"Ouroboros," a voice deep and cloaked in clear excitement rang, "How have you been?"
The voice was heavy with authority, yet not devoid of emotion. A little different from how Alex remembered it, but there was no doubt to whom it belonged.
'Dark,' he thought, the name ringing in his mind.
Alex felt his imaginary heart skip a beat. He was reliving another of Dark's memories, which meant he could earn another gift from the Ancient.
Boiling excitement rose in him at the thought of what it might be, making him wonder if it would be a new skill, a weapon, or maybe something different, a new quality like the Eyes of the Ancient or the Heart of the Ancient.
He was pulled back to his senses as another voice answered.
"Dark," it said, deep and measured, "I was doing fine until you showed up. And from your excitement, I would be right to assume you are not here for a polite, scholarly chat with me."
"I am not sure about polite," Dark replied, a chuckle slipping through, "but scholarly, sure, since I am here to add to your infinite records of reality." The sound of his laugh only made his excitement more apparent. Updates are released by 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝⁂𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖⁂𝕟𝕖𝕥
"I don't understand what I can gain from wasting time fighting you," Ouroboros answered. "Time is eternal. There is no escaping its grasp, and though you are strong, you are not at a level where you can erase all possibilities."
"So our battle will only end in a stalemate, as it always does."
"Unless you have something of value to offer me, I will not be playing your game of entertainment," Ouroboros answered, making his stance clear.
Dark chuckled, his excitement only growing. "I am disappointed. To think you would even entertain the idea that I am lying to you right now."
"Yeah, like you haven't lied to me hundreds of times already. And lying is actually the least troubling thing you do." The serpent almost scoffed. "Remember the time you tried to destroy centuries of my work, just so you could enter the tournament?
"Or the time you manipulated me into caging Ikanron, just so he would lose the bet he made against you." Dark actually chuckled, as if the thought itself brought back a funny memory.
"Oh, come now," Dark said, still amused, "It was all done in the spirit of fun."
"Now, quit complaining and get prepared for battle," Dark's voice boomed. His hand rose, and Alex, who watched in silence, caught sight of the muscular arm cloaked in taut, abyssal skin.
'Dark appears to be much younger in this vision than he was in the previous two,' Alex quickly concluded.
He realized that the stone-cold entity who lived atop a supermassive black hole was, in truth, a fun-loving individual at some point, and quite a powerful one, strong enough to play around with others of his kind.
Monsters, like the one looming before him.
Alex held his imaginary breath, waiting in silence for what would unfold.
Dark wished for battle, but Ouroborus, who from his previous statement seemed to hold authority of time, made his disinterest very clear; he wished to have part of a pointless clash, if it was purely for the sake of fighting.
But Dark clearly planned to force him into a battle, and seeing his clear excitement, it could only mean he had prepared something. A hidden card, a possible way to deal with the endless trickery of Time.
Alex felt he already knew the answer, or at least had an idea of what it could be, but he forced himself not to think about it. It was better to wait than let wild imagination set him up for disappointment.
It was then the world shifted. His vision bled into black and gray, a sight he was very familiar with, but there seemed to be an anomaly present in their surrounding.
The vibrant hum of existence, the tiny, shimmering motes of mana, the ceaseless pulse of life's breath, all of it had gone still. The dots of energy that filled the air hung like dust in a frozen picture.
The answer came before his mind could reach his own. 'Freezing time?' Dark's whisper, his tone laced with mockery. 'What next? Endless strikes, followed by a Paradoxal Cage?'
Dark chuckled, voice full of amusement, "At least try putting some effort into it."
A moment later, Dark made his move, and through his eyes, for a fleeting instant, Alex glimpsed what lay beneath the surface of reality, a stage that he himself had just begun to tap into.
He saw the base of reality, the hidden canvases upon which all of reality stood.
The air around them was not simply air, but woven upon another base, ever-shifting dark riples anchoring breath and wind. The vast void of space itself sat on yet another layer, a denser, calm layer, a dark plane that gave form to its emptiness.
