The universe had always been subject to him. The winds of time had been his to command, the rivers of fate his to shape. The Time God, Icarus, was above all—immortal, unfathomable, limitless. He had crafted the world with the skill of a master artisan, each moment, each life, a work of art and purpose. But now, on the edge of nothingness, he was nothing. A broken god adrift in the black sea of a dying world.
The Disruption of the Aeons was the moment that shattered his essence. It was a time so awful that it unraveled the very fabric of reality. Icarus sensed it first—like a deafening roar that drowned out everything else. His power disintegrated in an instant, the strands of his godly being snapping one by one. The eternal plane of the gods, where he had been one of the most powerful, had shattered like fragile glass beneath him.
The other gods, his relatives, friends, and foes, turned against him without remorse. They did not care anymore about the thin veil of time. Their greed to dominate the universe had clouded their vision. Icarus had been betrayed—not accidentally, but deliberately. They had deceived him, utilized him as a tool, and when he was no longer needed, they had discarded him into the depths.
He had fallen into a black hole that was not a natural formation. It was a jail. a region outside of time, where only countless frozen and warped pieces of moments existed. He had never thought that a place like that could exist, much less that he would be caught in its crushing grips.
Icarus's once-powerful abilities were dissipated as he now sank into its never-ending, spinning darkness. He had lost his sense of time and his comprehension of the usual strands of reality. Each breath was an effort to stop the gradual loss of his essence, every molecule of his existence in chaos, and every second escaped his control.
He was surrounded by an unnatural silence, but beneath it all was movement, a wild, chaotic motion. Here, time meant nothing. He was unable to feel the passing of time, the passing of seconds, or the motion of the stars. The only sounds were the broken whispers of past events and a crushing quiet.
Icarus had attempted to liberate himself by using his power, but it had failed. He had changed from being a god. Time was no longer his authority. No desire to change the cosmos remained, no powers to command. All that remained of him was an echo, just a fragment of the person he once was.
The black hole appeared to go on forever, incomprehensible in every direction. He didn't know what was up or down, or where he stood in respect to anything. Darkness surrounded him, a limitless void that twisted and bent upon itself, where even the laws of physics appeared to collapse.
Then there was a flicker in the middle of this infinite emptiness. A shimmer in the distance, a single, tiny point of light. It gave off a little pulse, resembling the heartbeat of an unnatural object. The time was not right. It wasn't space. It was something else.
Icarus stared at the light, his eyes gloomy and unclear after his descent. He sensed it's call. He had to get there even if he had no idea why. It was the only thing that appeared real, the only thing that made sense in this crazy.
He moved in its unfocused direction, pulled forward by an inner force, something instinctive. The world around him become more disorganised as he travelled farther. He caught flashes of shattered images—places that had never been, faces he didn't recognise, memories that weren't his own. The light got bigger, brighter, its pulse faster.
Then he noticed it. It was the first of many events that would destroy his perception of reality.
In the distance, there was a figure. A person, a child at that, who seemed oblivious to the mayhem around her. She appeared to not belong here as she stood motionless, her eyes wide with a calm, innocent expression. She stood there despite the fact that she was completely out of place in the black hole.
Icarus experienced an almost unfamiliar hurting sensation in his chest. He briefly lost sight of the fact that he was a god. Once more, he was just a man, lost and looking. He felt hope, something he had long forgotten, when the child was around.
The girl's features became more distinct as he approached. Her eyes glowed with an unusual light, an unsettling glow that seemed to emanate from within her soul rather than the outside world. Her complexion was pale, and her hair was as dark as the emptiness itself. She wasn't your typical person. She was a different thing.
Icarus opened his lips, but nothing came out. His voice seemed far away, like an old echo, as though he were listening to his thoughts rather than expressing them. Even communicating seemed impossible because he was so cut off from the outside world and from his old self.
However, the girl caught sight of him. The black hole appeared to pause for a second as her eyes locked with his.
In the thick silence, the girl muttered, "I know who you are," her voice clear but quiet.
Icarus stopped. His heart, if he still had one, halted as the words persisted in the air.
She went on, "You don't belong here." "None of us do."