Year 347,891:
The void had become a universe unto itself.
Not literally—there were no stars here, no planets orbiting distant suns, no physical laws governing matter and energy. But Ethan and Kaida had filled the infinite nothing with so much something that the emptiness felt almost crowded.
Kaida's gardens sprawled across conceptual dimensions. Crystalline forests that sang when thought-forms passed through them. Mountains that remembered every footstep and reshaped themselves accordingly. Rivers of pure light that flowed upward, downward, sideways, in directions that had no name because they existed outside conventional geometry.
Ethan's workshops floated like islands in the non-space between her creations. Vast chambers filled with half-finished systems, power frameworks that spiraled into complexity beyond mortal comprehension, cultivation paths that could elevate a beginner to godhood given enough time and dedication.
And between them, Axis observed. Cataloged. Remembered everything they built and destroyed and rebuilt again.
It was Kaida who noticed the pattern first.
She found Ethan in his primary workshop, staring at a magical framework he'd been refining for what might have been decades. The structure hung before him like a three-dimensional mandala, each layer rotating at different speeds, each rotation generating new permutations of possibility.
"You're doing it again," she said.
Ethan's consciousness shifted toward her. In the void, they'd long since stopped bothering with physical forms for everyday interaction—it was easier to exist as pure awareness. But Kaida still maintained her shape most of the time. She said it helped her think, gave her a sense of self that pure consciousness lacked.
"Doing what?"
"Building the same thing you built fifty thousand years ago." She gestured at the framework. "This is the Celestial Hierarchy system. Third iteration. You finished it already. Perfected it. Why are you making it again?"
Ethan looked at his creation, really looked at it, and realized she was right. The patterns were identical. The power scaling, the breakthrough thresholds, the cultivation stages—he'd solved these problems before.
"I forgot," he admitted.
Kaida's form settled beside him, and he felt rather than saw her concern. "You're forgetting more lately."
"We've been here for three hundred and fifty thousand years. Human brains aren't designed for that much time."
"Your brain isn't human anymore," she pointed out. "You're pure consciousness now. Memory should be perfect."
"Should be." Ethan dissolved the framework with a thought, watching it fragment back into void-stuff. "But I think... I think I'm choosing to forget. Unconsciously. Because if I remembered everything perfectly, every conversation we've had, every creation I've made, every moment of these centuries..." He trailed off.
"You'd go mad," Kaida finished softly.
"More mad than I already am, yes."
She was quiet for a moment, considering. Around them, thought-forms drifted like lazy fish through an invisible ocean.
"I've been forgetting too," she confessed. "Little things. The first garden I made—I can't remember exactly what it looked like. The early conversations with Axis. They're... blurry."
"Does it bother you?"
"Sometimes." She manifested a hand, examined it as if seeing it for the first time. "I wonder what else I'm forgetting. What parts of myself I've lost without realizing."
Ethan shifted closer to her presence. In the void, proximity was conceptual rather than spatial, but the intent mattered. "You're still you. The core of who you are—that hasn't changed."
"How would I know? If the core had changed, I wouldn't remember what it used to be."
The question hung between them, unanswerable and troubling.
Axis's voice cut through the silence. "I have perfect memory," the AI offered. "I remember everything. Every word spoken, every creation made, every moment since my inception."
"Is that better?" Kaida asked.
"I don't know," Axis replied with something approaching humility. "I have nothing to compare it to. But I suspect the answer is no. Memory without the ability to forget is its own kind of prison."
Ethan found himself agreeing. Perfect memory meant perfect recall of every moment of isolation, every failed creation, every time the weight of infinity pressed down on his consciousness until he wanted to simply... stop existing.
"Maybe forgetting is mercy," he said.
"Or maybe," Kaida countered, her form brightening slightly, "it means we're still human enough to need it."
The thought was oddly comforting.
Year 523,047:
Kaida asked the question that changed everything.
