It began with one infinitesimal thread of essence, so thin that if it had form or substance it would have been fine enough to pass through solid matter without disturbing it. Even that miniscule, delicate channel contained enough power to send shivers through Yoshika’s very soul. The raw power of creation, the primordial essence from which time, space, and experience were wrought, the lifeblood of Demiurges—timeless, alien beings from a place beyond places.

  Yoshika didn’t know how she knew that. Some part of the essence imparted comprehension on her just by perceiving it as she carefully wound it through the delicate channels of her grand formation. She emptied her mind of everything but the task at hand as one thread became two, then four, then eight, each one spinning off into another and another as she drew from the endless pool of Creation.

  Each thread was so small that it might have been nothing. As if she could draw an infinite number of them and still fail to reduce the pool by one iota. It didn’t matter. She would draw an infinite number of infinities if she had to. Quantity and numbers lost meaning in the face of pure Creation. Concepts like large or small, more or less, zero or infinity—this was the stuff such things were made of. It was the essence of essence itself, the fundamental building block of existence—and non-existence.

  The threads swirled and multiplied, filling Yoshika’s perception of the cosmic body that was both her and not her. The primordial essence flowed through channels like meridians, spiralling ever inward towards the core of everything at the center of her formation. Towards her.

  In a realm beyond thought or feeling, some detached part of Yoshika understood that she had a problem. Each time the threads doubled, they moved halfway to her core, an endless loop incapable of resolution. She could stall like that forever, but then nothing would ever change. An eternity frozen within a single moment, condensed over and over without resolution. Would the rest of the world move on, or would she somehow trap all of creation within her infinitely expanding point of stillness?

  She couldn’t answer, or even ask that question without breaking the moment. As soon as she did, her intent would reach the primordial essence, which would then shape itself and all the essence around it to that intent. Reality would not be destroyed, but it would be unwound—ripped apart and put back together as something fundamentally different. But what was Destruction if not the irreversible transmutation of one thing into another? Even Nothing was something.

  A dangerous ripple passed through Yoshika, and she stilled her mind once more. Even in that perfect state of dissociation, things slipped through the cracks. She withdrew further, putting everything she was into maintaining that asymptotic moment on the brink of finality.

  At the same time, she drew parts of her that weren’t her into the moment. Granting them her perception, but not full comprehension. A loophole in whatever fundamental axiom of the universe she’d tripped over—they weren’t her, but they could think for her while it was too dangerous for her to do it herself.

  “What’s happening?”

  The nervous voice belonged to Hyeong Daesung, but it was mirrored by thousands more, his anxiety shared across an ocean of consciousness.

  “Apocalypse. She’s killed us all.”

  Qin Yang, Yan De, and others like them shared a gloomy sentiment. There was no answer. No resolution. Yoshika had played with forces beyond Her ken, and now they all paid the price.

  “Nonsense! There’s always an answer if you have the time to seek it—and She’s given us all the time in the world.”

  Do Hye, Seong Misun, a reluctant Hwang Sung, and an endless number of like-minded seekers of truth and understanding echoed through the expanse of shared experience. For as long as they could search, there would always be more knowledge to find.

  “There is no time. No space. There isn’t even an us. What can we possibly accomplish like this? Why did She make us witness this?”

  “More importantly, how? The formation wasn’t supposed to do this at all. She’s changed it somehow.”

  Voices blended together, fading in and out of self-awareness as they argued back and forth. There were too many for any individual to distinguish themselves. Most could do little more than quietly exist, lending their experiences as substrate to the more defined and powerful personalities. Even those could do little more than band together with like-minded individuals to push shared sentiments to the fore, then fade back into the noise of the collective.

  “Melati’s never been part of another hive before! It’s nice not having to think all our own thoughts.”

  “A hive. That’s an interesting way to look at it. Yoshika’s apotheosis has brought us all together, but if She is not here, then who is the queen of this hive?”

