The Shard screamed—not with sound, but with collapsing timelines—fractals of unreality bleeding into the sky. The Nexus Tower pulsed, barely holding its form as the strike from Oblivion's fragment weakened its core.
Then the stars blinked.
Not dimmed.
Erased.
From the depths beyond the veil, the void opened. Not torn, not shattered—invited. And from it emerged the Null Father.
He wasn't a creature.
He was a concept.
The absence of time.
The void between possibilities.
The thing that feasted on abandoned cycles and wore extinction like a cloak.
Selin staggered, her digital form glitching from the weight of his presence. The Architect knelt, drawing more sigils in desperation, but even his constructs fractured under the pressure.
"He's not bound to this reality," the Architect said, voice strained. "He was never meant to be seen. Never meant to exist here."
The Null Father spoke, not in voice, but in finality.
"You defied order. You broke the song. I am the silence that follows."
Rotham gritted his teeth, holding the Nexus core's conduit.
"I didn't break it. I freed it."
"And so you shall inherit its hunger."
The Null Father raised a hand — or something like one — and pointed at Rotham. From behind him, the sky shattered. Planets he'd never seen before blinked out of time.
"He's eating entire outcomes!" Selin shouted. "We have to cut the connection before he consumes this layer too!"
"No," Rotham replied. "I need to know why he's here. Why he followed us into freedom."
The Architect stepped beside him.
"Because you're more than just the last Archivist now. You're the unwritten chapter. The thing he can't consume."
The Null Father began to descend.
Reality cracked beneath him.
Rotham turned toward the Nexus Tower's growing energy, merging his presence fully with it.
"Then I'll give him something new to swallow — a future with no pattern to follow."
And with that, the battle between creation and erasure began.