The Hunger of the Timeborne

The void stretched infinitely in every direction, yet Viraj felt trapped. There was no up or down, no walls, no floor—just endless nothingness. But it wasn’t empty. Something was here. Something vast. Something watching.

Lucius let out a sharp breath beside him. “Okay, this is officially in my top five worst places we’ve been dumped into. Right up there with the collapsing asteroid bar and that medieval village where they thought I was a sorcerer.”

Viraj didn’t answer. His entire body was on edge, his instincts screaming that they were not alone.

Then, the darkness moved.

A shape, massive beyond comprehension, shifted in the void. It wasn’t a creature. It wasn’t an object. It was something in between—a presence that didn’t belong in any timeline, in any reality.

And it was hungry.

Viraj barely had time to react before the whispers started.

Not voices. Not words. Something deeper, something older. The feeling of time itself whispering into his mind, unraveling thoughts, erasing memories before they could form. He clenched his fists, trying to fight the sensation, but it was pulling at him—like he was just another thread in the fabric of time, and the Timeborne was deciding whether to cut him loose.

Lucius stumbled beside him. “Viraj—something’s wrong—I can’t—I don’t—”

His voice glitched.

Viraj turned sharply. Lucius’s face was flickering, his body phasing in and out of existence, like a television signal failing to hold its shape.

“Lucius!”

Lucius met his eyes, panic flashing across his face. “It’s undoing me.”

Viraj’s breath caught. No. No, no, no.

Then, the whispers spoke.

"YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO BE."

The voice wasn’t sound. It was pressure. It slammed into Viraj’s mind like a tidal wave, pressing down on his thoughts, his memories, his very existence. The Timeborne wasn’t just speaking to him—it was deciding what parts of him should exist.

And it had decided that Lucius didn’t belong.

Viraj lunged forward, grabbing Lucius’s arm, gripping it so tightly he could feel the heat of his skin. “No. You are real. You exist.”

The darkness shook. The whispers hesitated.

Viraj gritted his teeth. It wasn’t all-powerful. It was feeding on uncertainty.

If it could erase Lucius, then it meant Lucius’s existence was still being decided.

And if something could be decided, it could be changed.

Viraj turned toward the shifting void, his voice steady. “He exists. You don’t get to rewrite that.”

The darkness shuddered.

The whispers snapped back.

The pressure relented.

Lucius gasped, stumbling forward, solidifying in place. “Oh, great, yeah—let’s never do that again.”

Viraj barely had time to process what had happened before the void rippled.

And then—the Timeborne moved.

A form began to emerge, still shapeless, still impossible to comprehend, but closer now. The whispers weren’t fading. They were growing stronger.

This wasn’t over.

This was just the beginning.

"The greatest battle is not against an enemy, but against the universe itself when it decides you shouldn’t exist."

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