In an unknown place within an unknown realm—far removed from time, space, and all things familiar—there existed a hall.
Not a hall of stone and mortar, nor one with walls, ceilings, or arches like cathedrals and palaces. This was something else entirely. A hall without beginning or end, without true shape or boundary.
At its center stretched a corridor impossible in its design: an endless red carpet, woven with veins of gold and white light that shimmered as though alive. It floated, anchored to nothing, yet solid beneath one's feet.
On either side rose pillars—countless, unnumbered, infinite. They soared upward into a fog that swallowed their peaks. Plain stone, uncarved and undecorated, yet older than memory, older than age itself. They radiated an ancient wrongness, as though they were never meant for mortal eyes.
Beyond these pillars stretched only nothingness: no walls, no floor, no ceiling, only a vast white glow that hummed faintly, like silence given sound. Suspended within this endless void were portals—innumerable, each one different, each one alive.
Some were small as coins, others vast enough to swallow mountains or entire cities. Titanic rings rotated slowly in the mist, carved with sigils that burned with inner fire. Some portals gleamed bronze, others silver or iron. Many shone with gold. A few burned blood-red. Rarer still were the black ones—so dark they seemed to drink the light itself, swallowing sight and certainty alike.
No two portals were the same. Some rippled like disturbed water, others stood still as glass. Some were mirrors, others whirling spirals, frozen storms, or fabric caught mid-flutter. What lay beyond them was unknown: shattered realities, forgotten timelines, other dimensions—or perhaps nothing at all.
Logic held no dominion here. Order meant nothing. Yet for all the chaos, a strange consistency bound the place together: every portal pulled at the soul in silence, as if inviting, tempting, daring one to step through.
The realm felt unreal, like a dream already fading from memory. And yet it pressed close, undeniable, as though more real than reality itself. Here, the line between fiction and truth was paper-thin, and everything—the pillars, the carpet, even the silence—felt both present and absent at once.
Still, beneath its disorientation was a strange sense of purpose. This was not merely a crossroads of chaos. It felt like an ending. Or perhaps a beginning. A place where journeys concluded, destinies resolved, or new fates were chosen. Like a library where answers waited, but at a cost.
Amid the infinity of portals and pillars hovered a platform. Unlike the rest of this place, it was unmistakably crafted. Smooth, circular, deliberate.
Atop it sat a golden chair, intricate in detail yet oddly mundane, resembling—of all things—an office chair dressed in finery. Before it rested a long white table littered with documents: pages scattered, some typed, some handwritten, some signed, some sealed with wax. A government desk in the heart of eternity.
And seated in the chair was a man. Not ordinary, just as this place was not ordinary.
He looked to be in his early thirties, give or take. His face was sharp, strikingly handsome — but not in the way of actors or stars. His beauty was different, harder to place, something that resisted description. His hair, long and black, fell neatly to his shoulders, parted and groomed with the elegance of an aristocrat from another age. His eyes were the same shade of black, calm and unreadable, and behind them lingered… something. Not ancient exactly, but older than ancient. Something further removed, unnameable.
An aura clung to him. Not oppressive, not overwhelming, but undeniable. It was like standing before a question — one you could neither solve nor dismiss. Like a problem in mathematics, where you knew both the question and the answer existed, yet they remained forever out of reach.
That was what it felt like to stand before him. He did not radiate power; he was power. And still, outwardly, he looked more like a professor or a civil servant than a god, a sage, or an immortal.
His attire reflected this paradox. A robe, long and flowing, inscribed with intricate sigils that shimmered faintly — glyphs that might have been ancient cages, or spells, or maps of forgotten worlds. Yet perched on his face was a pair of plain rectangular spectacles, the kind one could buy at any optician's office. Modern, ordinary, absurdly mundane against the impossible vastness of this place.
He did not speak. Instead, he worked. His hands moved with calm precision, stamping, signing, marking the papers laid before him. And still there was grandeur in it, an authority that commanded submission in the simplest gestures.
With each signature, the page glowed briefly — then vanished. Whether destroyed, absorbed, or carried off to some other realm was impossible to tell. The only certainty was that nothing he signed ever remained.
And another strange thing was that beside him, resting on the table, was a simple coffee cup—the kind people back on Earth drank every day. The kind you'd find in any café, or on the desks of office workers in a decent city. There was even faint steam curling up from it, as if it were freshly poured. Occasionally, the unknown figure would lift it, take a sip, nod to himself, and then continue signing and stamping papers.
It was absurd. A cosmic hall filled with infinite portals, a floating throne platform, and a man in ancient robes sipping overpriced espresso while doing paperwork. The whole situation looked like someone had dropped an office peon into a magical realm. And yet, somehow, it fit. It shouldn't have, but it did.
To him, this routine wasn't strange at all. He worked with the detached rhythm of an administrator, as if he were managing the pathways of the multiverse itself. One after another, people stepped before him. He signed, and they vanished into the portals around the hall. He never once looked at them, yet he knew—he knew who approached, from where, for what reason, and even the confusion they carried about being here at all.
This man wasn't a king, nor exactly a god. No—he was a god, but for now he was just an acting administrator. He had lost a bet to someone, long ago, and the penalty was this: billions of years doing paperwork at the crossroads of infinity.