"I–Is this how it ends...?"
"After everything... I'm still going to die."
"... and here I thought I could see my child grow..."
"... but at least he'll be safe with him from those monsters..."
Her chest tightened with every thought.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she closed her eyes slowly. A ticking sound echoed loudly in her head.
Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick! TICK...!
The sound reached its peak...
BOOM!
She exploded.
***
Within a vast, advanced technological structure spanning a cold planet, a man sat on a throne, radiating an overwhelming aura of dominance. Though he looked human, the faint glow in his eyes, the unnatural stillness of his posture, and the subtle distortion of the air around him made it clear he was far beyond ordinary.
The throne room he was in was large and silent, its walls and floors created by unknown metals resembling platinum with strange symbols etched on their surface.
Strange luminous metal also lined the walls, casting a dim light over the room. Several pillar lined the chamber, and two large statues of the man stood on both sides of the giant door.
There were no guards stationed at the door of the chamber, none were needed.
The giant door suddenly slammed open as a man dashed in. He immediately bowed to the man seated on the throne and said in an ecstatic voice:
"Your Grace," he said trembling with excitement. "The Cosmic Energy Pool is surging. It's time."
The man tightened his grip on the armrest of his throne.
"Deploy all troops immediately!" he commanded. "We must secure it before anyone else."
A faint glow flashed across his eyes.
•••
Amid the vast emptiness of space, a massive whirlpool of endless cosmic energy trembled violently, sending out waves of powerful energy annihilating the nearest planets, nearly five hundred million kilometers away.
Suddenly, it gave birth to a small glowing ball of cosmic energy. Its glow was so bright, it sent out rays of light like the sun towards the distant planets. After a few seconds, its glow faded as it shot forward, towards a certain direction at the speed of light.
After it vanished, fleets of spaceships began appearing near the edge of the massive whirlpool of endless cosmic energy. Some were as large as planets, others were even larger.
Every fleet stared in confusion at the massive whirlpool of endless cosmic energy that was now calm.
"Where's the discharge?" they all wondered.
Seeing that the Cosmic Energy Pool remained calm. They all assumed that one of them had came first and taken the cosmic energy and pretended not to.
It didn't take long for a fight to break out.
Some fled, while some stayed to fight to capture the 'thief'. Some, thinking they were smart, watched from the sidelines, but were eventually dragged into the fight.
It became one hell of a bloodbath. Wrecked spaceships and dead bodies all floated frozen in the cold, dark space. The largest spaceship barely won the battle, though severely damaged, it left immediately after failing to find the Cosmic Energy Pool Discharge.
•••
Like a shooting star, the Cosmic Energy Pool Discharge passed through the dark hemisphere of a planet. And somewhere on that planet a woman suddenly gasped.
She had been chosen.
The next day, she was woken by the insistent rumbling of her stomach. She tried to ignore it, but it became unbearable.
She lay on her bed, rubbing her stomach... but something felt off. She glanced down and saw her stomach had become the size of a basketball.
She froze as her eyes widened in disbelief.
She pinched her cheeks.
"Oww!"
The pain confirmed it, it was no dream. She immediately went to the hospital for a check-up.
Staring at the doctor's results, a wave of overwhelming confusion and panic washed over her. She felt her throat go dry and was speechless.
She asked the doctor, making sure she wasn't seeing things.
"It... says positive?"
"Yes, the test is positive. You're pregnant," the doctor said.
The sterile white room suddenly felt too small and the air too thin. It made absolutely no sense.
She had never shared an intimate moment with a man. She was a virgin and always had been, and yet the results were undeniable.
"I don't understand," she whispered to herself. "How did I suddenly get pregnant? There was nothing like this yesterday, so how is this possible...?"
Her thoughts ran wild as she began questioning her reality.
She left the hospital and went to a beach to get some fresh air. She spent all day there, just listening to the endless waves and staring blankly at the sea that stretched past the horizon.
It seemed to calm her, taking all her problems away... just for the moment at least.
Time seemed to fly by as the sky drew dark and night gracefully descended. Just as she was about to leave the beach, a man stopped and approached her.
His eyes carried a depth she couldn't explain.
"Who is he?" the thought echoed in within her.
"I have something important to give to you," the man said, handing her a scroll and a ring. "...take it,"
"I'm not really in the mood for this..." she said plainly. "Why would I accept something from a total stranger?!"
"Would you prefer something more valuable?" the man asked.
"That's not the point!" she yelled in frustration. She rubbed her temples as he thought. "Seriously, is this man for real?"
*Sigh*
"Well what do I even have to lose at this point..." she muttered hopelessly as she reluctantly accepted the scroll and ring. Before she could ask any questions, the man turned and walked away, vanishing into the dead night.
She stood there at a loss; the man didn't even introduce himself or gave her any reason for giving her the items.