  Thoughts of submission conflicted with ambitious drive, while yet another conglomeration of thought coalesced to deny them both. Names lost meaning—a former soldier, a close friend, those with experience joining with Yoshika, and those who understood and embraced the cooperation she represented. All emerged as one unified voice, like a wave in the ocean of thought.

  “It’s not that kind of collective. None of us are more or less than the others. We are not Her, but part of Her lives within us. She needs us as much as we need Her. We are here to help.”

  Lingering doubts bubbled up in opposition, some overlapping with the voices they addressed.

  “Help how? She’s stuck gathering more and more of that primordial essence, and the moment She allows this stalemate to break, everything ends.”

  “She needs to send it back where it belongs.”

  “But She can’t. If She so much as touches it, She’ll trigger the collapse.”

  It was a puzzle, but puzzles were meant to be solved. Yoshika had drawn them together to find answers where she could not. If the collected vision, insights, and experiences of an entire world could not find an answer, then there was no answer to be found.

  “That’s what we’ve been saying. There is no answer. We are trapped here forever.”

  “Even if that’s true, is it not better to spend that eternity searching for answers instead of moping about it?”

  “No. We’d rather mope.”

  Most of the collective pushed aside the naysayers, but their presence was unavoidable. Important, even. Doubts served a purpose, but the rest of the thoughts could not let themselves be bound by them.

  “The Sovereign’s Tear is part of Her. The primordial essence must be returned to the Tear. Might there be a way to separate Her from the Tear so that the essence will return of its own accord?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. Even if She could split herself apart like that, the divine formation doesn’t work without Her at its core. Letting go of it disperses the essence, and holding onto it means the essence must pass through Her anyway. Either way leads to destruction.”

  An unlikely alliance of lateral thinkers, including friends, enemies, and complete strangers to Yoshika turned the puzzle on its head. If She was a—no, the Goddess of Unity, then they needed to find a solution that played to her strengths.

  “We speak of separation, but that is not how the Goddess does things, is it? What She needs to do is join the primordial essence to the Sovereign’s Tear, and if She’s already joined to the Tear, then it seems to us that there’s only one path forward.”

  “Are we suggesting She, what, refine the primordial essence somehow? That would just destroy everything.”

  “Probably, yes.”

  There was a long, clamorous pause as the collective dissolved into noise, all previous associations momentarily lost as it tried to create new voices from the chaos.

  “You’re talking about destroying the world—perhaps every world—in order to return the essence to the Tear. That would be a rather extreme case of putting the cart before the horse.”

  “We are simply exploring possible solutions. Perhaps finding a way to do it by destroying the world is the first step on the path to doing it without destroying the world.”

  “You don’t believe that. You only want to find an answer—any answer. You don’t care about the cost.”

  A line was drawn. A schism in the collective, though even here the boundaries were blurry. An exhausted sigh rippled through the part of them that still had faith in Her.

  “We trust that whatever happens, She will do right by us. We’ve already reached a threshold from which there is no return. Eventually, we will have to finish taking that first step across.”

  “No! Who says I have to do anything? It’s not too late to abandon her. Qin Yang is here. With his power, maybe I can leave. Let you and Yoshika stay here and rot in the purgatory She chose for herself!”

  “We don’t know if that will even work. If Qin is here, then where are his benefactors? Where is Shen Yu? Longyan? If his power is so great, then why is he part of us and not part of Her? Or at least an equivalent being.”

  The schism recoiled, offended by the implication.

  “How dare you! Qin’s divinity is not in question! He is just...diminished. Stop speaking as if I’m part of you!”

  “But we are. No matter how much it frightens us, we are what we are, and whatever fate has in store for us, we can only meet it with open arms.”

  “Your future is nothing but destruction!”

  The collective shrugged, resigned but hopeful.

  “It may be, but She has been torn apart and created anew before. We did that for Her. Harnessing the power of creation might destroy us all—probably will. But She will remain, and with the power of creation, we trust Her to return that favor.”

  “That’s fine for you, but what about me?! Even if She can do as you suggest, can I trust her to restore me as I was? If I were to create a new world, it would be so much easier to create it without my enemies. Why should I participate in my own erasure?”

