A universe perished.
There was no war cry. No glorious struggle. No final stand.
Only silence—a silence so absolute, it did not merely replace sound; it consumed the memory of sound itself.
Where once vibrant galaxies pulsed with the dance of stars and civilizations, now there was only an expanding void, a great cosmic scar of non-being.
And standing at the epicenter…
...was Noctis Nihilo.
Clad in robes spun from the ink of collapsed dimensions, his form was neither mortal nor divine—but something that made both feel irrelevant. His crown hovered just inches above his brow, forged from conceptual negation—a circlet made not of matter, but of absence.
Behind him, countless beings floated in reverent stillness. Not a true army, but an entropic pantheon—every one of them forged from broken time, dead realities, fragmented souls, and lost truths.
These were the Scions of Ruin. Each one a former god, demon, or concept that had forsaken identity to serve the absolute.
The Ashbound Oracle, whose eyes foretold the unmaking of anything she looked upon.
The Pale Legion, once protectors of light, now hollow statues of bone and purpose.
The Threnody, a symphony of screaming echoes from the first universe ever erased.
And finally, the Harbinger Mirrors—sentient shards of realities that never were, now reflecting doom into existence.
They waited behind Noctis as he turned his gaze forward—not with anticipation, but with inevitability.
He stood at the edge of creation—where even time dared not breathe—and gazed upon a sight he had not witnessed before.
There it was.
A barrier.
A living sphere of golden, thrumming power, rotating with runes older than this iteration of reality itself. Light coiled like dragons around it. Sigils pulsed like hearts. And stretching endlessly across its skin were what resembled veins of molten fate.
At the farthest reaches of the sphere—seven Warden Beasts stirred in subtle, patient rhythms.
Noctis Nihilo raised one hand.
Noctis Nihilo:
"…Curious."
His voice was not deep, nor shrill. It was like someone speaking underwater, where sound bent wrong and sent shivers through spacetime.
Ashbound Oracle stepped forward, her broken voice like glass grinding across bone.
"My master… this shell is… resistant."
Noctis turned his gaze toward her.
She immediately dropped to her knees, weeping dust from her sockets.
Noctis:
"'Resistant' is not the same as 'permanent.'"
Another figure emerged—this one draped in shadows that rejected shape. A being known only as Coryx, the End-Woven General.
Coryx:
"This... is not the work of any pantheon I have erased before. This bears the essence of a singular will."
Noctis tilted his head, hand folding behind his back as he studied the sphere.
For the first time in countless annihilations, he felt it—not fear, not surprise… but something eerily close to recognition.
Within the divine shield of the Aegis Eternum, alarms rang through the sacred halls of Nyvaris.
The sky itself shifted. Planar disturbances rumbled across divine latticework. Even the Warden Beasts stirred, letting out sounds that only gods could hear—warning calls from the edge of existence.
Inside the Sanctum Caelestis, Rimuru, Varvatos, Velzard, Elmesia, Veldora, Diablo, Benimaru, and all of Nyvaris' defenders gathered around the Divine Mirror Gate.
The mirror pulsed—then flared. And they saw him.
Noctis Nihilo, standing before their universe, staring directly at the Aegis.
A quiet fell.
Rimuru, his face pale, asked in a low whisper:
"...Is that him?"
Varvatos:
"Yes."
His tone was void of all dramatics. Just fact. Cold, irrefutable.
Velzard, eyes narrowed, clenched her fists.
"I can feel it... it's like he's already here."
Elmesia, voice shaken:
"Just looking at him makes my magic tremble."
Diablo, more serious than ever before:
"If he reaches this place… nothing remains."
Varvatos turned away from the mirror.
Varvatos:
"He will test the Aegis. He will prod. He will observe. But he cannot enter—not yet."
Benimaru:
"Then we still have time?"
Varvatos, calmly:
"Time is a fragile luxury. Use it well."
He extended his hand and conjured a divine map—a sphere showing the barrier, its defense grid, and every projected impact zone. Radiant paths appeared where the Scions of Ruin might aim to breach.
Varvatos:
"Watch closely. If even one of his followers penetrates this realm, they will not seek conquest—they will begin unraveling your history, your memories, your souls."
Shion, drawing her blade:
"Then they'll be met with steel."
Veldora, now serious:
"Let them come. For every breath they take here will be their last."
Varvatos turned once more toward the mirror.
Varvatos:
"He erases without effort. But this time…"
He raised his hand once again.
Above the skies of Nyvaris, from every point along the inside of the Aegis, the Warden Beasts roared.
Their voices thundered across dimensions.
Even Noctis Nihilo paused, his unreadable expression tilted toward the sound.
Varvatos (voice low):
"This time… he will face resistance."
Back at the outer veil, Noctis Nihilo raised his hand again.
