The sound came first — a single, drawn-out note that did not belong to any world.
It rang through Kael's creation like a wound through glass.
He stood upon the Celestial Terrace, where the skies of a thousand realms met like rivers converging into one sea. Below him, his worlds turned in slow grace — continents of emerald and gold, skies that shimmered with living auroras. Yet now, all of it vibrated with unease.
The hum of the Worldseed had changed.
Each pulse came slower, deeper, and out of rhythm with the light that sustained it.
Kael's gaze hardened. The crystalline plains beneath his feet rippled as he reached his hand toward the sky — and the heavens answered.
A thin crack of violet light split the air.
From it poured not chaos, but memory — echoes of things that should have never touched his world. Seas of flame. Skies made of storm and teeth. A world built entirely of silence, devouring its own sound. He had seen those visions before — once, long ago, when he first ascended. But this time, they did not fade.
The walls are thinning…
The words brushed across his mind, not as thought — but as voice.
Kael froze.
"Lyraen," he whispered.
Her presence burned faintly in the center of his chest, a warmth that had no source. He could feel her heartbeat — distant but real — resonating through the threads of his creation. That connection had been dormant since he'd crossed the veil. For it to awaken now meant only one thing:
The multiverse was beginning to remember itself.
Kael closed his eyes, and the space around him reshaped at his command. The terrace dissolved into motes of light, revealing the Seed's Core — a vast sphere of living crystal, suspended in a sea of white fire. Within it burned countless smaller lights, each representing a world born from his will. But among them now were others: faint, flickering motes of alien color.
Violet. Red. Azure.
Each pulsing with a rhythm not his own.
The Unborn Gods are waking, he thought.
He stepped forward, and the Seed's glow intensified, waves of golden light folding around him. His voice carried across creation, not through sound, but through essence.
"Show me the breach."
The air shivered — and in an instant, his vision was hurled beyond his worlds.
He saw it: a rift cutting across the void, as thin as a thread and as endless as the horizon. On the other side, another universe blinked — alive, trembling, and wrong. From within it, eyes opened. Dozens. Hundreds. Each one staring back.
Then, a voice deeper than space:
You build light in a place that was meant to rest.
Kael raised his hand, summoning the Worldseed's flame. "And you hide in the dark because you've forgotten how to create."
The void rumbled — a sound like laughter and thunder blended.
Then teach us, Seedbearer.
A wave of violet force struck his barrier, shaking the Core. The ground beneath Kael fractured, shards of light scattering like meteors. Worlds trembled in his wake. For a heartbeat, the multiverse bent under two opposing wills — creation and consumption, seed and shadow.
Kael thrust his arm outward, pouring power into the rift. "Not yet."
The violet light shattered. The eyes vanished. Silence returned.
But not peace.
When he lowered his hand, Kael realized the crack hadn't closed — it had multiplied. Dozens of new fractures shimmered in the distance, each one leading to another world. Another Seed. Another god.
He stood in the ruin of light, his expression unreadable. The glow around his body dimmed as his power withdrew, and for the first time in an age, Kael looked uncertain.
Then, softly — like a prayer — he said her name again.
"Lyraen."
Her heartbeat answered. Faint, but steady.
Kael exhaled. His gaze turned toward the distant galaxies of his making — toward the fragile lives that would soon be caught in something far beyond them.
If the walls are breaking, he thought, then I must be the one who decides what comes through.
The light around him reignited, brighter than dawn.