“Destined? Sure. The end was etched long ago. Here, you’ve got no room to struggle, and no miracle will fall like rain.” The “Prince” wore a twisted mask of a face, his black wings leaking a dark sheen like oil on fire.

He was certain. This place was the Interstice, a seam between worlds, beyond the reach of the Other Shore. No law held sway here. No hand could intervene. Here, he’d start the Night Clan’s revenge. Here, he’d kill his first being from the Other Shore, and offer its blood to the fallen of his clan.

Crack…

The “Prince” wrenched off Ouyang’s other arm. “Relax. I won’t let you die yet. I want you to taste it too—the years that crawl in silence. You’ll love it. No one to interrupt. No clock to feel. Just you, drifting in the void, chewing on past and future…”

He smashed a fist into Ouyang’s face. Madness boiled across his features. “It feels sublime. Once you taste it, you’ll crave it.”

Ouyang lay on the black-and-white grid like a broken chess piece. His nose bled and bruises bloomed, his arms gone. Yet no despair dimmed his eyes.

“Pitiful. I don’t mean only you. All of you. Even those traitors. Pitiful, every one… You think this little setup could finish me for good? Heh. You don’t even understand what the Interstice is, yet you bet everything on it? Pathetic.”

“Shut up!”

Ouyang’s look of pity cut like salt in a wound. Each “pitiful” twisted the “Prince’s” face deeper. He slapped Ouyang hard, a crack like dry wood splitting.

“Trash stays trash. Here’s a tip: you’re going to crash and burn. So howl while you can. Bark like a stray dog who lost his home.”

Ouyang lay there, smirking, the grid under him cold as frost. “I told you. You can’t kill me.”

“Shut up!”

Black lightning crept from the “Prince’s” wings, crawling over him like vipers. He looked like a demon-king carved from night.

“You outsiders—one day, I’ll scatter your ashes over my clan’s burial grounds…”

While he raved, Ouyang’s severed arm whooshed back like a homing swallow and locked onto his shoulder with a clean click.

“Idiot. Not just you—the traitors too.” Strength surged from nowhere. Ouyang shoved the “Prince” off. Ripples spiraled up around him—deep blue, dark crimson, gold—coiling like a rainbow torn into ribbons.

“The Interstice is the bulwark between two starfields. Here, I’m closer to the Other Shore. Here, their power crosses easier.” Sevenfold light veiled him as he drifted toward the “Prince.” “Want to try me? With the gods of the Other Shore gathered in me, the gap between us is a newborn versus a god.”

He’d waited for this minute. The moment he stepped into the Interstice, the message reached him. But power needs time to gather and flow. So he watched, teeth clenched, as the frenzied “Prince” tore off his arms.

Now, with the Other Shore’s gods thrumming in his veins, one glance could erase a world.

He drank it in. With this power, all living things looked like ants on a sunlit stone. He stood above and looked down. Maybe those gods, even the Creator God the other gods sing to, see us as ants too.

He felt the flood inside him, a force that could rip order and law like paper. He wanted it to last forever. Pity—it wasn’t his. But a moment was enough. It opened a new horizon he’d only known in theory—Multiverse Theory.

“You’re so weak. Someone like you doesn’t deserve to be the final boss. Figures. The real boss should come from our own side. I can’t stand the traitors, but… what a tragedy.”

Ouyang slid his hand straight into the “Prince’s” heart. Easy. Natural. Like slicing tofu with a wet knife.

“This power is intoxicating. Shame you’re so weak. I can’t even enjoy it properly. Why didn’t you grow stronger? Why choose to be this small?”

The “Prince’s” black wings blinked out. He shrank to skin and bone, a famine-shadow. The rainbow around Ouyang faded. In its place, a pair of black wings unfurled on his back. The “Prince” saw his eyes then—empty as deep space.

“Heh… heh…”

Ouyang drew his hand free and laughed under his breath. The sound was wrong, like wind in a grave.

“This power is finally back. What the Night King stole—returned at last.” He bowed his head and cried. The broad black wings folded around him like a grieving cloak.

