In the corridors of Twilight Town inside the NUS Empire Obsidian a powerful female warrior stood saluting the Imperial Commissar known as Jargin better known as Jibberjabber or Jibberish. It talked in its nonsense audible language. The corridor was dim, lit by flickering neon glyphs carved into the black marble walls. The warrior's boots clicked as she snapped a salute. Before her stood Imperial Commissar Jargin—though no one called him that. To the soldiers and peasants of Twilight Town, he was simply "Jibberjabber" … or "Jibberish", depending on who survived his speeches.
His face twitched, mustache bristling like a frightened caterpillar. He opened his mouth, and a torrent of nonsensical syllables gushed forth: "Mubbuh–Jahh–Ribba! Skra-doo-buh-woop!" The sound rattled like a banjo string plucked too tight. The walls echoed with a hum, as if the Empire itself mocked his every word. The warrior stood stiff, straining not to laugh. Jibberjabber's eyes bulged, his hands flailed, and with every exaggerated gesture, more warped syllables erupted:
"Gahhh–Bwoo! Jibba-jabba-jabba—BLURRRRRT!" A small brass trumpet somewhere in the ceiling tooted on cue, like punctuation to his nonsense. Finally, he paused, nostrils flaring. "Sir…" the warrior ventured carefully, "…permission to… interpret?" Jibberjabber spun dramatically, cape flapping, and barked another unintelligible decree: "Skree–biddle–bop–ZOOOOOM!" A pair of nearby guards nodded solemnly, as if this made perfect sense. One whispered to the other: "He said… uh… execute phase four."
The other guard blinked. "Phase four? … I thought that was laundry day."
Both nodded again, pretending they understood, while the warrior's eye twitched.
"NANI??!!" "SIR PHASE FOUR???!!" said the female warrior. "We need to send reinforcements to capture these nerdoowels, they bested our enemies from the Federation. That means they could threaten us, I can send funds to some of their mercenaries that should not be a problem." The commander said, "Sir there's no way they threaten the NUS, we're a multi-cosmic empire, they can't touch us."
"The Forgotten Name"
Flashback — Over 2,000 years ago, in the Ashen Wastes of Old Umi:
The world burned red beneath a dying sun. Ash and black petals floated like snow across the charred plains where the old demon kingdoms once thrived. The air shimmered with heat and lingering curses — a land where every shadow whispered the names of the damned.
Talus was still young then — his hair shorter, less wild, his eyes burning with the fire of rebellion. Beside him stood Barzakh, a lean, spiky-haired demon with an irreverent grin and a jagged scar across his cheek, his crimson aura flickering like a living flame. They were both outcasts — too human for demons, too tainted for angels.
As they trekked through the ruins of a forgotten battlefield, they saw him.
A small figure crouched beside a broken statue, scratching something into the dirt with a trembling claw. His horns were small and uneven, his hair a wild nest of silver strands, and his eyes — wide, almost human — shimmered with unbearable loneliness. The little demon looked up as Talus approached. His voice was soft, like a ghost caught between worlds. "Do you... remember my name?" he asked. Barzakh tilted his head, confused. "You're the weird kid who keeps eating rocks behind the barracks, right? That's your name — Rock-Eater." The child frowned but didn't argue. He just hugged his knees tighter. Talus noticed the faint sigil glowing on the boy's neck — a spiral of spores embedded deep in his skin, pulsing faintly.
"The mark," Talus muttered. "A demon left that behind, didn't it?" The boy nodded slowly. "It... killed my parents. I was human once. It said it'll come back when I'm ready." His voice cracked, his eyes burning red with something between rage and despair. "I don't want to be ready." Barzakh, who usually mocked everyone, was silent for once. He looked away and muttered, "You're still a brat, even if you're cursed. Don't get yourself killed before I beat you in a fight someday." Talus smiled faintly, kneeling beside the boy. "You'll get strong. Not because that thing wants you to, but because you have to. Power isn't evil, kid — it's just a tool. You decide what it means."
The child blinked up at him, clutching his ragged cloak.
