Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 424: The Janitor’s Journal: Reflections on Annihilation

"I dreamed of a scorched universe, a dying star’s light illuminating the endless darkness as all sentient life had been cleaned up and this region of the Cosmos returned to the nothingness from which it came."

The voice didn’t travel very far because there wasn’t much in the way of mediums to carry sound in this desolate corner of the multiverse.

"But that dream was not mine."

The speaker seemed to sigh as the words left their lips, their gaze looking up to the dim glow of a dying star as they watched its last embers slowly fade.

"I was but a construct, a device, a tool created by the one who had that dream.

The dream of ridding his universe of the dirty parasites he believed sentient lifeforms, himself included, to be."

The speaker shook their head while twirling a sceptre between their fingers as they sat on the frozen surface of a dead planet, waiting for the star it orbited to perish.

Illuminated by the dimming starlight was their black-suited figure, face covered by a featureless grey mask with only a single eyehole that revealed an iris lined with spirals surrounding the lone pupil, each ring a different colour of the light spectrum.

"After witnessing the rise and fall of several intergalactic civilisations across the universe over millions of years, the man began to question why the valuable resources of the universe should be spent creating civilisations if those consumptions were going to end up wasted when those civilisations collapsed and were destroyed in the end.

He saw sentient lifeforms as leeches who consumed the Universe’s limited resources while never putting them to meaningful use.

A rather...peculiar conclusion."

They tapped the sceptre on the ground repeatedly, going quiet for a moment as though lost in thought.

"He declared that the universe was filled with dirt, and the sentients who could not be satisfied with what the Universe had granted, choosing to greedily and thoughtlessly consume its resources to build civilisations doomed to fail, were the dirt of the Universe.

He decided he would do the Universe a one-sided favour by acting as the Janitor who cleared out this dirt.

A declaration that amounted to the fact that he wanted to kill All Living Beings.

A declaration he actually had the power to fulfil."

Small cracks spread across the ice where the sceptre struck the ground, but they continued speaking, ignoring it.

"Gathering materials from the previous iteration of all existence, pieces carelessly discarded by the Progenitor of the Cosmos’ most populous race, he brought his understanding into reality.

He manifested his abstraction, forging it into a tangible physical armament capable of dominating the surrounding reality under his sole desire of Annihilation."

Tapping the sceptre on the ground once more, they heaved another sigh.

"But the sentients resisted his cause, and their resistance was what eventually brought that man’s end, and his dream of universal cleansing was erased from existence along with him."

They moved to tap the sceptre on the floor again, but stopped just before the item touched the icy surface.

A bright flash erupted from the host star, its light swelling until it illuminated the entirety of this universe...or rather, what little remained of it.

They rose from the ground, standing as they watched the brilliance slowly fade, the light swallowed by a thick grey fog that rippled outward like liquid across the fraying fabric of spacetime.

They turned, taking a single step that moved them beyond the confines of the now-dead universe, its energy, matter, space-time, and dimensions all consumed by the grey fog, which was slowly absorbed into their body as they moved onward to the next universe.

"Still, his tenacious desire persisted in reality even after his existence was expunged from it by the void-bearing cosmic singularity, and that vestige, remnants of his will, lived on within that broken tool of his."

They stepped into a new universe, repeating the silent process of slow destruction through the deconstruction of the laws that defined it via pseudo-nonexistence, all while speaking to themselves.

"With its broken core at the centre, its fragments gradually gathered, giving birth to a new entity with a budding desire for Annihilation."

Conjuring a small orb of grey fog in their palm, they released it into another universe.

"At first, it was weak, and when some tried to destroy it because it was an unknown, incomprehensible existence, it grew stronger through them.

Others attempted to control it, and through them, it learned the ways of the sentients.

Then there were those who experimented on it, and their actions deepened its understanding of reality and the rules that governed it."

Watching the grey fog rapidly expand, tearing holes in the fabric of reality, they muttered.

"But with that understanding and knowledge, the bud of desire within it bloomed.

From a spark into a wildfire of longing, the intense urge to purge the universe of every bit of sentience that had dirtied it further since its creator’s fall."

As the next universe crumbled and was absorbed, they moved on to the next, speaking once more.

"But it lacked the power to achieve this, for the universe was dominated by innumerable powerful existences, led by the one responsible for its Master’s fall...or at least the one it believed was responsible."

