared with a blinding fractal light. Something infinite moved just outside the edges of perception. When his vision cleared, there were three new sensations burning in him:
A shape in the Carnitrix database unlike anything else — the Naljians, beings who could fight across multiple planes of existence simultaneously, shifting between higher and lower dimensions as easily as breathing.
A White Lantern Ring sliding onto his right hand, its hum not of power, but life itself, every heartbeat in the multiverse echoing faintly in his chest.
And in his blood, something old — older than SCP files, older than the Endless. The rhythm of the universe itself, the heartbeat of Shiva, god of destruction and rebirth.
Jason stared at him. "Ethan. What just happened?"
"Power-up," Ethan said. His voice felt heavier now, like it carried echoes. "Big one."
---
The Second Gate — The Cult of the Rootless Eye
Gate Two wasn't guarded by an SCP.
It was guarded by people.
The Cult of the Rootless Eye — Nyarlathotep's chosen mortal servants — knelt in a circle, their faces covered by masks shaped like spiraling voids. As Ethan approached, they rose, chanting words that twisted his thoughts into Möbius loops.
The White Lantern Ring pulsed. Life opposes entropy.
Light burst outward from him, shredding the chant, restoring clarity.
The cultists screamed — not in fear, but in ecstasy — and charged. They carried SCP-modified weapons: fragments of SCP-953's claws mounted on whips, vials of SCP-610's flesh infectors, shards of SCP-682's scales.
Ethan decided to test his Naljian form.
---
Transformation: Naljian
The shift was like unfolding in all directions at once. His body became an impossible shape — wings that weren't wings, limbs that existed in overlapping positions, a head that could look forward, backward, and sideways in time.
The cultists' weapons passed through him, striking where he had been a moment before in another dimension. Ethan struck back — a single swipe scattering them into different realities, their screams fading like static.
Jason whistled. "That's… new."
---
The Third Gate — The Nullpoint Threshold
Beyond the final platform was nothing.
Not void. Not darkness. Not even death. This was the Nullpoint proper, where existence collapsed into potential. The Nyarlathotep fragment pulsed ahead, wrapped in chains of dreamlight — the prison Dream had woven.
But something was waiting.
It was SCP-001 — the Gate Guardian. Or rather, something wearing its form. The flaming sword dripped with the antimatter of unmaking, its eyes burning like twin neutron stars.
> "You may pass," it said. "If you can endure the judgment."
Jason stepped forward, but the Guardian raised a hand. "Not you. The host."
Ethan stepped into the null-gravity space, the Carnitrix, White Lantern Ring, and Shiva bloodline all humming in harmony. The Guardian swung its sword.
---
The Battle
Ethan blocked with a shield of pure life-energy, the White Lantern Ring resonating with the core of the Nullpoint. He shifted to Naljian form, vanishing from linear space, reappearing behind the Guardian — only for its blade to meet him there, too.
Shiva's blood surged.
The dance of destruction and creation filled him. His strikes no longer just hit — they rewrote. A slash through the Guardian's flame reassembled it into starlight. A kick scattered antimatter into new atoms. He was not just fighting — he was resetting the rules.
The Guardian smiled faintly.
"You may pass."
The Nyarlathotep fragment hung in the void. Ethan sealed it with a sphere of White Lantern light, locking it in life-energy so pure that entropy could not touch it.
---
The Cost
As the Nullpoint swallowed the fragment, the Carnitrix spoke:
> Warning: Shiva Bloodline integration at 12%. Naljian form unstable at higher-dimensional combat scales. White Lantern resonance will attract hostile attention.
Jason walked up beside him. "You just painted a target on yourself the size of a multiverse."
Ethan grinned, still feeling the hum of the upgrades in his bones. "Good. Let them try."
---
Meanwhile…
In a place even the Nullpoint could not touch, a shape with a thousand eyes turned to face the reader.
> "The host has taken the bait. Now the war begins."
---
Next: Chapter 9 — "The White War"
Ethan's new powers will be tested immediately as the White Lantern Ring draws the attention of both SCP-343 and an ascendant Shub-Niggurath, while the Endless fracture under political pressure.