"What... should I call myself, then?" Talus thought for a moment, glancing at the endless wasteland. "You said you forgot your name, right? Then you're Baby — because every god, every demon, and every man starts that way. Even monsters were innocent once." Barzakh scoffed. "That's dumb." Talus grinned. "Yeah, but it fits." The three of them sat there for a moment — two demons and a lonely child who forgot who he was — as the crimson sun set behind the ruins. The air was still heavy with sorrow, but for the first time in ages, the silence wasn't cruel. And deep beneath the ash, something unseen stirred — a faint, rhythmic heartbeat, the echo of a prophecy that wouldn't awaken for millennia.
The air was molten red, filled with the hiss of magma rivers and the distant roar of beasts. The smell of brimstone clung to every breath. The three outcasts — Talus, Barzakh, and the child called Baby — had made a crude shelter from blackstone and bone, hidden beneath a collapsed spire where old sigils still glowed faintly in the dark. Days had turned into years. The other demons still mocked the little one, calling him "halfling," "human stink," or worse. His horns had grown only a little, his aura faint and uneven — like static in a storm. But something terrifying pulsed within him, unseen, buried deep beneath his skin like an ancient seed waiting to bloom.
Barzakh was sparring with Talus under the red sky, their auras clashing and bursting like small suns. The heat of their blows sent molten pebbles flying, and Baby watched, eyes wide with both awe and fear. "Again, runt!" Barzakh barked, kicking a boulder into dust. "You'll never learn to control it if you keep hiding behind that scared look!" "I—I don't want to hurt anyone," Baby stammered, holding his hands up as faint violet energy sparked from his palms. "When I lose control… things burn." Talus walked over, his usual calm breaking into a faint smirk. "Then learn to burn better." He crouched down, meeting Baby's uncertain gaze. "The demons out there hate you because you remind them of what they lost — a soul. Don't let them take yours."
Barzakh scoffed. "That's deep and all, but if he doesn't start using that weird spore energy soon, it's going to eat him alive."
A Sudden Flashback Within the Flashback:The memory hit Baby like lightning — the night his parents were slaughtered.
A shadow had descended from the sky, wreathed in spores that glowed like dying stars.
He had screamed as it tore them apart — and before leaving, the demon had whispered in his ear:
"Grow strong. When your soul ripens, I'll return to harvest it."
He woke from the vision gasping, his body shaking, the spore-mark on his neck pulsing violently. "Yo, Barzakh—!" Talus shouted, but it was too late. Baby's aura exploded outward in violet shockwaves, shattering the obsidian rocks around them. His eyes turned a pale lilac, and from his back erupted jagged spines — not wings, but twisted growths of energy. Barzakh instinctively charged in, his claws glowing gold. "Kid, stop before you—!" But Baby screamed — not in rage, but in anguish. "I didn't mean to! I just— I just want to be normal!" The explosion that followed tore through the valley, creating a crater that would later be known as the Weeping Scar — a cursed landmark for millennia. When the smoke cleared, Talus stood over Baby's unconscious body, shielding him with his own battered frame.
Barzakh was on one knee, coughing up smoke, his hair half-burned, eyes wide in shock.
"…He's not normal," Barzakh muttered. "He's a living weapon." Talus looked down at Baby, who was curled up, his small hand still trembling in his sleep.
"No," he said quietly. "He's a child. And if the world won't let him be one… then we'll make one for him." Barzakh looked up with his usual smirk returning, faint but real. "Heh. You always were soft for strays." Talus chuckled, just once. "Guess that's why you keep following me." Night fell. In the faint red glow of the magma rivers, Talus sat awake, staring at the spore-mark glowing faintly on Baby's neck. He could feel something watching — not from this world, but far beyond it, whispering through the ash and the stars. And though he would never say it aloud, Talus knew: The being that left that mark was still out there. And one day, it would come back — not for a child, but for a demon who could destroy worlds.
