Evolto City: The Nexus of Eternity

The Void a realm of ruin and echoing silence.

An endless, suffocating landscape forged in negative creation.

Pitch-black terrain stretched beyond vision, dotted by jagged, light-absorbing trees gnarled things that fed on starlight and echoed the deaths of dying universes. No stars above, no horizon. Just the ever-present hum of absence.

In the center of a crater, beneath a skyless sky, something fed.

The shadowy being, once sealed, once forgotten, now tore through a pile of twitching Void Beasts. Massive panther-wolf hybrids skinless, radiating a glow like dying suns, once feared predators of the Physical Void. Now they were nothing but flesh to be consumed.

Crunch. Snap. Slurp.

Its jaw unhinged, tongue sliding out like melted pitch. It consumed everything muscle, sinew, eyes, the latent energy of the beasts themselves. Even the bones, cracking and vanishing into its abyssal mouth. With every bite, it swelled with power gaining more control over the realm it was once forbidden from entering.

It had tried once before. Aeons ago.

When Zalthorion's city first grew, an anomaly that stretched into dimensions none dared tread, the being had tried to enter the Void to own it. It failed. Heavily.

Bound in cosmic iron.

Sealed in a screaming sarcophagus.

Buried in the Vaults, screaming, thinking, waiting.

But now…

Now it was free.

And now it ate, carving into the black soil, its claws ripping deeper as it reached layers older than time itself. It whispered the names of forgotten gods, absorbing raw memories from dead worlds buried beneath the dirt. It remembered. It reveled. It grew.

Until

A shimmer.

A rift split the air some distance away, forming a crackling spiral of anti-light. Two beings stepped through. One, tall, skeletal and draped in regal black-and-violet plating, his eyes burning with betrayal: Xytheron Null. The other, small and hunched, robes barely covering its shimmering skin, trembling beside him: the Rift Maker.

They advanced, dirt crumbling beneath their feet.

The Rift Maker muttered in horror, "W-we should not be here. This thing… it is beyond the Vaults. Beyond rules."

Xytheron ignored it. His pace was cold and deliberate.

The shadowy being raised its head from the gore. Crimson ichor stained its teeth, and lines of voidlight pulsated across its face like veins of venom.

Its smile widened as it sensed them.

"Ah..." it hissed, voice vibrating like tectonic plates grinding, "A child of the Destroyers... come to visit me in my banquet."

It stood slowly, towering its form vague, shifting, cloaked in oily black mist. Dozens of eyes blinked across its torso, arms bending in unnatural joints.

The Rift Maker whimpered and took a step back.

The being bowed low, then spoke again.

"It is always a pleasure to meet the spawn of true gods. The Destroyers... oh, how I admired their work. Pure chaos. Relentless destruction. They cleansed the multiverse with fire and silence. I looked up to them once."

Xytheron gave a courteous nod, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smirk."I thank you. High praise from a devourer such as yourself. But tell me have you heard of their latest… pathetic transgression?"

The being tilted its malformed head, shadows shifting like liquid iron."Transgression?"

"They sacrificed nearly all their power," Xytheron said with disdain, voice like frost on steel. "To create a weakling. An anomaly imbued with empathy. Something they call 'a bridge.' A link between destruction and balance."

The shadowy being snarled. The mist around it boiled.

"That is a lie. They are Destroyers. They do not compromise."

"Oh, but they did," Xytheron continued. "They even considered allying with Zalthorion. The one who seeks to balance the multiverse. A fool. A builder in a world of necessary annihilation."

A deep, feral bang shook the realm.

The shadowy being had slammed its massive claw into the ground cracks spiderwebbing across the Void floor, tearing for millions of miles. Trees splintered. Mountains rippled like fabric.

The Rift Maker screamed in terror.

"LIES." the being roared, its voice warping reality. "The Destroyers are not spineless diplomats. They are the ending of stories. The severing blade of fate. They would never join that... that thing."

Xytheron's eyes gleamed. "But they have. And it is why I stand before you now."

He stepped closer, raising a hand.

"I rebelled. I saw the error of their betrayal. I refused to kneel to balance. I seek only what is pure obliteration. And I believe we… could be allies."

The being stilled, intrigued.

Xytheron extended his arm. "Together, we could destroy Zalthorion. End his deluded crusade for harmony. You, with your void-born hunger, and I, with my reach beyond the walls of reality."

The Devourer stared at his hand, oozing, dripping with Void Beast blood.

A moment passed.

And then, it shook Xytheron's hand.

"I accept," the being said, voice low and curling. "But I will be the one to kill Zalthorion. That... is my right."

Xytheron's smile faded.

"No. I will claim that honor. He is my enemy."

The tension shifted, like a tidal wave stalling at its peak.

"I must end him," the being growled, retracting its hand. "For what he did to me. For the Void I was denied. For the screaming I endured."