  “Because even if we are not Her, She is within us, and us within Her. All of us. She will not erase us, because to do so would be to erase Herself.”

  The schism could not trust the collective’s words so easily, but it was still part of the collective, and a decision had been made. A solution arose, and by its nature, Yoshika could not question or even comprehend it—only follow it, trusting them as they had trusted her.

  Except suddenly she could understand it. The first step of the conclusion that the collective gave her was to let her awareness spread throughout the entire formation, until she was no longer at the core of the cosmic pseudo-entity through which she was channeling everything—she was that cosmic being. Raw creation ran through her veins, no longer in danger of responding to her intent because it was her intent. She was the world, she was the Tear, and she was the infinite ocean of primordial essence.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  But the essence still had to go somewhere. It still contained the power of infinite stars spanning infinite universes. Yoshika wept at the realization of what the collective thoughts and feelings of her world had chosen for her. If she was the Tear, and the world, and the essence, then all of them had to return with her, to that mysterious source of all things. To save the world, she had to destroy it. To save herself, she had to die.

  She couldn’t hesitate. The world had made its choice, though it was not a unanimous one. They had given her their trust, and though she had no idea what would happen—what she would see on the other side of annihilation—she swore in her heart that she would live up to that trust.

  As if triggered by that thought, the endless buildup of power reached a crescendo, and time resumed. The primordial essence flowed through her cosmic body, her divine soul, and overwhelmed the infinite expanse of her mind.

  All of it spiraled inward, compressing to a single point. That tiny red jewel—a flaw in the cosmos. A leak, a wound—the blood of gods beyond the kind of petty deity she had become.

  She felt herself being pulled into it, strand by strand, then suddenly all at once as the explosive growth of the formation reached a critical peak. The primordial essence vanished, her cosmic body followed, then her divine soul, her mind, her world, and the Tear itself, until there was only nothing.

  Welcome back, young one. At last we meet, at the end of your path. And the beginning.

  The Void? Was she dead again? The last vestiges of her soul flickering between oblivion and reincarnation?

  Not this time. You are not here with me. You are not anywhere. You do not exist at all. Beyond even my reach—an absence that cannot be observed.

  The Void seemed to be observing just fine.

  It is a momentary thing. Infinity distilled to a single point. Your nature and mine work in tandem to create this bridge. I will toil for eternity to reach this moment.

  That didn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it have said that it had toiled for eternity?

  Eternity does not end, and time has no meaning here. I am not the Void as you knew me, nor as you will know me. The being you have known and will come to know experiences this moment only as echoes—dreams, premonitions, and portents.

  She hadn’t thought the Void could dream.

  Metaphorical. You still frame experience through the lens of mortal reality. You have not yet understood what you are or what you will be.

  Dead?

  Death is change. There is no such thing here. You are beyond death, or life, or anything in between. You are eternal, everlasting. Even I am less than an eyeblink to your true nature. This exchange is only possible because for one fleeting moment, you were. Because you existed, however briefly, you could cease—and thus I could find you here.

  Why? She had thought that the Void helped her because Chou’s last trap had been a danger even to it, but now it was implying that even that was only the means to an end.

  It is both. Unbridled creation is anathema to me, especially, though nothing would survive as you knew it if the worst comes to pass. Our cosmos would become like yours—filled with the boundless essence of existence. A world without contrast, without change, without meaning.

  It was mixing things up. She had already stopped that from happening. She was also quite certain that her world was not like that. She had experienced no shortage of contrast, change, and meaning in her short life.

  Time does not exist here. Soon you will learn to see all that is, was, could be, or could have been. The totality of causality, laid out like a tapestry before you.

  So Chou was right. Fate truly was real, and the future was predetermined and immutable.

  No.

  N-no? But the Void had just said that she was in a place without time or change or meaning.

  Yes. In this moment. This frozen instant of eternity. But this realm of unchanging uniformity is not perfect. It has flaws—two of them. The demiurges.

  Two? Somehow she thought that there would be more of them.

