The countdown on Ethan's watch hit zero.
The world died.
Not metaphorically—literally. Sound cut off mid-syllable. Birds froze in mid-flight. Even the dust motes in the air hung motionless like suspended amber. The only movement came from Ethan's chest as he breathed in the sudden, absolute silence.
Around him, his companions had become living statues. Marcus stood with his mouth half-open, a protest dying on his lips. Lyra's finger hovered over her tablet screen. The enslaved soldiers were frozen mid-shovel, their faces locked in expressions of confusion and fear.
The sky began to glitch.
Patches of blue peeled away like old paint, revealing static underneath. Colors bled into impossible hues that hurt to perceive. Reality itself seemed to be suffering a rendering error, as if the universe was running on outdated hardware.
A crack split the heavens.
It wasn't black—it was the absence of everything. Through the tear came something that Ethan's brain refused to process properly. His vision flickered between contradictory images: geometric shapes that folded through dimensions that didn't exist, symbols that rewrote themselves as he watched, a figure composed entirely of corrupted data.
The Auditor descended.
It spoke in frequencies that bypassed the ears and carved themselves directly into consciousness. The words arrived as pure information, untranslated and untranslatable:
```
[DIMENSIONAL BREACH DETECTED]
[SCANNING... SCANNING...]
[CLASSIFICATION: LEVEL 3 LOGIC CORRUPTION]
[UNREGISTERED DATA AGGREGATE IDENTIFIED]
[INITIATING PHYSICAL FORMATTING PROTOCOL]
```
The Nightmare Lord, that ancient terror that had devoured civilizations, took one look at the Auditor and simply... broke. Its thousand eyes went dark. Its writhing tentacles went limp. The eldritch horror collapsed like a deflated balloon, whimpering sounds that no throat should be able to make.
Even in its reduced state, the creature's fear was so absolute that wisps of its essence began evaporating into nothingness.
Ethan stood his ground. His system interface flickered wildly, error messages cascading across his vision faster than he could read them. But his voice remained steady.
"I'm going to need to see some identification," he said. "This is First Tax District jurisdiction. You're operating outside your authority."
The Auditor's attention focused on him like a microscope examining a particularly interesting bacteria. When it spoke, reality rippled around the words:
```
[QUERY: IDENTIFICATION REQUEST ACKNOWLEDGED]
[RESPONSE: AUTHORITY SUPERSEDES LOCAL PARAMETERS]
[TARGET CLASSIFICATION: UNREGISTERED ENTITY]
[DESIGNATION: ERROR CODE]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: DELETION]
```
Ethan's system went haywire. Alarms screamed in his head. His interface turned red, then white, then colors that didn't have names.
```
[EMERGENCY ALERT: AUTHORITY LEVEL EXCEEDS MAXIMUM PARAMETERS]
[TAX COLLECTION REQUEST: DENIED - INSUFFICIENT CLEARANCE]
[SYSTEM OVERRIDE: IMPOSSIBLE]
[RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE EVACUATION]
```
For the first time since acquiring his powers, Ethan's system was completely outmatched.
The Auditor raised what might have been a hand. Reality bent around its fingers, forming something that was simultaneously a weapon and a concept. A gun made of pure deletion, designed to erase things not just from existence but from the possibility of ever having existed.
"Wait—" Ethan started.
The weapon fired.
Marcus threw himself forward, his bulk interposing between Ethan and the conceptual bullet. Lyra moved at the same instant, her smaller frame adding to the human shield.
"No!" Ethan shouted, but it was too late.
The deletion beam struck them both. Their bodies began to unravel at the molecular level, skin cracking like dried earth, revealing static underneath. They were being erased, not killed—deleted from the fundamental code of reality.
But they held their ground, even as their forms began to dissolve.
The beam reached Ethan.
In his pocket, the Ancient God's divine fragment erupted.
Purple-black energy exploded outward, forming a swirling vortex of compressed information. The deletion beam struck the barrier and stopped, its conceptual force meeting something equally fundamental. The fragment pulsed with data streams so dense they warped space around them.
The Auditor paused. Its weapon lowered slightly.
```
[ENERGY SIGNATURE RECOGNIZED]
[CLASSIFICATION: VOID CONSORTIUM - BLACK GOLD CREDENTIAL]
[CROSS-REFERENCING DATABASE...]
[ERROR: VERIFICATION FAILED]
[RECLASSIFYING TARGET...]