"I understand your pain," Xytheron said, tone colder. "But I was the one who stood against him when the Destroyers faltered. I watched their temples crumble and their will bend. He is mine to kill."

A pause. A rumble. A growl.

"So..." the Devourer whispered, "…we have reached a disagreement."

"It would appear so," Xytheron nodded.

The being stood to its full height, mist roaring like a storm.

"Then this alliance is pointless."

Xytheron didn't flinch. "Agreed."

"Then I must eliminate you. You are a threat to my prey."

"And I to yours," Xytheron replied. "It's unfortunate. I had hoped to replicate that little trick of yours the rift breaches. They bypass Zalthorion's Multiversal Grid Lock. Very clever."

The Devourer grinned, revealing jagged rows of ever-shifting teeth.

"Then come and try to take it, worm."

The airless expanse around them trembled as Xytheron and the Devourer faced off. Red-white veins of void-energy cracked the ground beneath the Devourer's gnashing maw leftovers of its warped feast. Xytheron's regal silhouette held an unnatural calm, plated in obsidian armor streaked with violet.

There were no words just two beams of intent clashing across infinite darkness.

With inhuman grace, the Devourer unfurled its dark claws, slashing at Xytheron in a blur. Sparks of unstable Void Energy snapped under the assault. Xytheron absorbed wave after wave of void-imbued flesh strikes using mirrored armor plates fragments dissolving before they could break a pinprick.

Xytheron unleashed a pulse of Void Resonance from his core, pushing back the Devourer like a collapsing star swallowing its own light. Still, the Devourer surged forward, roaring, charging once more.

Using a flick of his mighty arm, the Devourer shaped the ground into a consuming pit black abyss that threatened to swallow Xytheron whole. Rocks and energy spilled toward him like a viscous waterfall.

Xytheron responded by ripping open a cylindrical rift of shimmering anti-light beneath the wave. Gravity reversed below the Devourer; it stumbled mid-charge, the torrent collapsing into the dark rift, scattering void debris into nothingness.

The Devourer roared in fury. From its throat noxious shadow-energy coalesced into a spear of pure void flame, lanced at Xytheron with bone-rattling force. The flame scored the armor, gouging a molten wound.

Unharmed, Xytheron retaliated. He stepped forward, hand glowing. An orb of compressed void-energy formed in his palm, humming with death. Tossed forward, it struck the Devourer's chest, encasing the wound in a necrotic blossom that crackled outward void-runes corroding and dissolving flesh, draining the stolen power of the beasts it had consumed.

The Devourer reeled, agony ripping through its form.

The Devourer extended countless tendrils writhing void-snakes that wrapped around Xytheron. The distortional limbs soaked energy from his armor, pulsing like black hearts. Each moment risked collapsing Xytheron from within.

But Xytheron accepted the struggle.

With a bellowing roar, he activated his Void Core Accelerator. His armor surged with pure resonance, and energy leapt outward, reversing the siphon. Those void-snakes shattered in searing shock void tearing void recovering stolen energy and turning it back on the Devourer, fracturing its form.

The Devourer staggered, less shadow, more cracked statue.

Xytheron advanced, steps echoing like planet-cracks in the void.

A final impact:

With pinpoint precision, Xytheron summoned a Reverse Collapse a black hole of anti-void that tore through space and darkness.

He punched through the Devourer's heart of corruption.

A blinding burst of null energy erupted, transforming it into dust, displaced void-matter collapsing inward.

For a heartbeat, the Devourer flickered.

Then disintegrated its amassed power unraveled, its trophies and stolen void-eaten energy stripped clean. The void surrounding them pulsed, returning to its empty stillness.

Yet from the ashes, a trembling shape crawled from the wreckage it was the shattered Void Beast husk: the Rift Maker, stained and terrified. Rushing forward, he collapsed at Xytheron's armored foot.

Xytheron fixed him with an unwavering gaze. He knelt, drained, but untouched by compassion: "Your failure cost you the wrong prize. Some battles are not meant for survival."

The Rift Maker nodded, tears and void-stain blending.

From the secret corners beyond the edgeless map another fragment of the Devourer slithered away, a sliver of darkness, invisibly cloaking boarding a silent rift.

Only Xytheron and the Rift Maker stood witness to its escape.

Xytheron gathered the Rift Maker's trembling hand. With a quiet pulse, he sealed the crater in a ring of Nullspace erasing everything there from recorded existence.

No echoes. No records. No proof remained.

"Tell no one," he said softly. "This is the end… and the beginning."

The Void's silence shattered like glass.

The shadowy Devourer, swollen with the power of devoured Void Beasts, reared up like a collapsing abyss made flesh, eyes glowing red-hot as molten stars, claws scraping the obsidian ground with a roar that seemed to split the very fabric of the Void itself.

