Cosmic Ruler - Chapter 573

Chapter 573: Arena XII

Myne’s voice cut across the nothingness. “It’s afraid of us.”

He nodded. “Yes. Because for the first time, we’re not trying to survive within its story.”

He turned toward the breach—where the final curtain of unreality fluttered like a wound in the void. The silence deepened as he stared.

Then a tremor.

Not of sound. Not of energy.

Of absence.

Something moved behind that curtain.

Not a thing. Not a god.

A will.

The silence between stars split open.

The entity that emerged did not roar. It did not announce its presence.

It simply was.

A chasm, shaped like nothing, rimmed with the memory of screaming. The essence of denial, crystallized into form.

It was not an Outer God, nor a forgotten one.

It was something older.

Something that had never accepted the idea of existence to begin with.

Aiden whispered the word, though it scalded his throat. “The Before-God.”

The Pact drew close around him, shielding one another instinctively. Vehl began binding symbols into air, but they unraveled before forming. Myne’s frost cracked and melted across timelines that no longer stabilized. Even the unkillable Askar staggered.

The Before-God did not attack.

It erased the need for resistance.

Its presence was the absence of struggle. Of self. Of story.

Aiden reached into his core and denied that denial. His sword shone, golden-abyssal, screaming its defiance in silence. It wrote itself into being against the Before-God’s anti-will.

“We write,” he said. “We remember.”

The Pact echoed: “We remember.”

The void convulsed.

The Before-God shifted, as though disturbed by an itch it could not comprehend.

Aiden stepped forward, planting his sword into the fabric of unreality.

It pierced nothing.

And in doing so—

Created something.

A single star.

Small. Pale. Fragile.

But real.

The Before-God surged.

Not with rage. Not with malice.

With a flattening.

Reality compressed. Language bled into static. Meaning curled at the edges.

Aiden staggered as his thoughts folded into themselves. Memory became suggestion. Names began to vanish again.

“No.” His voice tore from his throat like shrapnel. “We just got them back.”

He plunged deeper into himself. Into the Remembrance. Into the names he’d carved into his soul. Myne. Vehl. Askar. Nexus. Kael. Even those who had died.

He roared those names.

And the star above him flickered brighter.

It fought the compression.

Fought the silence.

Began to hum.

Vehl knelt, sketching glowing glyphs across her skin. “Anchor me to the first name,” she whispered.

Myne mirrored her. “To the first betrayal.”

Askar’s voice was quiet. “To the first refusal.”

They spoke not to Aiden.

But to existence.

The star pulsed again.

This time, it did not tremble.

It beat.

A rhythm.

A song.

The Silence Between Stars recoiled, not in fear, but in confusion.

It had never been resisted before.

Aiden drew his sword from the void and raised it high.

“You are the space between. But we are the ones who fill it.”

The Pact joined hands.

A circuit of meaning.

Of memory.

Of presence.

The Before-God rippled, as though pressed upon by something intolerable.

Awareness.

Aiden stepped forward, blade at the ready. “You gave us nothing. But we named it. You offered void. We forged stars.”

The space shook. The first time the void had ever done so.

The star overhead bloomed into a sun.

A tiny sun.

A fragile defiance.

But enough.

The Before-God paused.

A silence deeper than the previous one followed.

It was listening.

It was learning.

Aiden’s breath caught.

“This was never war.”

Vehl nodded slowly. “It was… a test?”

“No,” Myne whispered. “A… negotiation.”

The silence answered.

Not with sound.

With implication.

The Before-God had never meant to be resisted. It had never known choice. It had never considered that within the nothing, something could want to be.

Aiden stepped forward. “We do not ask your permission.”

The Pact’s voices joined.

“We exist.”

The Before-God pulsed.

And—

—for the first time—

—it withdrew.

The star remained.

Now joined by another.

And another.

Tiny lights in the ink-black sky.

Aiden dropped to his knees, exhausted. His sword dimmed, not from failure—but from peace.

The Pact gathered around him, silent.

Above them, the stars multiplied.

The silence between them remained.

But now—

It had room for song.

The stars had returned, but their light was tentative. Each one flickered as if uncertain of its right to exist. The void had not retreated entirely; it lingered at the edges, watching.​

Aiden stood beneath the newborn sky, his sword—now a beacon of remembrance—planted firmly in the ground. Around him, the Blank Sky Pact gathered, their forms more solid, more real. They had named the Unremembered, and in doing so, had reclaimed a fragment of reality.​

But the void was not vanquished.

It pulsed at the periphery, a constant reminder of the fragility of existence. Aiden could feel it pressing against the boundaries of the known, seeking entry.​

“We’ve bought time,” Myne said, her voice steady. “But the void is patient.”​

Aiden nodded. “Then we must act before it does.”​

He turned to the Pact. “We need to understand what the void truly is. Not just name it, but comprehend it.”​

Vehl stepped forward. “There are ancient texts, forgotten by most, that speak of the void’s origins. We must seek them out.”​

Askar, ever the skeptic, crossed his arms. “And if those texts are lost to the void?”​

“Then we retrieve them,” Aiden said firmly. “Or we create new ones.”​

The Pact dispersed, each member setting off on their respective quests for knowledge. Aiden remained, staring into the horizon where the void loomed. He knew that naming the void was only the beginning. To defeat it, they had to understand it.​

As the days turned into weeks, fragments of forgotten lore were recovered. Vehl returned with scrolls detailing the void’s first incursion into reality. Myne brought back relics imbued with ancient memories. Each piece added to the puzzle.​

Through their combined efforts, a picture began to form. The void was not merely absence; it was a force that thrived on ignorance and forgetfulness. It fed on the unspoken, the unwritten, the unloved.​

Aiden realized that to combat the void, they had to remember. Not just the grand histories, but the small, personal stories. Every forgotten name, every lost tale, was a victory for the void.​

He called upon the people of the realms, urging them to share their stories, to write, to speak, to remember. A wave of storytelling swept across the lands, each tale a beacon against the encroaching darkness.​

The void recoiled.

Its advance slowed, its presence diminished. The collective remembrance of countless souls had created a barrier it could not breach.​

But Aiden knew it was not defeated.

“It will return,” he said to Myne.​

“Then we’ll be ready,” she replied.​

Together, they stood beneath the sky, now dotted with stars that shone a little brighter. The void had a name, and with that name came power. But the true strength lay in the stories they told, the memories they cherished, and the unity they forged.​