The white explosion was the last thing he expected.
There was no sound. No heat. No smell. Just light devouring everything in its path, then... silence. But not the silence he knew. This was something else—something more vicious. As if the universe had suddenly stopped breathing.
Orphyn stood at the heart of the silent storm, staring at his trembling hands. His fingers looked translucent for a moment, as if turning to glass. Then he noticed the same thing happening to everything around him. Trees, rocks, even the air—all dissolving into floating geometric shapes, then into symbols he didn't recognize.
"This isn't collapse..." he whispered to himself, his voice strange, as if reaching him from somewhere far away. "It's being erased."
He closed his eyes. Tried to remember. Anything. His name. Where he came from. Why he was here.
But all he could summon was a woman's voice saying:
*"You'll see every ending—except your own."*
He couldn't remember who she was. His mother? His teacher? Maybe just a hallucination from a time that no longer existed.
His eyes snapped open at the sound of footsteps.
She was there. Standing a few meters away, as if she'd materialized from nothing. A woman with red hair that seemed more vibrant than anything else in this melting world.
He knew her.
No—that wasn't right. He *felt* like he knew her. But he couldn't recall her name, or when they'd last met.
"You..." he said, his voice shaking. "Who are you?"
She raised her hand as if to touch his face, then hesitated. "Lyx," she said, and that single word made his heart contract. "And you're not supposed to be here."
He tried to ask what she meant, but the ground beneath him began turning into written lines. Black letters on a white background, writhing like snakes.
"What is this?" he asked, but his voice was lost in the void.
"No time," Lyx said, gripping his wrist with surprising strength. "It's coming."
"What is?"
But before she could answer, he saw it. On the horizon, where the sky should've been, something black appeared. Not an object. Not light. Just... an idea. An idea that devoured everything it touched.
"The First Fragment," Lyx whispered, her eyes reflecting the approaching void. "The beginning of everything. And its end."
He wanted to ask more, to understand, but the world was crumbling around them. He saw Lyx open her mouth for one last word, but all he heard before the darkness swallowed him was:
"Close your eyes."
Then the universe exploded.