"Impressive."
The Writer praised, its voice glitching between tones, like overlapping echoes of itself.
Its featureless form shimred faintly, the countless digits of 1s and 0s rippling like liquid light. "You’ve surprised once again, Hades. I had thought your mind would collapse under the weight of revelation. Yet here you stand."
Hades said nothing. His heart still felt heavy, but his expression was calm, cold even.
He did not make a move, he simply observed—the way the Writer’s form bent reality, the way even the light around it seed uncertain whether to exist.
He knew, instinctively, that attacking such a being was pointless. If the Writer desired, it could erase him completely, rewrite him into dust, or perhaps never let him exist in the first place.
So he stayed still, watching, calculating, waiting.
Just then, a movent caught his eye.
Out of the corner of his vision, at the far edge of the white expanse, a small shadow slithered across the floor like smoke.
It was devouring sothing....a book? Hades frowned, feeling an unsettling unease.
The pages vanished as if eaten by invisible teeth, consud by the inky mass. Hades frowned, his gaze sharpening as he looked closer, and it was then he realized that it wasn’t alone.
There were dozens, hundreds, thousands of such shadows scattered throughout the infinite library, feasting silently.
They were devouring different books, while so were devouring entire shelves entirely. And that unsettling unease just grew the longer he watched.
Hades’ eyes narrowed. The shapes of those shadows were eerily familiar. That pulsating, writhing texture, the faint echo of madness they emanated—it was the sa feeling as them.
The Outer Ones.
But how?
Before he could speak, the Writer tilted its head, the digits composing its body flickering in amusent.
"You’ve noticed," it said. "Do you want to know what they are?"
Hades gave a slow nod. His voice remained still, almost quiet. "What are they?"
The Writer paused, as though savoring the mont.
"They are" it said finally, "the embodints of my boredom and forgetfulness."
The words hit like thunder. Hades felt the weight of their aning ripple through him.
His pupils dilated slightly as he repeated, "Your... boredom?"
"Yes," the Writer replied, almost casually. "This space you see—the endless shelves, the infinite white horizon—this is my mind. Every book that fills it is a multiverse. Every shelf you see is a a boundary that stores these multiverse. All that were, all that is, and all that ever will be, are simply stories within ."
It gestured languidly toward the devouring shadows. "When I grow bored of a story, or when I forget it, when I no longer care to rember its aning... those things you call Outer Ones appear. They are manifestations of my boredom and Forgetfulness, consuming what I no longer find interesting."
Hades felt a chill crawl down his spine, colder than the depths of Tartarus itself.
His thoughts spiraled.
The Outer One he had fought, its incomprehensible power, its endless hunger, its chaotic form, was nothing but the byproduct of this being’s fleeting emotion.
Boredom.
"How..." Hades murmured, his voice faint. "How many... books have they devoured?"
The Writer shrugged, numbers cascading down its form like falling rain.
"Enough that I’ve forgotten their number." It chuckled, the sound static and hollow. "Sotis, I even let them eat entire rows upon rows of bookshelfs just to see if sothing interesting will co out of the collapse."
Hades clenched his fists.
He could almost feel his flas stirring beneath his skin, the primordial death-fire yearning to burn again.
But what would be the point? How do you fight a god who does not rely exist within the story, but is the who wrote the story itself?
Still, his heart burned with fury.
To learn that all of existence, every victory and tragedy, every love and war, were no more than the fleeting thoughts of a bored writer—it was a truth heavier than death.
And to hear that the catastrophic event of outer ones feeding was because the writer was bored? Even Hades, who experienced it, couldn’t believe it.
It was too despairing.
And yet, despite the despair that pressed upon him, Hades’ eyes did not lose their sharpness.
He would listen, he would learn, and he would wait. Because if there was one thing even the Writer could not predict—it was the will of one who refuses to die inside his own story.
The Writer’s form shimred, its binary body rippling like the surface of disturbed water.
"You know," it said in that glitched, overlapping tone, "I initially intended to erase you. To delete your story, your universe, everything tied to you. A clean reset if you will. Simpler that way."
Hades said nothing, his jaw tight, the weight of the words pressing into his soul like lead.
The Writer’s tone shifted—amusent, almost warmth, though its voice remained inhuman.
"But now," it continued, "I’ve changed my mind."
The endless white expanse humd faintly as it moved. Each step it took made the ground beneath reality flicker with digital static.
It circled Hades slowly, observing him like a painter inspecting his own creation.
"You are... different. The first one to escape the confines of your book. To reach here, into my mind. I didn’t write that." Its head tilted, a cascade of numbers spilling from its body like falling rain. "So now, I want to see sothing interesting."
It turned away, walking toward the podium where the book The God of Underworld floated.
With one finger that is long, thin, and flickering between matter and code, it touched the page that had once recorded Hades’ death.
The ink twisted, the letters unraveling, words bleeding into nothing until the page beca clean and empty.
A blank ending.
"I’ve decided," the Writer said softly, "to leave your fate unwritten."
Hades’ gaze hardened. "What are you saying?"
The Writer glanced back, its face still unreadable. "I will not destroy your universe—yet. I want to see if you can resist them. The Outer Ones. If you can hold your existence against my boredom, my forgetfulness."
A low rumble of anger stirred within Hades, his divine aura trembling faintly around him.
"You treat us as entertainnt," he said, voice low and heavy. "You could erase everything with a thought, yet you toy with us instead. Why?"
The Writer blinked. For the first ti, its tone shifted—not with any emotion, but with genuine confusion.
"Why?" it repeated. "Why do you watch mortals, Hades? Why do you linger in their shadows, observe their joys and their grief? You could end them with a gesture. Yet you don’t."
It took a step closer, and the air around them warped, the entire expanse of the infinite library flickering between white and static.
"It’s simple, really. It’s curiosity, isn’t it? You watch because you wonder. Because you care to see how far they’ll reach, how much they’ll suffer, how brightly they’ll burn before they fade."
Its voice deepened, distorted. "I am the sa. I am curious how far you will reach. Whether you’ll defy —or die, as you were always ant to."
The Writer extended a hand, and the blank page turned toward Hades. "This is your chance. Fill it, if you can. Create aning in what was already ant to end."
Hades’ teeth clenched, his eyes burning with fury.
"I will not stand this. I will thoroughly crush your sches and erge victorious."
"That, I wanted to see." the Writer replied, a flicker of amusent ghosting through its tone. "And like I have said before, you, my dear Hades, are simply the only one who will show it to ."
The binary digits on its body began to glow, forming spiraling lines of code that twisted into a vortex around them.
"I will send you back now," it said. "Prepare yourself... or don’t. It doesn’t matter to ."
Its voice beca layered, echoing across every direction at once, reverberating through the infinite white void. "If you succeed, then I have created a masterpiece. If you fail, then you were never worth rembering. Either way, the story ends."
And with a single flick of its finger—
Hades felt reality rip open.
The library shattered into shards of light.
The Writer’s form blurred into infinity.
His body dissolved, his consciousness hurled through endless dinsions. He could hear the faint whisper of the Writer’s voice, soft, almost amused:
"Now, show what happens when a god refuses to die."
And then—
Darkness.
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