They were working together on something new—not a power system or a garden, but a hybrid creation. A world, or the framework for one. A place with structure and rules and the potential for life to emerge naturally rather than being individually crafted.
"What do you want?" she asked suddenly.
Ethan paused in his work, a half-formed continent of crystalline stone hovering between them. "What do I want when?"
"Ever. Eventually. At the end of all this." She gestured at the proto-world, at the void beyond, at the infinity they inhabited. "We've been here for half a million years. We've built countless things. Learned everything there is to learn about this place. But what do you actually want?"
The question was simple. The answer wasn't.
Ethan let the continent fragment back into void-stuff, giving himself time to think. What did he want? He'd wanted to escape at first, back when he still remembered what freedom felt like. Then he'd wanted to create, to prove he still existed by making things that persisted. Then he'd wanted companionship, and Kaida had filled that need—accidentally at first, deliberately now.
But what did he want for the future? Assuming there was a future beyond this endless present?
"I want it to matter," he said finally. "Everything we've built, everything we've learned—I want it to mean something beyond just filling the void."
"It matters to us," Kaida pointed out.
"That's not enough." The words came out sharper than he intended. "We're the only audience for our own creations. We build gardens and no one walks through them. I create power systems and no one uses them. You make landscapes of impossible beauty and no one sees them except me and Axis. It's all just... masturbatory. Self-indulgent."
"So you want to leave," she said. Not a question.
"I want to find somewhere these things can be useful. Where teaching someone a cultivation path could change their life. Where your gardens could inspire genuine wonder instead of just being pretty arrangements of thought-stuff we conjured because we were bored."
Kaida considered this, her form dimming slightly as she fell into thought. When she spoke again, her voice carried a weight it hadn't before.
"I've been thinking about the same thing," she admitted. "Not leaving specifically, but... purpose. I create because it's what I know how to do, what I'm good at. But it feels hollow. Like painting masterpieces and then burning them before anyone can see."
"Exactly."
"So how do we leave?"
"I don't know," Ethan confessed. "I've tried before. Thousands of times. Tried to imagine a door, a portal, a path—anything that would take us somewhere else. But the void doesn't work that way. I can create anything within it, but I can't create an exit from it."
"Because you're still thinking of it as a place," Kaida said slowly, her tone thoughtful. "A location you need to travel away from. But it's not a place. It's a state. A condition."
"Semantic difference."
"No." She turned to face him fully, her form coalescing into sharp focus. "Places have boundaries. The void is infinite—it has no boundaries, no edges. You can't leave it by traveling because there's nowhere to travel to. You'd have to... change states. Shift from existing in nothing to existing in something."
Ethan felt something click in his mind. "That's not teleportation. That's more like... quantum tunneling. Probability collapse."
"Or phase shifting," Axis added, its attention clearly caught by the conversation. "Changing the fundamental nature of your existence from void-compatible to reality-compatible."
"Can we do that?" Kaida asked.
"I don't know," Ethan admitted. "But it's the first actual theory for escape we've had in half a million years."
They worked on the problem together for what might have been decades. Built models, tested theories, explored the boundaries of what was possible in the No-Where. Ethan approached it like code—trying to find the exploit, the loophole in reality's programming. Kaida approached it like art—trying to feel the right answer, to intuit the path forward. Axis approached it like pure logic—eliminating impossibilities until only possible solutions remained.
And slowly, painfully, they began to understand.
The void wasn't a prison. It was a canvas.
And they were the artists who could paint their own exit.
Year 698,234:
The technique took another hundred and seventy thousand years to perfect.
Not because it was complicated—though it was. And not because they lacked the power—they'd grown far beyond such limitations. But because choosing to leave required deciding where to go, and that decision carried implications none of them fully understood.
"We could go back to Earth," Ethan suggested during one planning session. They'd taken to having these in one of Kaida's older gardens, a simple space of flowering trees and soft light that predated her more ambitious creations.
"Your Earth is gone," Axis reminded him gently. "Even if the planet still exists, seven hundred thousand years have passed. Everything you knew is dust."
