It began not with an explosion, but with a suffocating silence.
Virellen, one of the shining gems of Kael's empire, renowned for its fusion of magical academia and industrial prowess, blinked out of existence.
One moment, it was a thriving city—a hub of knowledge, enchantment, and trade. The next… nothing. A void, a silent gap on all maps, an absence on every arcane sensor.
No couriers arrived. No magical signals pinged from its towers. The streets were eerily still, but there was no sign of devastation, no marks of battle. No smoke or flames, no scattered remnants of civilization. There was simply a blankness that stretched across the fabric of existence itself.
Virellen wasn't destroyed. It wasn't corrupted. It had vanished.
Gone.
Three hundred thousand souls. Gone.
Not dead. Not lost. Removed.
Kael stood before the Grand Scepter of Dominion, his hand resting on the cold, smooth surface of the artifact. His mind was a storm of thoughts, calculating, hypothesizing, considering every possible avenue for explanation. The scepter allowed him to observe the ebb and flow of magic within his empire—the leylines, the flow of arcane energies, the key nodes of power. But now, the projection of Virellen—a city once vibrant with life—was gone. There was nothing where it should have been. Only empty space. The crystal projections of his empire's power grid flickered and sputtered in an unnatural, erratic rhythm, as if the very fabric of reality had been stretched and torn.
Eryndor, the Shadow Serpent, stood beside him. The ancient creature's many eyes, each a glimmering pool of wisdom and ancient terror, narrowed as he surveyed the scene. His serpentine body coiled like a living storm, his claws clicking softly against the floor of Kael's private chamber. "This is not conquest," he said slowly, his voice laced with a thread of apprehension. "This is subtraction."
Kael said nothing, his thoughts churning with the gravity of what he had just witnessed. Subtraction. A piece of reality, of history, simply wiped away without a trace. The very essence of Virellen had been erased, leaving behind only the barest shadow of its existence.
The winds of the Abyss howled in the distance, but in Kael's mind, the storm was more than a metaphor. A dark force had begun to stir. Something older, something deeper, something beyond even his understanding.
That evening, as twilight descended upon the Imperial Palace, Kael convened a rare meeting of his inner circle in the Astral Chamber. The chamber, carved from ancient stone and draped in shimmering, translucent veils of magic, was a place of both contemplation and strategy—a fitting locale for the crisis that now loomed over the empire.
Kael's eyes flicked across the faces of those assembled. His mother, Lilith, was absent—she had sealed herself within her private palace, unreachable and hidden, the aura of her own disquiet palpable. The Empress stood to Kael's right, her regal presence imposing yet tempered by the quiet worry in her eyes. Seraphina paced restlessly in the corner, her usual calm shattered by the sheer scale of the crisis. Elara, her face a mask of pale concern, sat silently beside a shifting pool of magical projections, her fingers tracing absent shapes in the air. Selene had summoned seers—seven of them. Six had fallen catatonic the moment they tried to divine the truth of Virellen. The seventh, a young woman with hollow eyes, had screamed a single word before she clawed her own throat open in terror:
"Singularity."
"I don't believe in coincidences," Kael said, his voice low and measured, though the tightness in his hands betrayed his inner turmoil. "The Enforcer arrives. The stars begin to vanish. The weave misbehaves. And now… time and place unravel?"
Isryn, his stoic advisor and master of hidden truths, nodded slowly from his place beside the chamber's central pillar. "Even the Abyss trembles," he said, his voice like a whispering wind. "I've heard from Lilith's agents… she's sealed herself within her palace. She knows something we don't."
"She's scared," Seraphina said flatly, her tone icy as her eyes flicked to the pool of magic before her.
Kael's gaze was unwavering. He stared into the shimmering surface of the pool, watching as the fragmented image of the world—his world—wavered like a shattered reflection. The ripple was subtle, a tremor of reality, but it was there. And Kael felt it deep within his bones.
