I'm back! Refreshed and ready to write~
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In the boundless expanse between realities—where time was a dream and existence had no language—four of the most ancient beings stood around an impossible table made of crystallized stars.
Chaos was practically vibrating with excitement, their half-black, half-white hair rippling like galaxies torn in two, eyes glowing with swirling pinwheels of entropy and whimsy.
"Is it finally time?" Death asked, though her voice—so silken and eternal—held no real question in it.
Her manicured fingernails tapped gently against the side of her obsidian teacup. She already knew. Death always knew when her friend was up to something... chaotic.
Chaos grinned so wide it threatened physics.
"Yup~! After I drop by and say hi to my sweet little kiddos in the greek pantheon, I'll hop over to see my precious Blessed and give her a proper welcome back present! Gotta unlock her Dimensional Travel perk, after all."
They twirled in the air, literally spinning so fast their form blurred into ribbons of light and shadow before re-forming mid-skip.
"Ehehe~ She's going to be so surprised! I even wrapped it in a little void-ribbon. Do you think she'll cry? She might cry. Oh! What if she sings again?!"
Rebirth groaned and dropped his face into his hand.
"Chaos, I swear if she combusts another weyline again, I am not fixing the dimensional seams this time. I understand she's unaware she's doing when she unleashes her aura, but still."
Beside him, his fiancée—Order—remained a study in poised composure. Her gown shimmered like starlight frozen in ice, and her eyes held the same calm gravity as laws before the birth of light.
"…I would like to meet her," she said simply. "Your Blessed is… unorthodox."
"That's what makes her fun~!" Chaos beamed, throwing both hands in the air.
They leaned over toward Death with an exaggerated whisper:
"She totally gets it."
Death chuckled softly, her smile a crescent of calm finality.
"Then I suppose we better not keep her waiting."
The four turned toward the rising spiral of Nihility in the distance—an echo of Hespera's rising presence stretching out even across primordial distance.
And in unison…
They began to move.
~☆~
In the great marble banquet hall of New Olympus—a celestial city now wrapped in a tranquil hum of magic and moonlight—the newly anointed Olympian gods gathered for their nightly feast.
The grand table stretched across the hall, glittering with celestial fruits, golden wines, and divine delicacies that shimmered with starlight. Laughter echoed through the chamber, stories were exchanged, and for once, peace reigned.
Until—
It happened.
The air shifted. The flames in the sconces bent inward. The ambrosia stilled in every cup. Even time seemed to hesitate.
A silence swept the hall—not empty, but watchful. Dense. Primordial.
Every god paused mid-bite or mid-sentence. A strange, ancient pressure began coiling through the walls, not hostile… but overwhelming in its gravity.
Astraea was the first to speak.
Her hand slowly lowered from her goblet, and her luminous eyes turned toward the heavens beyond the silver arches of the open hall.
"…They're returning." Her voice was quiet, but every word hit like a gavel against fate. "The ones before Olympus. Before Titans. Chaos themselves are returning."
Hephaestus straightened in his seat, the molten core of his divine forge-heart pulsing uneasily. "…The true ones? The first?"
Irene paled slightly, fingers curling around her goblet of peacewine. "But why now?"
Astraea's eyes narrowed.
"Because something in the cosmos just moved. Something that hasn't moved since the first star gasped into existence."
A moment passed.
Then Erytheia—lounging as she usually did—sat up straighter. "Do you think this has something to do with mother?"
Astraea nodded once. "She is the most likely reason why they have decided to return after all this time. That and what's forming in the cosmos. For now?" She looked at each of them in turn. "We wait and prepare to greet our progenitors. We were chosen to stand when the veil thins. And that is what we shall do."
And as if to punctuate that declaration, the great golden doors of the hall creaked open—though no one had touched them.
A soft breeze swept through the chamber… and with it, a whisper of ancient song older than even Hespera's flame.
The progenitors were arriving.
The air in the banquet hall turned electric—not with lightning, but with raw, unfiltered being. The kind of existence that existed before the gods, before myths, before language gave names to fear.
And then—
The open archway cracked.
Not physically, but cosmologically. As if the concept of "door" had to make way for something beyond form.
From that fracture of reality stepped—
Chaos.
Their presence was not a figure at first, but a sensation. A paradox of stillness and movement. Half-light and total void. Male, female, neither, all.
And then—they chose a shape.
They settled into the form of a tall, willowy figure, shifting between beauty and terror with every blink. One half of their hair was stark white; the other, starless black. Their skin shimmered like a nebula caught between collapse and birth. Their eyes were unreadable voids, impossible to stare into without unraveling a piece of yourself.
"My children," Chaos said. Their voice was every whisper in every womb. The echo of the first scream. Gentle… and limitless.
The gods fell silent. Not bowed, not kneeling. Just—still. Not even Astraea dared to move.
And then—another shimmer.
Death entered.
Where Chaos was liminal, Death was definite. Cloaked in regal black, her eyes glowed like fading stars. She wore a wide-brimmed hat like the last shade before the grave. Her presence didn't demand silence—it made noise afraid to speak.
She walked beside Chaos with quiet steps, her gloved hand trailing fingers of entropy through the air.
After her, Rebirth followed.
Clad in vibrant reds and golds, eyes glowing like twin suns in bloom. His cloak moved like silk over blood and morning dew. Where Death brought endings, he pulsed with beginnings. Every step left the scent of spring and thunder.
And behind him, last—
Order.