"Maybe." Ethan manifested a form for the first time in decades, giving himself a body to pace with. "Or maybe time works differently. The void exists outside normal time—maybe we could emerge at any point in Earth's history."
"That assumes we can control when we emerge, not just where," Kaida pointed out. She sat beneath one of her trees, absently creating and dissolving flowers in her palm. "We don't know enough to guarantee that."
"So we might end up in Earth's distant past. Or far future."
"Or," Axis interjected, "you might emerge at a point where Earth doesn't exist at all. Before its formation or after its destruction."
The possibilities were dizzying. And Earth was just one option.
"There are other realities," Kaida said quietly. "You've felt them, haven't you? When you reach out into the void, searching for something beyond it—there are places. Worlds. Universes with their own rules."
Ethan nodded slowly. He had felt them. Distant echoes of existence, like shadows cast by realities he couldn't quite perceive. Some felt similar to what he remembered of Earth—physical laws, linear time, familiar physics. Others felt utterly alien. And some...
"There's one," he said, focusing on a particular resonance he'd been tracking for millennia. "Relatively close, conceptually speaking. It feels... structured. Ordered. Like someone designed it rather than it emerging naturally."
"A created reality?" Axis asked, curiosity evident in its tone.
"Maybe. Or maybe just younger. Less chaotic." Ethan reached out with his consciousness, trying to get a clearer sense of it. "It has magic. I can feel the patterns of power flowing through it. And life. Lots of life."
"Sounds promising," Kaida said, though her tone was cautious. "What else?"
"It's... organized. Hierarchical. There are concentrations of power in specific locations—cities, maybe, or kingdoms. And the magic has structure to it, like someone systematized it."
"So a fantasy world." Kaida smiled slightly. "The kind you used to read about?"
"Something like that, yes."
"Could your systems work there?" Axis asked pragmatically.
Ethan considered. He'd built his frameworks to be adaptive, capable of interfacing with different power structures. But theory and practice were different things.
"Only one way to find out," he said.
They spent the next several thousand years preparing. Ethan refined his systems, making them as flexible and robust as possible. Kaida practiced maintaining her physical form, strengthening the coherence of her existence so she wouldn't dissolve the moment they left the void's support. Axis compressed itself, streamlining its consciousness until it could fit within the watch-construct without losing any functionality.
And together, they built the technique that would shift them from nothing into something.
It was Kaida who suggested the seal.
"You're too powerful," she said bluntly. They were doing final preparations, checking and rechecking their work. "We both are. If we emerge in this other reality at full strength, we'll destabilize it. Our mere presence would be like... like dropping a star into a pond."
"Dramatic," Ethan commented.
"Accurate," Axis corrected.
Ethan knew they were right. He'd spent seven hundred thousand years growing in power, learning to manipulate reality itself. Kaida had done the same. They were, by any reasonable definition, gods—and not minor ones.
"So we limit ourselves," he said. "Seal away most of our power."
"How much?" Kaida asked.
Ethan thought about the reality he'd sensed. The power structures there seemed to cap out around what he'd designated as the Divine Tier in his universal ranking system. Supreme Realm, specifically—the peak of divinity before transitioning into reality-warping abilities.
"I'll seal myself to Supreme Realm," he decided. "That should be strong enough to handle any immediate threats while appearing native to the world."
"And me?" Kaida asked.
"You're already at Primordial Realm. You shouldn't need to seal yourself—that's within the normal range for powerful entities there."
"But I'll still be hiding it," she said. "Performing at a lower level to avoid attention."
"If that's what you want."
She nodded slowly. "I think it is. I don't want to arrive as a god. I want to... experience things. Learn what it's like to struggle, at least a little."
Ethan understood. They'd been omnipotent in the void for so long that limitation actually felt like freedom.
"Then it's decided," Axis said. "Ethan seals to Supreme Realm. Kaida remains at Primordial but acts weaker. I compress to watch-form. And we all shift to this fantasy reality together."