“Your Night Clan will vanish from this universe. Believe me. The day isn’t far. But you won’t see it. You lit the fuse for all this, Your Highness. If you hadn’t craved this power, none of the tragedy would’ve happened.

“The old prophecy wasn’t why the Night King moved. The true reason was you. You kept goading him.”

“Do you know what it’s like,” his voice broke like ice underfoot, “to watch the girl you love stripped of power, bit by bit, until she dissolves into particles? Do you know?”

“When you broke her like that, and hunted my kin across the stars—did you think about extinction? Don’t worry. The other me will end your clan with his own hands. He’ll end this ancient feud himself.”

“Dream Chaser sacrificed the Boundless Sea and cut off our way home. But in a way, he saved us. He gave us a chance at revenge. Heh. All these years, I kept company with the Void and with solitude—year after year, spring after spring, winter after winter. I waited for the day I could kill you myself.”

“My remnant wouldn’t fade for one reason: to live to end you.”

The skeletal “Prince” stared wide-eyed, as if seeing a ghost in full daylight. “You’re… the Watcher of the Void…”

“No. The Watcher of the Void is dead. Now there’s only the Void Messenger.”

“Come. Let’s dive to the deepest dark. Let’s return to the first Aether Sea.” Ouyang’s face contorted, more deranged than the “Prince” had ever been.

“No!”

It didn’t matter. From within Ouyang, a phantom stepped out, seized the “Prince,” and dragged him down the long fall to the end of the Void.

Ouyang stood, watching the far distance. The “Prince’s” torn-throat screams still echoed like wind in a canyon. His gaze went unfocused, like a child who’s lost his parent, staring at a world too big.

“Liar… You said you’d wait for me to come find you. Why didn’t you keep our promise?” He hadn’t thought the void-born Ouyang would choose that road. He didn’t even get one last look. Their last meeting had been farewell.

“I’m sorry. I doubted you before. Only now do I understand…”

It was over. The Watcher of the Void, that other Ouyang, had hauled his fated enemy back into the primal Aether Sea. From the memories left behind, Ouyang knew this: when the void Ouyang watched his lover die before his eyes, his heart died too.

“Rest easy. I’ll erase the Night Clan from this universe. If it takes ten thousand years, a hundred thousand, a million… I’ll spend my life to finish it.”

“And I’ll finish your mission. I’ll prove the Multiverse.”

The Multiverse Theory and the Co-Genesis Theory had sparked endless arguments across ages. No one had ever nailed it down. The Watcher’s lover was the one who proposed the Multiverse. Of course he wanted her vision confirmed.

She believed the two starfields weren’t born as twins. She wanted to prove the world was wider and more vast than they imagined. Then disaster fell out of a clear sky and buried everything. When he became one with the Void, he no longer had the strength to prove it for her.

…

While the Watcher of the Void dragged the “Prince” toward the Aether Sea, snow fell in another world. It fell thick and soft, building a world made of frost and breath. Two figures faced each other. Different from before—today, orange-haired Xi stood before the white-haired Lian without her old restraint.

“I’m leaving. Thank you for taking care of me.” Lian smiled, peerless and untethered. Barefoot in a white dress, she turned among the falling flakes, pale hands and jade feet ready to melt into snow.

Her words were strange, since anyone could see she’d been the one caring for Xi. Yet she said it anyway. Outsiders would be puzzled.

Xi sighed, a little lost, like smoke thinning in the wind. “Don’t mention it. I just hope you won’t carry regrets.”

“The wrongs I made… I hope they vanish with me. I should’ve disappeared back then, like he should have. But he clung to a vow and wouldn’t scatter. I was the same. I couldn’t let go of him. So I watched him in secret, year after year. Now he’s chosen to return to the Aether Sea. It’s time I walk with him.”

Xi knew Empress Bai had always loved the Watcher of the Void. She nodded, said nothing more, and smiled, sending Lian off like a lantern downriver.

“And you? You never told him the truth. You kept it from him…” Lian glanced back at Xi.

“It’s alright. That fool is easy to coax. A few gentle words and he won’t stay mad. If… the Aether Sea is another world, then I bless you both.”

Lian’s smile was sincere, warm as a hearth under winter eaves. She whispered, “Aurora, I bless you two as well.”