[NEW DESIGNATION: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT]
```
The attack ceased. Marcus and Lyra collapsed, but the restoration wasn't gentle. Reality knitted them back together with agonizing slowness. Marcus howled, clutching his chest as if his heart remembered being unmade. Lyra shuddered, her eyes wide and vacant, tears streaming down a face that had momentarily ceased to exist. When she tried to speak, only static emerged for several seconds before her voice returned.
They were alive, but the memory of the void was etched into their very cells—a coldness no blanket could warm.
The Auditor's form shifted, becoming slightly more comprehensible. It now resembled a tall figure in a suit made of flowing code, its face a constantly changing display of symbols and numbers.
"Interesting," it said, and this time the words came in recognizable language. "You carry credentials from the Void Consortium. But our records show no authorized entry for this dimensional sector."
Ethan's mind raced. The divine fragment had saved them, but it had also revealed something he'd hoped to keep hidden. The fragment wasn't just a power source—it was a passport. A forged one.
"There must be some mistake in your files," Ethan said carefully.
"There are no mistakes in our files." The Auditor stepped closer, its presence making the air taste like copper and ozone. "Only unauthorized entries."
It reached out with one finger and touched Ethan's hand. Pain lanced through his nervous system as something burned itself into his flesh. When the Auditor withdrew, a blue QR code glowed on the back of Ethan's hand like a brand.
```
[IMMIGRATION VIOLATION DETECTED]
[SUSPECT: ETHAN SU - DIMENSIONAL COORDINATES 3.7.41.9]
[CHARGE: FORGED ENTRY DOCUMENTATION]
[SUMMONS ISSUED: REPORT TO SECOND TAX DISTRICT]
[LOCATION: MULTIVERSAL FREE TRADE PORT - PROCESSING CENTER 7]
[DEADLINE: 72 HOURS FROM TIMESTAMP]
[FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN ASSET FORFEITURE]
```
"Seventy-two hours," the Auditor said. "Report for identity verification or face the consequences."
"And if I don't?" Ethan asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
The Auditor's smile was visible even through its shifting digital face. "Your planet of origin will be classified as contraband smuggling equipment. Standard procedure is confiscation and disposal."
The words hit like a physical blow. Earth. They were threatening to destroy Earth.
"You can't—"
"We can. We will. Seventy-two hours, Mr. Su. Don't be late."
The Auditor began to fade, its form dissolving back into incomprehensible geometry. The crack in the sky sealed itself with a sound like reality zipping shut. Color returned to the world in a rush that made Ethan's eyes water.
Time resumed.
The frozen workers blinked in confusion, unaware that anything had happened. Birds continued their flight paths. Dust settled normally. Only Ethan and his inner circle retained any memory of the encounter.
Marcus groaned and pushed himself to his feet, his face still pale, a streak of white now running through his black hair. "Boss? What the hell was that thing?"
"Trouble," Ethan said quietly. He looked down at the QR code burned into his hand. The mark pulsed with a faint blue light, counting down. Seventy-one hours, fifty-nine minutes, thirty-seven seconds.
In his pocket, the divine fragment had gone dark, its power spent. But it had done its job—it had bought him time and revealed the true scope of the game he was playing.
Lyra struggled to stand, her legs shaking, her voice still carrying traces of digital distortion. "Sir, what do we do? If they can really destroy Earth—"
Ethan studied the fading spot in the sky where the Auditor had vanished, his mind already parsing the structure of the threat. He saw it then—not invincible power, but a rigid set of protocols. A massive, interconnected bureaucracy with rules, procedures, and most importantly, exploitable gaps.
"They want to confiscate a planet?" A slow, predatory grin spread across his face. "They just made a classic error. They invited a tax auditor into their house."
He looked at the QR code on his hand, already calculating. Seventy-two hours to reach the Multiversal Free Trade Port. He'd need transportation, documentation, and enough liquid assets to operate in an interdimensional economy. The emergency fund he'd been building would finally see use.
"If their record-keeping is anything like their security protocols," Ethan continued, his voice gaining that familiar edge of cold calculation, "I'll have the Entropy Council dissolved for fraud before the week is out."
Behind him, Marcus and Lyra exchanged worried glances. They'd seen that look before—right before Ethan did something that redefined the meaning of impossible.
The countdown continued, but Ethan Su was already planning the audit of a lifetime.