"If she's scared…" Kael's words trailed off, his mind racing to calculate the implications. If Lilith, a being of such immeasurable power, was frightened, then something far worse was on the horizon.
The pool of magic shifted again, this time showing a new vision—one that chilled Kael to his very core.
Another report.
The Council of Chronomancers, a prestigious order of time-magic specialists in the city of Athalar, had vanished. Not assassinated. Not abducted. The entire council—scholars, researchers, and experts in manipulating the flow of time itself—had simply… ceased to exist. Not only had they disappeared, but all records of their existence, all references, all documents, were gone. The books, the arcane tomes, even the memories of those who had once worked with them—now they were blank placeholders, eroded from history as though they had never been.
The ripple through reality deepened.
"The equations are breaking down," Kael murmured under his breath, his hand clenched tightly around the hilt of his sword. The very idea of time itself being malleable, rewritten, was a concept too dangerous to grasp fully. "What… or who… could have done this?"
He turned away from the pool and locked eyes with each of his allies. "This is not the work of a mere mortal or even a god. Whoever—or whatever—is doing this, it is rewriting the very fabric of existence. They are not just erasing history. They are forging something new. And it is coming for us."
Seraphina's eyes glinted with cold determination. "We need answers, Kael. Whatever this is, we must stop it before it erases everything we know."
Kael met her gaze, his expression hardened. "Agreed. But first, we must understand the scope of the threat. We are no longer fighting for dominion over an empire or even the gods themselves. We are fighting to preserve reality."
By midnight, Kael had issued orders to seal the empire's arcane gates and initiate a total lockdown of all magical travel. No one was to leave or enter the empire under any circumstances. But even as the orders were carried out, it was already too late.
Anomalies were spreading across the empire like wildfire.
In the ancient city of Lorian, the clock towers spun backward, their gears grinding in unnatural opposition. Rituals, once precise and beautiful, now spiraled into chaotic, uncontrolled energies, twisting their casters into strange, half-formed shapes. In the distant city of Althera, a family watched in horror as their child turned to dust mid-sentence, her body disintegrating into the air as if she had never existed. And in the forest of Drahgor, rivers flowed uphill, their waters defying the very laws of nature.
Kael walked the halls of the Imperial Palace with a heavy heart and a mind razor-sharp. He moved like a phantom, his footsteps almost inaudible as he observed the growing disarray. The palace, once a bastion of strength and order, was now a place of unease. The walls seemed to close in on him as he passed through empty chambers, the silence amplifying his every step. It felt as though reality itself was crumbling beneath his feet.
In one corridor, he passed an ornate mirror. He glanced into it, expecting to see his reflection—a familiar face, sharp and calculating, with the weight of the world in his eyes.
But there was nothing.
Instead, he saw another version of himself—walking in the opposite direction, his face impassive and distant. For a split second, Kael's heart skipped a beat, and then the reflection was gone. Just as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished.
Another him.
Gone in the blink of an eye.
By dawn, the damage had only grown worse. Entire districts of cities blinked in and out of existence. Ancient, sacred libraries bore books with blank pages, their contents stolen by an invisible hand. The air itself seemed to tremble with the weight of the unknown.
Elara found Kael in the Tower of Origins, where the empire's founding scrolls had once been kept—the records of Kael's reign, his conquests, his victories, the very essence of his rule. But now, when Kael turned to the ancient shelves, his stomach twisted in disbelief.
The scrolls were blank.
He reached out with trembling hands, his fingertips brushing the parchment. It felt cold—empty.
"They're not erasing," Kael whispered, his voice breaking. "They're rewriting."
Elara's voice trembled beside him. "Who… or what… could do this?"
Kael turned to her, his face a mask of grim resolve. He placed his hand over his chest, feeling the faint beat of the Heart of Singularity pulsing beneath his skin.
The game had changed.
No longer was he fighting for conquest or survival.
Now, he was fighting for reality itself.
To be continued…