The air in John's study was thick with the scent of aged paper and beeswax candles, a scent that carried the weight of decades spent unraveling ancient truths. Books lined every inch of the towering walls, their spines whispering silent tales of forgotten lore and forbidden knowledge. Each volume was a gate, a fragment of truths mankind was never meant to understand. And yet, John had made it his life's mission to understand them anyway.
He sat hunched over a particularly ancient tome, its vellum pages brittle, yellowed, and inked in a language that hadn't been spoken in eons. The candlelight flickered against his glasses as he traced a passage with a shaking finger. His hands, once steady and precise, now trembled—not with age, but with the burden of knowing too much.
By most accounts, John was the third smartest man alive. A title he bore with a mixture of pride and quiet anxiety. Intelligence had opened doors no human should walk through. It had brought him to the edges of reason, where logic failed and horror began.
Across from him sat Evelyn, his daughter. She was young, brilliant, and unyielding in her curiosity. The same curiosity that had cursed John with a lifetime of sleepless nights. Evelyn possessed his intellect, perhaps even exceeded it, but hers was still untouched by despair. Her mind danced where his trudged.
"Dad," she began, her brow furrowed with concern, "the Unravel ability of the Unbounds is too powerful. The texts… they barely scratch the surface. What if… just what if, Dad… Omnius wasn't there to restrain them? The infinite Unbounds?"
Her voice wavered slightly, though she tried to mask it. Evelyn was no longer a child, but in that moment, her question wasn't just academic—it was existential.
John closed the ancient book with a slow, deliberate motion. A heavy thud echoed in the quiet room, a sound that felt more like a warning than punctuation. He leaned back in his worn leather chair, eyes clouded with memory and fear.
"Oh, Evelyn…" he whispered, the name carrying both affection and sorrow. "That… I don't know how to describe that anymore. It's beyond comprehension. No mortals could possibly survive something like that."
His eyes drifted to a framed photograph on his desk, a swirling nebula caught in a rare alignment, its colors otherworldly. Evelyn had given it to him years ago after one of her stargazing nights. He remembered how proud she had been, how innocent her fascination with the cosmos had seemed back then.
"I remember," he said, voice barely above a murmur, "reading in the earliest texts—those not written by hands, but by… impressions left in reality—about two Unbounds who merely fought over pride. Not revenge. Not conquest. Not ideology. Just pride. And their clash nearly unraveled the multiverse."
Evelyn leaned forward, her expression grim.
"Nearly?"
"No," John corrected himself. "It did. Temporarily. Reality bled into itself. Memories crossed timelines. Cause and effect broke down. There were people who remembered dying before they were born. Stars that pulsed with the rhythm of forgotten gods. It took Omnius himself to descend and force their Unraveling to halt. He didn't defeat them—he restrained them, Evelyn. He commanded them. And they obeyed."
There was a silence between them now. Not the silence of peace, but of deep realization. Of standing at the edge of an abyss and knowing it stared back.
"Now imagine," he continued, "an infinite number of Unbounds. Not two. Not ten. Infinite. Each with the ability to Unravel not just reality, but the very notion of existence. And without Omnius…"
He stopped, unable to complete the sentence. He didn't need to. The implication hung in the air like a guillotine.
"Dad," Evelyn asked softly, "are they evil?"
"No," he said quickly, almost instinctively. "They're… not evil. Not like us. They don't operate on morality. They're too vast. Too high. Some are boundless hearts, full of love and restraint. Others… are emptiness personified. Some exist only to question Omnius's order. To test the fabric of possibility. But none of them are evil in the way we understand it. They simply are. Unfiltered. Untamed."
He paused, his voice a little hoarse now.
"That's what makes them so terrifying. You cannot reason with a storm, Evelyn. You cannot plead with a cosmic tide. And the Unbounds are not storms. They are the concept of storm, dreaming themselves into chaos."
She stared at the dancing shadows on the wall. "If Omnius vanished… would it all just… end?"
John gave a weary nod.
"Not end. Not like a story closes. No. It would be worse. The concept of endings would unravel. The idea of time. The framework of memory. Of identity. You wouldn't know who you were, because there would be no 'you' to question it. There would be no 'existence' to hold the idea of a question."
The fire in the hearth hissed, throwing sparks upward as if in protest.
"Some say," he added, "that one Higher Unbound once got trapped outside the script. Not inside the story… outside it. Refused to be written. But even nonexistence became a prison. That's the level we're talking about, Evelyn. Not strength. Not power. Freedom from everything—even freedom itself."
Evelyn swallowed hard. She had come to her father seeking clarity, and instead found awe. Fearful, reverent awe.
"So Omnius…" she said, voice quieter than ever, "He's the only one standing between infinite Unbounds… and everything unraveling?"
John looked at her with the heaviness of someone who had carried forbidden knowledge too long.
"No," he said, "Omnius is not standing between them and the rest of us. He is holding it all together. The last knot in an infinite tapestry. If that knot is undone… we won't even remember we were ever afraid."
And with that, the study fell into silence once more. A silence deeper than thought.
Unbound is the death of strength. Higher Unbound is the death of meaning."