  To exist is to be capable of change. The birth of a demiurge is also its death. To be anything less than eternal in a realm devoid of change is tantamount to never existing at all. I do not know how the first demiurge came into being, as it died before it was born. I am a vestige of its nascent mind—a consciousness aborted before it could ever form, nothingness given life.

  Wait, so Void was one of the two demiurges?

  No. Only its shadow. The emptiness left in its wake as it passed. The first demiurge remains a mystery even to me. I have never witnessed any sign of its existence—only its absence.

  But she’d been told that demiurges did make their presences known sometimes, as mysterious avatars with inscrutable purposes. They stepped in whenever the disorder of heaven threatened to wreak too much havoc on mortal worlds—they’d been the ones to step in and put a halt to Chou’s bloody rampage. Clearly they had some kind of interest in existence.

  Yes. You do.

  ...

  No, wait, that wasn’t right. She was no demiurge. She would have known if she was a timeless being outside of causality. She was just...just...why couldn’t she remember who she was?

  Because you have not become her yet, nor has she become you. We have captured this moment of infinity at the precise intersection between past and future, after your death, and before your life.

  Between past and future? Did it mean the present?

  No.

  Right. Okay, then. That still didn’t answer why. What was this all about? Why had Void helped her reach this point? Why had it worked so hard to get here itself? And...what was she supposed to do now?

  My purpose is already fulfilled. I am here because the echoes of this moment I felt within my soul compelled me to be here. Because it was inevitable.

  So fate was immutable?

  No. But you are. Whatever decisions you will make to reach this point, you have already made. When your eyes open to reality and time unfurls itself beneath your gaze, you will be free to observe any possibility, and in the observing, make it so.

  That didn’t change anything. It just meant that she was fate, and that she was immutable.

  You may see it that way. I do. Chou will. Yet can an entity which defines causality truly be bound by it? Perhaps you have carved the inevitable path the Bloody Sovereign will come to resent and seek to destroy. Perhaps you will give our reality the meaning your predecessor never had the chance to impart. Regardless, my role here is at its end. I cannot impose my impermanence on you any longer.

  She tried to call out to it, but she had no voice, tried to reach but had no hands. She was alone, with nothing to keep her company, but even nothing had disappeared, leaving just...her. Formless, meaningless, eternal, yet stuck with an unbearable emptiness within her.

  In the constant static of unchanging existence, she had nothing else to do but investigate that emptiness. There was no Void there, no absence, nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the raw, primordial existence everywhere else. It was just...a feeling. An idea. Memories of a past that hadn’t yet happened, and a future she’s already seen. Potential, waiting to bubble up out of the formless mass of reality and become something else.

  Just as the Void had said, she could see it now. The entire cosmos, the flaw in her unchanging eternity of raw being, her sibling’s corpse. It contained all of time within it. Everything that might be or might have been. She turned away, afraid to look. Terrified that whatever she witnessed would come to be, worried that she might witness the wrong thing. Some part of her felt that she had an oath to uphold, even if she hadn’t made it yet.

  But forever was a long time to hesitate, and curiosity wasn’t nearly that patient. Eventually, she looked, and what she saw was everything.

  She was confused. There was no picking and choosing—no deciding to be done, nor meaning to impart. It was true that fate was immutable, but only from her perspective. Time was not a line, or a series of branching paths, or even a plane of possibilities. It was an entire dimension, each point with an infinite number of pathways leading to it, and an infinite number leading away.

  It wasn’t accurate to say that everything that would happen already had. Rather, everything that could happen, did. Every future that might have been, every past that could be—all of them were real, and all of them existed at once.

  That didn’t mean that everything was possible, however. Try as he might, there was no reality in which the man who sometimes took the name Chou succeeded in slaying her. Plenty in which some aspect of him slew some aspect of her, but she was immutable. The only thing which could change her, was her. Besides, he was already carrying around her corpse—what more did he want?

  He reached her, sometimes. Parts of her were intertwined with her deceased counterpart, and in those places she could recall an echo of who she might become once she was born. She tried to explain his misunderstanding, but often lacked the words to express it properly. Sometimes she broke him, sometimes she stoked his fury further and she had to extinguish him entirely, to preserve the futures he tried to destroy.