She sighed dejectedly and left.
Walking back home, she decided to open the scroll and read it. While reading its content, her expression instantly changed to one of horror and her legs went soft.
"Ahh!"
A sudden scream escaped her mouth as a searing tide of pain made her stagger back, causing her to clutch her lower back as she felt a grip far stronger than any pre-menstrual ache she'd ever endured. Her jaw tightened as she tried to steady her breath.
She was in labour.
"H–How is this even possible," she muttered with gritted teeth. "Is this some kind of sick joke the gods are playing?!"
She thought all the events happening to her today was orchestrated some deity with a twisted personality.
Enduring the raging pain, she hailed a taxi to the hospital and was immediately taken to the emergency room.
The doctors were dumbstruck as they all checked her file repeatedly. They couldn't fathom how she was due for birth that very same day. What left them even more confused was that the baby wasn't premature.
She herself was more stunned than anyone, struggling to comprehend what was happening. While the medical staff assumed she had been pregnant for months, only she knew the astonishing truth: she had mysteriously gotten pregnant that very morning and now, she was about to give birth.
It was crazy.
During the childbirth, in the delivery room, light bulbs flickered constantly and some medical devices began malfunctioning. It wasn't calm outside either, as the sky drew darker, the moon and stars grew exceptionally bright. Rain poured heavily, lightning crackled violently across the sky, and thunder rumbled loudly.
And this was happening across every inhabited planets in the universe at the same time and in every region, whether it was day or night.
It was as if welcoming the birth of a glorious king to the cosmos.
•••
The man on the throne slowly opened his eyes.
The faint glow within them flared as every symbol in the chamber glowed brightly and a low hum spread through the vast hall.
"What happened back there."
The figure kneeling before him stiffened, dread crawling up his spine. "I'm sorry your Grace. Despite arriving there early as possible before the other divisons. I still failed to capture the energy"
"You worthless thrash! I need full..." the man on the throne trailed off.as he seemed to sensed something.
"Hahahaha!" He suddenly burst into laughter. "The discharge found a vessel faster than I expected," the man continued, his voice calm, absolute. "This marks the beginning of a new dawn."
He rose from the throne.
The man kneeling couldn't help but feel suffocated as the aura emanating from him intensified.
"Send our best soldier immediately!" he commanded. "Strip that planet of its skies if you must... I want that child alive," he said stressing each word slowly.
His gaze sharpened as he added.
"Failure will not be tolerated again."
"Y–Yes, your Grace," the man on the floor bowed deeply and he immediately dashed out of the room.
•••
In a delivery room the woman was holding her now newborn child, her eyes filled with endless warmth and joy. The feeling of caring and protecting the child filled her heart.
"Nova" she whispered softly.
"Nova... like a light that shines brilliantly before fading..." a soft, gentle smile adorned her face as she caressed his head gently. "But your light will always shine bright."
Though she didn't know how she got pregnant, she made a silent promise in her heart to keep her new born baby safe.
A few hours later, in the middle of the night, she was woken by the sound of a knocking. Through the surveillance camera, she saw that it was a nurse and let her in.
The nurse walked in slowly her expression cold and her gaze sharp. A sword then materialized in her hands and she pointed it at the woman.
"If you don't want to die… hand over that baby now," she said coldly, slowly morphing into a seven feet tall man clad in a sleek, black high-tech combat armor.
Her chest tightened, her heart hammering against her ribs like it was trying to escape. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps, each one trembling with terror. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but there was nowhere to go. Her hands clutched her baby tighter, knuckles white, her mind spinning with fear.
"No… no, stay back...! don't you dare touch him!" she shrieked, her voice cracking. "Somebody! Anybody! Help! The person… they're armed!"
She frantically pressed the distress button on the wall next to her, but nobody came.
"Do you honestly believe anyone will hear you?" the man asked plainly. "Don't you feel it? We are in my spatial zone... a parallel world. So no one's here to save you... Now listen carefully, hand over that baby!"
The woman's eyes filled with terror as she stared at him. "Who... Who are you?! And Why... Why do you want my baby?!"
"I won't repeat myself again...!" ignoring her questions, he said. His voice cold and filled with threat.
Her eyes darted across the room, but there was nothing she could use to defend herself and her baby.
She didn't want to hand over her baby to the man... From the strange black combat armour he wore and the weird powers he'd displayed, she knew he wasn't ordinary.
Seeing that she was unmoving, the man moved to forcibly remove the child from her arms, but a figure suddenly emerged from the ceiling, swiftly taking both the woman and the baby away through the ceiling.
"Damnit!" the man snarled. The sword in his hand trembled with rage.
He cleaved the bed in half.
And in the next heartbeat he blasted through the window, leaving a storm of shattered glass behind him.