A being carved of clarity and angles, her robes immaculate, her presence steady and inevitable. Her gaze did not judge. It measured. Her very existence brought symmetry to the trembling pillars. Even Chaos gave a faint smirk as she entered.
The four Primordials stood together.
Not above.
Not below.
Just… present.
Chaos spoke first.
"Isn't this adorable? Our echoes grew thrones and egos."
Death gave a faint chuckle.
Rebirth folded his arms. "Let's carry this along. The longer we are here, the more damage we do to the veil of this universe. That blasted psycho already caused enough damage when she awakened the Pandora fragment."
Order simply looked around and said, "This domain requires recalibration. You are correct, Love, in the fact there is far too many cracks in weylines."
Astraea swallowed hard, then stepped forward with grace.
"…We greet the Primordial Progenitors. Welcome back to Earth."
Chaos tilted their head. "No. Not Earth, darling child."
Their voice softened, yet darkened. "Welcome to our tea party! Let's jump head first into the hole of chaos~!
Rebirth groaned louder this time, rubbing his temples as if he could massage away the inevitability of what was about to unfold. "We talked about this, Chaos. We agreed. No tea parties with reality."
Chaos gave a mock gasp, clutching their chest as if mortally wounded. "How dare you! You wound me, brother mine. And after I went through all the trouble of baking void-cakes and bringing extra sugar cubes made from collapsed singularities."
Order, ever serene, arched a brow. "You did what to the dimensional pantry?"
Death's smile deepened. "Let them have their fun. After all, it is their playground."
The Olympians still hadn't moved.
Not even the arrogant ones. Not even Hephaestus, whose hand hovered near his hammer, breath caught somewhere between awe and instinctive terror.
It was Astraea—ethereal, ancient in beauty and depth—who finally broke the silence, stepping forward with a smile that trembled at the edges.
"…You're here for Hespera, aren't you?"
Chaos lit up like a dying star reigniting. "Ding ding ding! Give that lovely goddess a prize! Yes~! We are here because our sweet little starling has reached her tipping point." They twirled midair, giddy. "We love a good metamorphosis."
Rebirth exhaled through his nose, arms still crossed. "She's not just undergoing metamorphosis—she's triggering cosmogenic recursion. Do you know how hard it is to contain an existential bloom when she's unraveling concepts with her emotions?"
Chaos spun midair again, one leg elegantly extended like a ballet dancer in a gravity-less pirouette. "Mmm… but isn't that the point? She doesn't contain anymore. She transcends. That's what makes her so deliciously dangerous!"
~☆~
Meanwhile—far from the echoing tension of New Olympus and the watchful eyes of gods and ghosts—
In the living room of the Eveningstar Estate, where the walls hummed with silent wards older than the celestial calendar, Hespera stood barefoot before a floating mirror of voidglass, her expression calm… yet sharpened by purpose.
Her long coat—charcoal-black with runes of drifting magenta—billowed gently despite the stillness of the room. Her katana, Pandemonium Noctis, leaned lazily against the obsidian hearth, humming like a hungry lullaby. On the mantel, a single black blossom—picked by Akeno earlier that morning—lay beside a silver candle flickering with inverted flame.
Ophis stood beside her, a teacup in one hand, the other held loosely behind her back. Her eyes, endless and unblinking, fixed on the forming portal in front of them—an ellipse of dreamlight and ash, slowly stabilizing between two converging sigils.
Kuroka was lounging upside down on a velvet chair nearby, her legs dangling over the back, tails twitching lazily as she munched on a rice cracker. "Mmm~ You sure you don't want backup, nya? That forest gives me the creeps. Last time I stepped near it, the acid slimes melted all of my clothes!"
Nyx didn't look up from the glowing threads she was braiding between her fingers. She sat cross-legged on a floating cushion of shadow, eyes half-lidded. "The Familiar Forest is quite the troublesome place. It's meant those that trek it afterall."
Hespera didn't flinch. "I know."
Ophis spoke, her voice like still water flowing beneath stone. "You are going for the Virdis Myrr."
Hespera nodded. "The last material."
"To save that tree," Ophis intoned, placing her teacup soundlessly down.
"To save the World Tree," Hespera affirmed, and for a moment—just a moment—the storm behind her eyes flickered with something fragile.
"I will finish what his mother began. He's bought us time. But time doesn't last."
The portal flared, now steady.
From beyond, the sounds of the Familiar Forest whispered like old dreams: the rustle of sentient leaves, the low growl of a guardian beast, the hum of ley-silk spiders weaving memory into their webs.
Kuroka stretched and sighed dramatically. "You know, you could send a clone. Or a message. Or some overpaid mortal hero."
"No," Hespera said, stepping toward the portal. "I also want to speak with Tiamat. I'm sure she's been bored as of late."
Nyx finally looked up. "You're going to offer her one of your real chaos pieces, aren't you?"
Hespera reached for Noctis, the sword folding into her palm like it had been waiting all this time. "I'm going to offer her a way out of her eternal boredom, that's all."
Ophis smiled faintly. "Then may the void part, and the cosmos remember."
And with that, Hespera stepped through.
The portal closed with a soft sound—like a book shutting, or a promise being kept.
And the Estate fell quiet again… save for the faintest rustle in the hearth's flame, where the blossom now glowed softly with magenta light.
"Hmm, do you think she'll end up burning the whole forest to the ground?"
Ophis and Kuroka looked at Nyx as if she just cursed their whole families.
""You just jinxed it!""