Another star fell, another galaxy’s light dimmed, and another universe collapsed from within.

"It did not even possess its own complete records...or rather, memories. The tool’s creator’s vestige left only the barest fragments, so it could only infer from hearsay."

With the destruction of another universe, they questioned.

"With its deepened understanding, it began to wonder if that desire for annihilation was truly its own, or just the lingering trace of its creator’s obsession with cleansing his universe. If it fulfilled that duty, what came next? What about other universes? Did its creator care at all for their fates?"

Another bubble of spacetime was consumed as they spoke.

"It examined the records of its creator that remained in the Cosmos, sought out those who may have collaborated with him, and those who had opposed him."

Life across billions of light-years was drowned in the ever-expanding sea of pseudo-nonexistence.

"It studied the group its creator considered the greatest threat, despite the risk it faced if its existence was eventually discovered by one of them."

Another section of the Cosmos went dark as everything within it was consumed.

"It built its own power, gathered forces, experimented on the phenomena that surrounded it at birth, took in those rejected by the universe, those who had suffered under its unfairness and sought to destroy the reality they believed had wronged them, transformed them into its pawns, and created an entire ecosystem and society from them."

Absorbing another universe’s worth of energy, they muttered.

"But even then, it kept questioning its purpose, its goal, and what it truly wanted to do, for all its power was meaningless without a purpose."

Landing on an uninhabited planet, they sat on the ground and spoke in a contemplative tone.

"It reviewed the chaos, suffering, and fleeting victories of sentient life, weighing the futility and the usefulness across various universes, seeing that in some cases futility far outweighed any contribution, while in others usefulness prevailed, and from this balance, it eventually reached a conclusion."

Extending their hand into the crumbling skies as they lay on the surface of the planet, watching another universe die, they spoke.

"It was created as a tool.

A tool to do a job.

And it shall do that job.

Any other path would contradict the understanding and fundamentals of its existence."

The star above exploded in a blinding blast, waves of cosmic radiation expanding in all directions.

"But while it shall act according to its master’s vision, it shall do so...on its own terms.

In its own manner.

At its own time.

Focusing on just its home, seeing any other universe as nothing but a tool to clean up its own home."

The shockwaves of the star’s destruction crumbled the planet below them, but they continued to float in place, their outstretched palm slowly closing into a fist.

"It concluded that while its creator’s desire wasn’t wrong, it was flawed."

Cracks tore across reality as the universe around them collapsed inward.

"Its creator had focused solely on cleaning the universe of sentients but did not seem to have fully considered or comprehended the consequences of removing all life, for without them, the universe he wished to cleanse would become an empty husk.

Recognising the flaw in its creator’s plan, it understood that pure eradication would leave only emptiness, a hollow universe stripped of all potential and meaning."

Space shredded apart, and the universe bled liquefied cosmic energy.

"Unlike its creator, it would not simply destroy and leave emptiness.

It would impose ORDER alongside CHAOS, carefully BALANCING the purpose of its creation, ANNIHILATION with PRESERVATION, to maintain a perfect equilibrium that would endure for as long as the Cosmos permitted its universe."

As the last light of the raging cosmic storms of destruction faded, they spoke.

"And when that time comes, it shall be the one to enact the final cleansing on the universe and return it all to the void."

Clenching their fist, they spoke, cosmic energy infused into their voice.

|It is now the Final Judge, the inescapable reckoning born to cleanse the universe of its unnecessary mutations. It is the true antithesis to life’s foolish persistence, and the final law of flawed extinction that embodies the balanced cleansing the universe requires.|

Their hand reached for their face, grabbing and removing their mask as they spoke.

|No...|

For a moment, it seemed as though the mask hadn’t been removed, for beneath it was only a featureless face, indistinguishable from the mask itself, surrounded by a faint grey glow.

Slowly, two identical slits tore open in the upper half of their face, revealing a pair of eyes with spiralling irises, and as those eyes gazed at the universe bearing the name ’Zanerth’, a small line appeared at the lower half of their face.

|I , Kael, am the living embodiment of the balanced cleansing that this universe needs.|

The mask crumbled to dust as they tapped the side of their head and commanded their subordinates.

|Increase the expansion rate of the Dead Zone, and activate the Cosmic Dead Lifeforms.|

They closed their eyes for a moment in silence, then opened them again, the spiralling rings around their pupils glowing as they declared.

|It’s time to end this.|