Meanwhile Ungar had an itch…
"I have to go." In an instant he was gone. Lupus scowled: "Always heading off on inopportune movement." Ungar had arrived in the realm of Ozzy. He walked towards the rabbit who was facing away his cape waving behind him. He declared: "Ozzy there's something I've been meaning to talk to you Hermes and her origin." Ozzy laughed: "You know her origin." Ungar grew slightly more angry, "I'm not buying the story anymore, and as Hermes' soul is not part of my being I cannot ascertain that knowledge within myself." Ozzy laughed: "Well lets just say I've been giving her a little push." Ungar's hands tightened at his sides. The air of Ozzy's realm pulsed like liquid glass, rippling between twilight and dawn. Reality here never seemed to settle — it breathed, sighed, and twisted in rhythm with the rabbit's thoughts. Ozzy stood with his back turned, his long ears framed by a halo of drifting motes. His cape fluttered in slow motion, as though time itself hesitated to touch him. Ozzy: "You think you've caught up, Ungar? You're always late — always chasing echoes." Ungar: "Echoes are all you ever leave behind." The rabbit laughed, a soft, unsettling sound — more like wind through hollow wood than mirth. "Then you've learned to listen. Good." He turned slightly, revealing the faint gleam of his red eyes beneath the shadow of his hood. Ungar's voice was steady, low. "Tell me the truth about Hermes. About her origin. You know something no one else does." Ozzy tilted his head, amused. "You already know her origin." Ungar frowned. "I'm not buying the story anymore. Her soul isn't part of my being — I can't access that memory."
Ozzy chuckled. "Well… let's just say I've been giving her a little push." Ungar took a slow step forward. "You've been tampering with her path." Ozzy raised a finger to his lips, smiling faintly. "Tampering is such a mortal word. I'm not moving the pieces, I'm whispering to the board. Every destiny needs a gust of wind to make it interesting." The sky cracked open like glass, revealing a thousand Hermeses suspended in orbit — saint, soldier, monster, child. Each shimmered for a moment, then shattered into motes of golden dust. Ozzy: "You see? Which one's the real her? The one Lupus trusts? The one Talus fears? Or the one who will one day destroy me?" Ungar's eyes narrowed. "You don't know which, do you?" Ozzy smiled — a hollow, sad smile. "That's what makes her beautiful. She's proof that even the gods can't predict everything." The realm dimmed, colors fading into a black ocean. Only Ozzy's eyes remained. Ozzy: "Tell Lupus this: the moon he prays to doesn't watch him anymore. I do." Ungar took a demanding step towards Ozzy.
His eyes widened, "Of course, it all makes sense. That explains everything." Ozzy smirked, "I'm surprised it took you so long." Ungar narrowed his eyes, "I was correct, you are not a villain but you're clearly an antagonist, what game are you playing?" Ozzy laughed: "The enigma of my motives is driving you mad isn't it. On why that power was placed inside that vessel. On who is living through that and through her, and the many things contained with her especially the one in particular." Ungar was shaking with anger now: "You're sick, is this all a game to you?" Ungar clenched his metal fist again. Ungar's voice trembled, a low rumble like tectonic plates grinding:
"Besides what I know she is… what is she then, Ozzy? If not a Prophet, a Mage, a Sage, a god, a constellation, a spirit — what?"
Ozzy's eyes flickered, catching some unseen light. His smile was thin, almost reverent, but his tone was grave:
"She is so much more, Ungar. –
More than any title, more than any pantheon, more than any prophecy. She isn't simply something you can name — she's an architecture, a mechanism, a force threaded through the marrow of creation. You can stack every word in every tongue you've ever known and you'll still be speaking in shadows. Hermes isn't becoming something. She always was. And we've only been staring at the surface."
