The Shape of the End

"The end isn’t always an explosion. Sometimes, it’s just a whisper that no one notices—until it’s too late."

Viraj had seen many impossible things, but nothing compared to what he saw now.

The Timeborne was no longer just a presence in the void. It was taking form.

The shifting darkness coalesced, twisting into something almost humanoid, yet entirely wrong. It had no single shape, no definite edges—just a swirling, ever-changing mass of fractured time and collapsing realities. One moment, it looked like a towering silhouette with infinite eyes, the next, like a shifting swarm of overlapping versions of itself, each one flickering in and out of existence.

And it was watching them.

Lucius tensed beside him. “I really hate how it keeps changing. It’s like it can’t decide what kind of nightmare it wants to be.”

Viraj barely heard him. His mind was racing, trying to process what he was looking at. The Timeborne wasn’t just a creature. It was an event. A force of nature given sentience.

And now, it was here.

The whispers returned, but this time, they weren’t just pressing into his mind—they were speaking.

"YOU STAND IN THE WAY OF WHAT MUST BE."

Viraj gritted his teeth. “Yeah, well, that’s kind of our thing.”

Lucius crossed his arms. “What must be, exactly? Because from where I’m standing, it just looks like you want to erase everything that ever was.”

The Timeborne’s shape shuddered, splitting into a dozen shifting echoes of itself. Each version flickered, overlapping realities pressing into one another, like it existed in every possible moment at once.

"THIS LOOP CANNOT HOLD. YOU ARE THE LAST THREAD."

Viraj’s stomach twisted.

The last thread?

Before he could ask what it meant, the void shifted.

Reality bent.

For a fraction of a second, Viraj wasn’t standing in the void anymore. He was somewhere else—everywhere else.

Flashes of different timelines bombarded his vision. He saw himself standing in a ruined future, looking at a city swallowed by a time storm. He saw another version of himself, older, sitting in a darkened room, whispering equations onto a chalkboard. He saw Lucius dying in his arms in a place he didn’t recognize.

And then—it was gone.

The void snapped back into place, and Viraj staggered, gasping for breath.

Lucius caught his arm. “What the hell just happened?”

Viraj swallowed hard. “I think... I think it just showed me everything we lost.”

Lucius frowned. “You mean, in the timelines we’ve already erased?”

Viraj hesitated. “No. I think it was showing me what we were supposed to be.”

Lucius’s face darkened. “Well, that’s horrifying. Any way we can politely ask it to stop messing with our heads?”

The Timeborne took another step forward—or rather, it existed closer. It didn’t move like a normal being. It just... was.

"YOU MUST BE UNDONE."

Viraj steadied himself. “Yeah, see, I’m really not a fan of that plan.”

The darkness quaked. The whispers intensified.

And then—the void collapsed.