For a single heartbeat, Alex saw it all, the branching roots, each base feeding into another, the whole of existence stacked and intertwined in unfathomable depth.
The sight overwhelmed him, threatening to tear his mind apart with the sheer weight of the truth forced onto him.
All of it then faded away, leaving only an ocean of gold, resting upon a vast black sea, endless, depthless, a silence upon which the golden strings of eternity were stretched taut.
Gleaming cold and unyielding, Alex realised that he was seeing the law of time and the base it rested upon.
The sea of gold was coiling around the frozen picture of reality, binding every mote, every breath, every instant in countless golden strings that beautifully came together.
This was the source that held the world still.
Alex's vision trembled. The base of Time was vast, ancient, immaculate, everything woven with absolute certainty, everything sealed within its embrace.
No wonder nothing could move, because to the law of Time, stillness was just a quality of its nature.
Alex almost felt lost seeing the picture before his eyes, and for a moment, he wondered whether this absolute law could even be challenged.
How could anything shake eternity, when it was anchored so deeply?
However, a moment later, Dark also took action, making the black sea quiver beneath the golden loom, and as it shifted, so too did the strings that lay upon it.
The disturbance disrupted the harmony of the golden ocean, and darkness spread like oil across the water, silent yet relentless.
Not erased, not broken, but distorted.
The golden threads that had been ruler-straight began to bend, as though they no longer remembered their perfect shape.
One area was pulled closer, another stretched too far, while many others wavered like reflections across disturbed water. The ocean itself rippled, sending tremors through the endless weave.
The strings still glowed, still held their authority, yet clear change bled into them. The laws they carried began to stutter, falter, and change from their absolute truth.
The frozen world above answered with cracks in its stillness. A mote of mana stretched into a streak before snapping back. Another trembled, splitting into two images, then three, as if reality could not decide which moment it belonged to.
He had no words to describe how he was feeling at the moment.
This was not erasure since that would have brought a much different result. The canvas would have been wiped clean.
But this was deeper, finer, more insidious. The canvas itself had shifted, and now the grand golden ocean that was Time began to wobble atop it.
It was a flaw seeded into perfection, and as a result, eternity itself had begun to falter.
"Dark…" Ouroborus's voice rumbled low, heavy with emotions. His vast eyes, oceans without end, narrowed. "What have you done?"
"I introduced a little flaw into your great cage," Dark replied, tone playful, almost teasing, but with a glint of satisfaction. He spoke not like a rival, but like a craftsman showing off a clever trick.
The serpent's calm eyes rippled, shifting through countless emotions: first excitement, then a flicker of hunger, then desire, and at last... fear.
"A single stutter in Eternity is enough to let a blade slip through the frozen forever," Ouroborus murmured, as if realizing the far-reaching effects of his friend's new domain. "A fracture in Infinity means it is no longer truly endless. A flaw in the endless Cycle means rebirth is no longer guaranteed."
For the first time in countless eons, the Serpent of Time, keeper of records, devourer of knowledge, eternal witness, and someone who believed he would be present to watch the end of the universe, found himself uncertain.
He did not know how to put into words what he felt.
"Old friend," Dark's laughter rumbled low, bright with mischief, "You are already impressed... And here I thought your hunger was endless."
"You have more than this?" Ouroborus's voice deepened, a roar shaking the golden strings around him. "Tell me you're not lying."
The great serpent experience told him that Dark, having discovered not just one but two aspects of his domain, was highly unlikely, but the scholar within him dearly wished for it to be true.
"I can show you what I learned about Error," Dark said, raising his hands as though offering a performance. Then his tone sharpened, teasing and cruel all at once. "And maybe, if you fight me with everything you have, I will show you something even more… interesting."
"Interesting?" The serpent laughed, his coils trembling with the force of it. His laughter was vast, rolling through the vast desert. "Only a madman like you would look upon such a truth and call it interesting."