Delta did not argue.
That was what stunned them most.
Balance waited for a counterposition.
The Backup God recalculated for resistance.
Hell leaned forward, expecting consequence.
Nyx ran, already too late.
Delta simply turned away.
Not in defiance.
Not in victory.
In disinterest.
He had listened to every justification the universe could offer. Freedom, suffering, meaning, choice, optimization, equilibrium. All of it assumed one thing:
That Delta still cared whether the universe agreed with him.
He no longer did.
The Deltonic Saber remained sheathed—not as restraint, but as confirmation. He did not need to draw it to cut anymore. The blade had served its final purpose already: it had reflected him honestly enough for him to understand the lie beneath every argument presented to him.
That lie was simple.
That staying mattered.
Delta lifted his hand—not toward the Backup God, not toward Balance, not toward Hell or Nyx or the watching universe.
He lifted it toward logic itself.
The rules that said causality must close.
The axioms that said existence required continuity.
The silent agreement that stories demanded endings.
He broke them.
Not violently.
Casually.
A hairline fracture appeared in the air, thin as doubt, running vertically through space as if the universe had been scored by something sharper than force. Balance reacted too late—its authority assumed rules could only be bent from within.
Delta stepped outside the assumption entirely.
The fracture widened, not into light or darkness, but into possibility without grammar. Dimensions layered behind it—not stacked, not ordered, but overlapping like thoughts no one had ever finished thinking. Places without gods. Realities without Balance. Universes where causality had never been optimized because no one had survived long enough to insist on it.
The Backup God finally moved.
"Delta," it said—urgency cracking its perfect cadence for the first time. "This action destabilizes all outcome paths."
Delta did not look back.
"That's the point."
Balance tried to assert priority, flooding the region with corrective pressure, but the rift did not respond. It wasn't a tear in space. It was a refusal to acknowledge space as a requirement.
Nyx reached him then.
She didn't grab him.
She didn't plead.
She just said his name.
Delta paused.
Just once.
Not because of the universe.
Not because of Balance.
Not even because of Aurora's stolen echo.
Because Nyx was real.
He turned his head slightly.
"You don't have to do this alone," she said, voice breaking. "You don't have to disappear."
Delta looked at her fully now.
There was no rage in his eyes.
No hunger.
No exhaustion.
Only distance.
"I'm not disappearing," he said calmly. "I'm stepping where nothing expects me to matter."
"That's worse," Nyx whispered.
"I know."
He reached out—not to pull her with him, not to push her away—and rested two fingers briefly against her forehead.
A memory passed.
Not love.
Not regret.
Acknowledgment.
"You were the last reason I stayed here," Delta said. "And I won't turn you into a justification."
Nyx's breath hitched. "Then let me choose—"
"No," Delta interrupted gently. "That's mine."
He stepped backward into the rift.
The Backup God froze.
Balance shattered several projections at once.
Hell screamed—not in pain, but in alarm—as causality peeled away from Delta's trajectory entirely. For the first time, something existed that could not be tracked, corrected, optimized, or remembered cleanly.
Delta was leaving the equation.
The rift began to close—not collapsing, not sealing, but losing relevance, as if the universe itself were already trying to forget the possibility he had proven real.
Delta walked.
Not falling.
Not fleeing.
Walking.
Reality on the other side did not welcome him.
It did not resist either.
There were no stars at first.
No ground.
No direction.
Only motion without expectation.
And then—after steps that had no distance—something shifted.
Footsteps.
Not echoes.
Someone else walking.
Delta stopped.
For the first time since Heaven fell, since Aurora died, since the universe tried to replace him—he stopped without provocation.
Ahead of him, in the space between formed things, a figure resolved slowly. Not summoned by the rift. Not generated by logic.
Present already.
Tall. Still. Familiar in the way scars are familiar.
Long black hair.
Dark armor.
A presence that did not submit to the absence of rules.
Nyxara.
She smiled—not playful, not teasing.
Waiting.
"You really thought," she said calmly, "you'd be the only one smart enough to leave?"
Delta exhaled.
Not relief.
Recognition.
"…Nyx," he said.
She tilted her head slightly. "I followed the gap, not you. You just happened to walk into it first."
Silence settled around them—not empty, not oppressive.
Unclaimed.
Delta looked back once—at nothing, because there was nothing left to look at.
Then forward.
The universe behind him resumed its becoming—imperfect, unstable, free.
Ahead of him stretched infinity without purpose.
He sheathed the Deltonic Saber fully.
"Don't expect me to care," Delta said.
Nyxara's smile widened just a fraction.
"Good," she replied. "Neither do I."
They walked.
Not as heroes.
Not as monsters.
Not as solutions.
But as beings who had stepped far enough beyond meaning to finally decide what mattered only to them.
And for the first time since existence learned to tell stories—
Delta was no longer one of them.
He was simply moving on.