A ripple spread outward.
One by one, the Scions of Ruin stepped forward, preparing for deployment.
He spoke a word no mortal would ever understand—a command so abstract that it rippled backwards through time.
And then…
He pointed toward the Aegis Eternum.
A single, infinite word left his mouth:
Noctis:
"Begin."
The silence of the cosmos was shattered.
From the black gulf beyond creation, where the stardust of annihilated universes still drifted like ashes in a cold void, it came.
A ripple—no, a tear—in reality. Space groaned. Time winced. A jagged chasm of obsidian light bloomed like a wound across the boundary of the universe Varvatos had sealed.
The First Breach had begun.
From the abyssal fracture, a procession of shadowy figures surged forth—creatures that twisted the senses, made of impossibilities and silence, malformed by the will of their master: Noctis Nihilo.
They were his scouts, his testers, and his heralds—each of them potent enough to ravage a world, yet nothing more than offerings to probe the might of this new domain. Their presence caused solar winds to recoil. They devoured light as they advanced.
Their goal: puncture the divine barrier that enclosed this universe, erected by Varvatos himself—a shimmering boundary of celestial threads, woven from the World Law and reinforced by ancient divine runes beyond mortal understanding.
Then—there was movement.
At the edges of reality, where mortal comprehension faded, they stirred.
The Warden Beasts.
The First Warden was already waiting.
Tethrakkon, Warden of the Southern Reach—an entity of absolute stillness, slumbering between neutron stars. It moved without sound, without haste. Its body—an amalgam of obsidian armor and glowing star-runes—was so large that even galaxies bowed to its passage.
As the voidspawn approached the Southern edge, they halted.
Not from fear. They could not feel fear.
But some ancient instinct, buried in whatever remained of their awareness, told them this thing before them was not just a guardian.
It was judgment.
Tethrakkon's runes ignited with golden radiance. There was no roar, no scream—only the thunder of silence as it raised a limb the size of a continent and struck.
A single blow.
The space around them shattered like glass. Dozens of invaders were obliterated without even the chance to react.
Another Warden stirred.
Azel'Vorr, the Warden of the East, whose body was a serpent of galactic plasma, emerged from the folds of light itself. With scales that shimmered like quasars, its coiling mass unspooled from hidden reality, wrapping the Eastern front in an infinite spiral of burning radiance.
The remaining voidspawn attempted to scatter—but they were too slow.
Azel'Vorr's tail lashed, erasing millions of kilometers of space in a single sweep. The darkness screamed and blinked out of existence.
Above the breach line, in the unreachable heights of the universe's crown, the Northern Warden descended—Ka'maraxis, the Black Mirror. It was not a beast of flesh, nor even of essence. It was a void made flesh, a shadow that reflected nothing. Its form was a jagged spiral of negative light.
When it opened its eyes—twin eclipses—weeping black starlight, the voidspawn froze.
And then, like puppets cut from their strings, they withered. Not in body, but in will. Their essence was unraveled, their forms crumbled to entropy. Ka'maraxis devoured what made them real.
Three Warden Beasts.
Three fronts.
A coordinated ballet of annihilation without a word spoken.
As if following an unseen rhythm, as if dancing to the heartbeat of a god, they moved in perfect unity.
Far beyond, in Nyvaris, the sky darkened. The heavens shimmered like water, and then revealed to the stunned mortals a vision—not an illusion, but a window through Varvatos' will.
Rimuru, Veldora, Diablo, Benimaru, Shion, Hakuro, and the rest stood outside the Celestial Palace of Nyvaris, watching in breathless silence.
The vision displayed the three Warden Beasts at war, their forms titanic, elegant, terrifying.
Carrera murmured, "…That's not war. That's divine retribution."
Shuna gripped Shion's hand tightly. "They don't even hesitate… it's like they already know what to do…"
"They do," Diablo answered solemnly, his crimson eyes narrowing. "They are not like us. They do not need commands. They were made for this. They are extensions of Lord Varvatos' judgment."
Gobta, unusually quiet, whispered, "...Good thing they're on our side."
Meanwhile, the final survivors of the First Breach screamed into the void, trying to retreat.
But it was too late.
The final Warden revealed itself—the one who was not stationed at a corner of the universe, but moved between the cardinal edges.
Yrrmion, the Pale Song—a wraith-like construct of translucent wings and endless mouths—descended from a tear in the stars, unleashing an inaudible scream that echoed across realities.
And like that—the Breach was sealed.
The invaders, unworthy of names, erased.
In the silence that followed, a quiet pulse resonated across the divine barrier. A signal. Not from the Warden Beasts—but from something deeper.
The will of Noctis Nihilo had noticed.
He had seen.
The trial had begun.
And this was only the first breath of war.