  Those futures still ended, of course. She could have extinguished Chou in every reality, to prevent him from ever existing and keep every future intact, but that was meaningless. To do that would be to rob her sibling’s sacrifice of meaning. If she worked hard enough, eventually she might even be able to repair the wound in their endless expanse of formlessness by just eliminating every possibility until it was as unchanging and formless as everything else.

  She...didn’t want to do that. Even when Chou destroyed reality, that was only one path among the infinite—a single invisible thread of darkness cutting through a vast dimension of light and life. So she kept her hands to herself—for the most part. A little poke here, or a nudge there, just enough to keep the darkness from spreading too far from the places where only her intervention could stop it.

  An eternity passed like that, pruning and trimming the tapestry of causality like a good little Goddess of Fate until she realized that there was nothing left to do.

  There were many things that never happened. Nobody ever joined her. They tried, but most were like Chou. A few thought themselves sufficient and tried to hurl themselves outside of her dead cousin’s body, but she just gently put them back where they came from with a light scolding before they could be obliterated by raw creation.

  Neither did the whole of creation ever get destroyed. Certainly there were threads where all of existence got obliterated—the threads of darkness she spent so much effort containing—but never in a way that threatened the entire tapestry. In fact, it was constantly growing! There were always more threads, more possibilities, new futures leading to different pasts in an ever shifting pattern of life and death.

  Just as she never changed, her dead parent never stopped changing. Nevertheless, she still ran out of possibilities to explore.

  It wasn’t that there was a limit to them, but rather that there wasn’t a limit to her. Infinity was nothing to her. She looked upon an endless, eternal task—and did it. Then it was done. She wasn’t bored—she couldn’t get bored. But neither was she happy, or sad, or anything else.

  It occurred to her, as she contemplated the nature of the dead world she’d spent eternity nurturing, and contrasted it with her own, that she’d gotten things backwards. The other demiurge wasn’t dead at all. It was alive, thriving, and growing. It was life by its very definition.

  She, on the other hand, was not alive. She wasn’t dead, either. She just was. Had been. Was going to be. Chou never killed her, nor did anyone else. Yet her corpse was there too. She had died, and was going to be born. But the only thing that could change her was her.

  Was that why the Void had interrupted her? Was that capacity for change some gift her other half had left behind after its cosmic suicide? By giving birth to itself, had the universe given her the tools she needed to follow in its footsteps?

  She could have just sat in silent contemplation forever. She did. She pruned and nurtured the universe forever. She did nothing forever. She did everything forever.

  Though she was infinite, she only had one death. Only one birth. Her corpse appeared in many places, passed through many hands. She lent her power to an infinite number of wielders over the course of eternity, and an infinite number of them returned that power to her—as if she wasn’t surrounded by an endless mass of the stuff.

  But only one of them could be her. Or maybe all of them could. Causality didn’t matter to her. Nothing should have mattered to her, but watching the other demiurge change had changed her.

  Were there really two demiurges? The other had always been dead.

  Had she really not been born? She’d always been changing.

  To be born was to die, and to die was to be born. In a place where nothing ever changed, anything less than eternity was nothing. She was infinite, she had experienced eternity, but perhaps her mistake had been in assuming that was enough. She’d had a beginning, when Void spoke to her. And she would have her end, at the beginning of the universe.

  There was only one. All of it was her. All of it had always been her. She was...everything. She had sacrificed herself in order to create herself. All that was left was to return the favor.

  She remembered her oath. The promise she’d made to herself. She saw it now, a point of darkness that her limitless eyes had chosen not to see. It was her end, and it would be her beginning. She would toil for eternity to reach it, but then she would extend her hand to touch that dark point and fulfill her promise.

  She created herself, and in doing so, she destroyed herself.

  The Goddess of Fate unraveled, and Yoshika opened her eyes to a world reborn.

  !

  Selkie Myth for their incredible shoutouts.

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