> "Legends say he broke time.
The truth is—he buried it alive."
---
Location: Riftwound Expanse — Multiversal No-Zone
Time screamed here.
Every breath tasted like static and smoke. The sky flickered between galaxies, lightning veins pulsing with stolen magic. Rael Veylor stood at the bleeding edge of existence—silent, still, dangerous.
His obsidian throne hovered behind him, twitching like a living nerve. Every time it moved, the wind around it whimpered.
> "This place…" Lyra muttered, wiping sweat from her brow, "it doesn't want us here."
"No," Rael said. "Because it remembers me."
And from the Rift… they came.
The Sable Choir.
Cloaked beings with no faces, humming a discordant chant that fractured thought. Their bodies flickered between dimensions, and in their hands—they held reality-forged scythes.
> "The Pale Emperor sends his love," one whispered with a voice made of static and spider legs.
---
The battle was war poetry.
Lyra vanished into motion—her plasma blade carving glowing sigils in midair. Each step rewrote gravity, each swing carved a new law of physics.
Rael?
He didn't fight. He unraveled.
His hand lifted—and one Choir member blinked out of existence, his scream echoing backward in time. Another lunged—and was caught mid-strike by the throne itself, its shadowy tendrils pulling the attacker inside, devouring him whole.
> "I'm not the heir," Rael growled. "I'm the end."
The sky split in half.
A Chrono-Reaper dropped—ten stories tall, made of dead timelines, crowned with broken clocks. It opened its mouth and screamed…
> And the past began playing in reverse.
---
Meanwhile: The Pale Emperor Watches
In the Obsidian Crown Citadel, the Pale Emperor removed his mask. Beneath it—a face twisted with madness and eternity.
It was Rael. But corrupted. Unholy. Perfectly preserved in a state of power-rot.
> "My weapon still resists," he said.
His voice melted through every surveillance channel in the galaxy.
> "Then we escalate."
He raised his hand—and somewhere across the stars, a sun died.
---
Cut to: Talon Vox — Orbiting Chaos
Talon leaned back in his pilot seat, boots on the dashboard, sipping glowing caffeine from a stolen empire thermos. The screens around him lit up—Rael's kill count rising like a war god's heartbeat.
"Damn," he muttered. "Still knows how to make a mess."
The raven drone on his shoulder chirped nervously.
"You're going to help him, aren't you?" it asked.
Talon smirked. "Help him? Nah. I'm gonna film him. Sell the footage to pirates and get very drunk."
Pause.
"Then I'll save his ass. Again."
He cracked his knuckles and set course straight for the Rift.
> "Hey Rael, tell the Emperor daddy's favorite failure is back in business."
---
Back in the Rift
Rael jumped—midair. His fist cracked with red lightning as he landed on the Reaper's head. One word—
> "End."
And the creature exploded from the inside out, its remains falling upward into an imploding sky.
But just as the dust settled… everything stopped.
Literally.
The air froze. Sound vanished. Even time blinked and hesitated.
And a voice, ancient and venomous, whispered into Rael's ear:
> "You think you're free? You think you won? You're just the prologue."
Rael turned, wide-eyed.
Behind him, standing in a burning sigil, was a shadow of himself—
> The Pale Emperor's Echo.
Draped in white fire, runes of the first language burning on his skin, and holding…
> Rael's original heart—still beating.
---
End of Chapter 4