The Fourth Dimension was a cacophony of moments.
Nexarion drifted through its currents, his body threaded with time particles that pulsed like veins of liquid starlight. Around him, the river of crystallized time fractured into tributaries—each a shard of a possible past, a probable future, or a never-was. The air thrummed with the dissonant harmony of overlapping eras: a child's laughter echoing through a dying star's scream, a war's first strike fused to a peace treaty's final signature.
"Time is not a line," hissed the Whispering Void, its serpentine form undulating through the chaos. "It is a symphony. And you, little god, hold the baton."
Nexarion clenched his fist, time particles swirling around his fingers like fireflies. "I don't want to conduct. I want to understand."
The Void laughed, its voice ricocheting off frozen instants. "Understanding requires surrender. Are you hungry enough to let go?"
The Echoes of What Might Be
Time particles were not mere energy—they were conceptual echoes that represents the present to mirror the past and recreate future presents using fragments of the All-Known Dimension's infinite archive. To touch one was to relive a moment, but not as it was—as it could have been.
Nexarion seized a shimmering mote. Instantly, he was elsewhere
A younger Lumina knelt in a temple of ice, her hands bloodied as she carved runes into a spacetime glaive. "Balance is not stasis," she murmured. "It is the dance of possibility."
The memory dissolved, replaced by another:
The Spire of Balance, whole and unbroken, its core radiating stability. A mortal king begged it to freeze time, to spare his dying world. The Spire refused. "To halt time is to murder possibility," it intoned.
Nexarion recoiled, dropping the particle. "Illusions. Lies."
"Truths," corrected the Void, its scales drinking the light of dying stars. "But truths seen through a fractured lens. The past is not a corpse to resurrect—it is a mirror, reflecting the present's hunger."
Lumina's Descent
She found him in an eddy of collapsing futures, her glaive crackling with unstable spacetime energy.
"You have to fix this!" Lumina shouted, her armor scarred by temporal radiation. "The Third Dimension is unraveling. Cities blink in and out of existence. Children are born old, elders die as infants!"
Nexarion stared at his hands, still glowing with stolen time. "I didn't create the hunger. I'm just… feeding it."
"By devouring worlds?" Lumina's voice broke. "You're becoming what you hate!"
He turned, his eyes reflecting the river's chaos. "What I hate is the emptiness. The Similarity's silence. Balance and Chaos—they're just notes in a song no one asked to hear."
Lumina stepped closer, her glaive humming. "Then change the song. Use the time particles to rebuild the Spire. Stabilize the Third Dimension!"
Nexarion laughed bitterly. "Rebuild? Look."
He hurled a time particle into the river. It erupted into a hologram of the Third Dimension—not as it was, but as it could be: a paradise of floating islands, mortals wielding time particles like gods.
"A reconstruction," he said. "Not the past. Not the future. A fantasy."
The hologram shattered.
"Time particles don't resurrect. They reflect. Your 'balance' is just another cage."
The Whispering Void's Gambit
The Void materialized between them, its form blending with the swirling chronons.
"She clings to meaning, little god. But meaning is a noose. Cut it."
Lumina struck, her glaive slicing through the Void's mirage-like body. "You're using him!"
"And he's using me," the Void hissed, reforming behind Nexarion. "Symbiosis, priestess. The hunger binds us all."
Nexarion raised his hand, time particles coalescing into a blade of fractured chronons. "What do you want?"
"What you do," the Void purred. "To unmake the Similarity's mistake. To transcend the song entirely."
Lumina's eyes widened. "The Similarity… you mean to destroy Balance and Chaos?"
"Destroy?" The Void's laughter echoed. "We mean to evolve them."
The Fractured Mirror
Nexarion's blade faltered. The Void's words resonated with the hunger in his core—the void that had gnawed at him since birth.
"How?"
"The Fifth Dimension," the Void said. "Where possibilities branch infinitely. There, we can rewrite the Similarity's score. No more Balance. No more Chaos. Only… potential."
Lumina stepped between them, her glaive igniting. "Don't. You'll erase everything."
Nexarion met her gaze. "What if 'everything' is the problem?"
He slashed the time blade, tearing a rift to the Fifth Dimension. The Void slithered through, but Lumina grabbed Nexarion's arm.
"Please," she begged."This isn't the answer."
He hesitated. For a moment, the hunger dimmed, replaced by the ghost of empathy. Then he pulled free.
"Answers are for the full. I'm still starving."
Echoes of the All-Known
As Nexarion crossed into the Fifth Dimension, the river of time particles shuddered. Lumina stood alone, the Third Dimension's death cries echoing in her ears.
A voice, soft and ancient, whispered from her glaive:
"You cannot save him. But you can follow."
She tightened her grip. "How?"
The glaive flared, its blade piercing the rift. "By becoming hunger itself."..