A breath.
That's all it took.
As Kael's hand touched the thread of fate, the void convulsed—not in resistance, but in acknowledgment. Reality unraveled around him like a tapestry being rewritten from its very essence. Time flowed backward, forward, sideways, in spirals. Everything bled into everything else, until only one thing remained:
His will.
Kael opened his eyes.
The sky above was a violet hue, bleeding into gold along the edges of the horizon. Twin suns hovered in unnatural stillness. Beneath his feet was not earth, nor void, but a glasslike expanse that reflected not his form—but his soul.
He was in a world that didn't belong to any pantheon, any memory, or any prophecy. It was something new. Something born of a decision that had never been made before.
And it was… alive.
"Where… is this?" Kael whispered.
A voice—no, many voices—echoed softly, like wind through reeds. "The place of consequence. The world shaped by the path no one dared to walk."
Kael turned.
Before him stood a city, floating above nothing, built from light and shadow. Its towers bent at impossible angles, its streets moved on their own, and the people—if they could be called that—glowed faintly with awareness. They bowed as Kael approached, not in reverence, but in recognition.
They knew him.
He had not created this world by force. He had invited it into being by choosing the impossible.
And it had answered.
But even here, beyond destiny, something stirred.
A faint hum beneath the world. A pressure behind Kael's spine.
Something… watching.
Kael closed his eyes and listened.
Not with ears, but with existence.
And there it was.
A rift.
A tear in the very fabric of what he had created. Small. Silent. But growing. Something old, something forgotten, was pushing its way into the new world. Not a god, not a demon—an idea.
The refusal of change.
The echo of what had been.
Kael frowned.
"I made this world," he said softly, "but I do not own it."
He stepped forward. The glasslike surface rippled, reacting to his thoughts, guiding him toward the disturbance. As he neared the rift, the world grew quiet.
And then—he saw it.
A figure stood before the tear.
It was him.
Or rather… the version of Kael who had never chosen. The one who had stayed behind. Who had refused to step into the void. His eyes were hollow, his aura crumbling with doubt.
"You shouldn't exist," Kael said.
The other Kael smiled bitterly. "Yet I do. I am every choice you never made. Every fear you buried. I am what you left behind."
The rift pulsed.
Kael's hand clenched.
This was not a battle of strength.
It was a battle of identity.
To keep the world he had created, he would have to confront the remnants of himself. The shadows of who he once was.
And destroy them.
No weapons.
No gods.
Just Kael…
Versus Kael.