Ozzy said:
"That thing that climbed out of her — Akira — truth be told, he isn't that bad of a man. You can see it when you watch him; there's a sadness there, a quiet that isn't cruelty. Right now he's only a minor threat, a fluke of history and circumstance. Lucky for him, unlucky for the rest of us. But you miss understand what I'm worried about, Ungar. Akira gets the front row seat. He sees things up close that the rest of you cannot imagine. There is an entire universe folded into Hermes. She is no mere Prophet — she is a cosmos, a stitched cathedral of lives and ghosts. Countless beings stir inside her, more than the number of souls you parade as your strength. Akira has seen the beast that sleeps within that architecture. He's touched its shadow. When it wakes, it will be unstoppable — not because of Akira, but because of what lies coiled in her depths. So what do we do? We use what we have. We turn the beast loose on its own kind. Let it shred the patterns that made it, let it devour the architects. Pain will be a language it understands. Betrayal will be the blade we teach it to hold. If the Void is to be ended, we will make an enemy that knows nothing but annihilation — and point it at everything that would keep the Void alive. Call it monstrous. Call it blasphemy. But you asked me for truth: I'll take that risk. Because the alternative is letting the Void outlast us all."
The air around them was still shuddering from the collision — waves of heat bending the fractured floor, the remains of shattered runes flickering like dying embers. Ungar stood motionless amid the ruin, obsidian armor hissing as excess energy vented through the seams. His fists, still trembling from impact, lowered with a slow grind of metal.
Ozzy straightened, wiping a thin trace of blood from the corner of his mouth. His expression softened, regret cutting through the arrogance that usually armored his words.
"It's not up to me anymore," he said quietly. "All I can do is watch. Even if I wanted to undo this, I can't. And to be honest…" — he exhaled, glancing aside — "I'm beginning to have regrets."
His eyes met the black mirror of Ungar's helm. "Not that your hands are completely clean, though that means little to me at this point — if I'm being completely honest. None of us are innocent, Ungar. We just carry our sins in different containers. Yours happen to be made of iron."
He looked toward the broken wall where the light of another world flickered faintly through. "And now… all that's left is to see what she becomes when the veil is finally lifted. And every soul feels the minor-resurrection."
Ungar's yell split the hall like a falling mountain.
"GODDAMN YOU!!!!"
He lunged — not with words but with the force of every dead star he'd swallowed. The air tore; shadow-iron claws flashed; thunder answered like a chorus of broken worlds. Ozzy moved like lacquered smoke, a grin stretched thin as glass, and for a heartbeat the two forces shredded the room's reality: columns bent into rivers of light, tapestries unravelled into screaming constellations, and voices from inside Hermes stirred like trapped birds.
Ungar's hand closed around Ozzy's throat — a grip that should have torn breath and bone — and Ozzy's palm met Ungar's chest as if pushing against fate itself. They traded blows that would have unmade lesser beings: a strike that peeled away a memory, a counter that slammed into a belief and cracked it. For every universe Ungar hurled, Ozzy answered with a lie that hardened into steel. For every ghost Ungar called up from his six hundred thousand worlds, Ozzy answered with a whisper that turned that ghost inside out.
The violence lasted only moments and an age. Then, abruptly, it stopped.
They stood locked, chests heaving. Ungar's claws trembled around nothing but air — Ozzy's neck was bruised, his shirt singed, his smile now a slow, small thing. Around them the hall lay half-ruined: a dozen shattered prophecies littered the floor like glass. Neither could press the advantage; some invisible ledger had balanced their debts.
Ozzy's eyes met Ungar's, and something like pity, like an old, exhausted amusement, passed over his face.
"Its not up to me anymore," he said quietly. "All I can do is watch, even if I wanted to undo this I can't. And to be honest, I'm beginning to have regrets." Ungar replied in earnest:
"When Hermes awakens what sleeps inside her, she will have power beyond anything this world can contain. The laws that bind gods and the veils that hide truth will shatter like glass before her steps. But she will not understand it at first — she will think it's a blessing. She'll believe she's finally become what she was meant to be. And then, when the echoes of that power begin to twist her heart, when she starts to see the truth behind every illusion, she'll regret ever following the path that led her there. I've seen it before — those who awaken the light that was buried in the beginning. It never comes without a price. When she opens her eyes to what she really is, she won't see salvation. She'll see the weight of creation staring back at her. The void will be staring back at her: D.E.M."
Ozzy laughed: "It goes so much deeper than what you already know, but I'm sure you considered that." Ozzy turned around: "Let me explain to you a summary of everything that occurred. At least that what I wish to disclose."