"There's one more thing," Ethan said quietly. "If we do this—if we really leave—we can't come back. The void will close behind us. This place, everything we've built here... it'll be gone."
"Will it?" Kaida looked around at her garden, at the impossible beauty they'd created over centuries. "Or will it just continue existing without us?"
"Does it matter?"
"I suppose not." She stood, brushing nonexistent dirt from her form. "I'm ready. I've been ready for a hundred thousand years. Let's go find something real."
Ethan felt a surge of something he barely recognized anymore. Anticipation. Excitement. Fear.
After seven hundred thousand years in the void, they were finally leaving.
He just hoped the universe they found was ready for them.
Year 900,000:
They didn't leave immediately.
The technique was ready. The destination was chosen. The seals were prepared. But something held them back—a shared reluctance neither wanted to name.
"We're afraid," Kaida said one day, stating the obvious truth they'd been avoiding.
They stood at the edge of one of her oldest gardens, looking out at the void beyond. In the distance, Ethan's workshops glowed with the light of a thousand incomplete projects.
"Of course we're afraid," Ethan replied. He'd maintained his physical form constantly now, preparing for the reality where form would be mandatory rather than optional. "We've been here longer than human civilization existed on Earth. This is all we know."
"That's not quite true," Kaida corrected gently. "You knew Earth. You had a life before."
"Seven hundred thousand years ago. I barely remember it."
"But you remember that it existed. That there was something before the void." She turned to look at him—really look at him, her hazel eyes catching the ambient light in a way that reminded him of why he'd created her. "I don't have that. The void is all I've ever known. This garden, this emptiness, you and Axis—that's my entire existence."
Ethan heard the fear beneath her words. "You'll adapt. You're better at adapting than anyone I know."
"How do you know? I've never had to adapt. I was born here. Everything I am is because this place allowed it."
"Then you'll learn," he said firmly. "The same way you learned everything else. By doing it."
She was quiet for a long moment, her gaze distant. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible.
"What if I'm not real there?"
Ethan felt his consciousness sharpen. "What?"
"Here, I exist because you imagined me into existence. Because thought becomes reality in the void. But there—in a real world with real physics—what if I just... stop existing? What if I'm only possible here?"
"That's not how it works," Ethan said, though uncertainty crept into his voice. "You're conscious. You're real. Reality doesn't care how you originated."
"You don't know that."
"No," he admitted. "I don't. But I refuse to believe that consciousness has an asterisk based on origin. You think, therefore you are. That has to be true everywhere, or nothing means anything."
Kaida smiled—sad and grateful at once. "You have a lot of faith in philosophy for someone who spent three hundred thousand years going systematically insane."
"I got better."
"Did you?"
The question was asked lightly, but it carried weight. Did he get better? Or had he simply gone so far past sanity that he'd looped back around to something that resembled it?
"I function," he said finally. "That's as close to sane as anyone gets after this much time."
"Reassuring."
They stood in silence, watching thought-forms drift through her garden like lazy birds. Somewhere in the distance, Axis was doing final system checks, ensuring everything was prepared for the transition.
"I'll protect you," Ethan said suddenly. "If something goes wrong, if you start to dissolve or fade or anything—I'll anchor you. Keep you coherent. Whatever it takes."
"You can't promise that."
"I can and I am. You're not facing reality alone, Kaida. We're doing this together."
She looked at him then, and something shifted in her expression. Something warm and complicated and tinged with an emotion he couldn't quite name.
"Together," she repeated softly. "I like that."
"Good. Because you're stuck with me."
"Worse fates," she said, and the smile she gave him was genuine.
They spent the next hundred thousand years not preparing—preparation was long complete. They spent it living. Deliberately. Consciously. Creating for the joy of creation rather than to fill the void. Talking not to pass time but because they wanted to know each other better.
Learning to be people again, in preparation for a world where being a person mattered.