Across the shattered crater, Xytheron Null stood unmoving his regal black-and-violet plating gleaming with an unyielding coldness, skeletal frame radiating the ruthless authority of the Destroyers. His eyes burned not with rage but with calculation, a predator assessing its prey.

The Rift Maker, small and trembling, clung to Xytheron's side, unable to hide the terror that gripped its heart. "We shouldn't be here," it muttered, voice barely audible over the hum of breaking reality. "It's beyond the Vaults. Beyond all rules."

Xytheron's voice cut through the dark void like a blade. "There is no place beyond fate's reach. We end this now."

Without warning, the Devourer surged forward, a living storm of shadow and voidlight. Its many eyes multiplied, rolling in wild frenzy as dozens of writhing, segmented arms erupted from its torso, whipping through the air like toxic serpents. The scent of burnt starfire and decayed memories hung heavy.

The first strike came like a comet impact a massive claw smashed into the ground where Xytheron had stood moments before, sending a shockwave that tore mountains asunder and shattered entire forests of light-absorbing trees. The ground cracked open in a spiderweb of black fractures, glowing faintly with stolen energy.

Xytheron rolled aside just in time, the force sending shards of rock and void ash flying past. His plating, forged in the crucible of destruction itself, absorbed the brunt without a scratch.

The Devourer hissed a sound like the grinding of worlds and lunged again, jaw snapping wide, revealing a maw filled with swirling darkness, waiting to swallow. It struck like a living black hole, aiming to consume Xytheron whole.

But Xytheron vanished in a flicker of shifting space, slipping through the devouring void like a wraith. He reappeared behind the creature, and with a brutal swing, his arm transformed into a blade of shimmering anti-light, slicing deep into the Devourer's sinewy flesh.

The wound steamed and hissed as the corrupted flesh reknit itself, but a fissure was torn in the creature's form.

The Devourer roared in fury, its multiple eyes narrowing to slits as it unleashed a wave of corrosive void energy. The pulse tore through the blackened landscape, evaporating whole forests and splintering mountains into cosmic dust.

Xytheron raised his arms, summoning the cosmic rift embedded in his chest, a swirling vortex of dark energy that pulsed with raw power. From it poured a torrent of violet and black flames, searing through the Devourer's energy wave like a comet through a nebula.

The clash of their energies echoed across the Void a titanic struggle that bent space itself.

Then, Xytheron lunged, his blade flashing like the final starburst of a dying sun. He struck again and again, precise and merciless, each cut unraveling the Devourer's form, severing limbs that dissolved into nothingness.

The Devourer howled, twisting and contorting, its shape shifting into something more monstrous tendrils sprouting that writhed and lashed with lightning speed. Each lash left scars in the very void, corrosive and burning.

Xytheron parried expertly, countering with beams of pure anti-light that seared and cauterized, disrupting the regeneration of the shadow beast.

Amid the chaos, the Rift Maker's eyes darted wildly. The small being trembled, caught between awe and terror as the titanic fight threatened to tear the Void itself apart.

"This madness," the Rift Maker whispered, voice cracking. "We cannot stay. This thing will consume us all."

Xytheron, never breaking focus, barely spared the Rift Maker a glance. "Cowardice will not save you."

The Rift Maker knew it was true. As the battle raged, it edged away, searching for an opening. When the Devourer lunged with a wild, desperate strike, the Rift Maker slipped through the shadows, disappearing into a crackling rift of anti-light before either combatant could notice.

The Devourer's form was now ragged, flickering with unstable energy, eyes wild with desperation and fury.

"You will not end me!" it snarled, lashes whipping like venomous whips.

Xytheron's eyes gleamed cold as ice. "You have consumed too much. Your gluttony will be your undoing."

Gathering all the power within his chest-rift, Xytheron unleashed a storm of crushing energy a cyclone of void and anti-light that engulfed the Devourer. The beast shrieked as its form began to unravel, torn apart from within.

The stolen void energies that had fed its monstrous strength were ripped free, siphoned back into Xytheron's vortex like stolen treasure reclaimed.

The Devourer's screams echoed, fading into whispers as its vast form diminished, collapsing into a flickering shadow.

In one final gesture, Xytheron's blade pierced the core of the beast, silencing its cries forever.

The Void fell deathly silent once more.

Xytheron stood tall, chest rising and falling with steady breath, the rift in his chest slowly calming. Around him, the shattered landscape still smoldered a testament to the brutal battle waged here.

The Devourer had lost everything it had stolen. But it had not died.

From the darkest shadows, a faint pulse remained barely perceptible, a secret kept by the emptiness.

Somewhere, in the uncharted depths of the Void, the broken shadowy being licked its wounds, biding time, hidden, and waiting.

Xytheron looked to the rift left behind the escape of the Rift Maker a stain of unfinished business.

His voice was quiet but resolute. "This is not the end."