The voice sounded heavy and ancient.

By now, Male, as mentioned before, was no pushover when it came to power.

With the Merchant’s help, he had evolved his own verse countless times and reached the Twentieth Dimensional level of existence—just one step below Ash, at least on paper.

Feeling the weight and pressure radiating from this being, he knew things weren’t simple. But one thing he was sure of...

"You’re not him," Male said, tilting his head, clearly thinking of the Father.

Hearing this the massive abstract symbol before him began to shift.

Before it was a jagged, ever-shifting glyph of pure negation, a black hole-like shape that seemed to erase the space around it. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Then, with a slow, deliberate ripple, it condensed into a humanoid form.

The man who appeared was tall and slender, with skin the color of absolute void and eyes that were empty sockets filled with distant, dying stars.

His presence was still oppressive, but now more contained — like a storm held in a bottle.

He laughed — a low, echoing sound that seemed to come from multiple directions at once.

"Of course not," he said, amusement clear in his voice. "Why would the Father bother with such lowly realms? Not only that... who has even met the guy?"

Seeing his more relaxed, almost casual demeanor, Male’s tension eased slightly. He looked around the chamber once more, then back at the man.

"Have you been waiting for me?" He asked, "And how long?"

The man shrugged, his star-filled eyes flickering.

"While I’ve only been waiting for a little over ten cycles... we have been on shifts for the last 254 Cycles. Awaiting the day you returned."

Hearing the word "returned" again, Male’s curiosity deepened. He crossed his arms, his long black hair drifting slightly.

"Well... I’m here now."

The message was clear: show him what all the fuss was about.

The man shrugged once more, a trace of dry amusement in his voice.

"The last step’s on you," he said, motioning toward the open darkness. "But make it quick—we should already be in the coliseum getting ready."

Male looked at the man in confusion, not fully understanding what he meant by "preparing in the coliseum."

But instead of asking, he simply began to walk toward the direction the man had gestured.

He didn’t know what he was doing.

There was no clear path, no obvious destination — only a deep, instinctive pull guiding him forward through the pure, empty void.

Each step felt heavier than the last, as if the nothingness itself was pressing against him, testing his resolve.

As he walked, the darkness around him seemed to thicken, becoming almost tangible, like wading through cold, heavy oil.

The silence was absolute — not just the absence of sound, but the absence of the very concept of sound.

His own breathing, his heartbeat, even the faint rustle of his long black hair — all of it felt muted, distant, as if he were moving further away from the idea of "self."

His eyes eventually closed.

He came to a halt.

In that moment, words began to slip from his lips — not spoken consciously, but murmured as if pulled from somewhere deep within him, connected to the very pieces of what Nonexistence truly was.

"End... without beginning... silence without echo... the last breath that never needs to be taken..."

The void around him responded.

HUMMMM!

It wasn’t a visual change — there was nothing to see.

But he felt it.

The emptiness started to coalesce around him, not filling him, but recognizing him.

It was as if the Nonexistence was acknowledging a long-lost fragment of itself, slowly wrapping around his existence like a second skin made of pure absence.

Male’s murmur grew steadier, more instinctive.

"The space between thoughts... the gap after the final word... the nothing that remains when everything has been unmade..."

His body began to change — not dramatically, but subtly.

His pale skin grew even paler, almost translucent, as faint veins of pure void traced beneath it.

His long black hair seemed to absorb what little light existed, becoming a deeper, more absolute black.

In general,... his presence itself started to feel... less. Not weaker, but less there — as if he was beginning to exist in the spaces between existence.

He didn’t fight it.

He let it happen, letting the essence of Nonexistence seep into him, merging with the fragments he had already gathered.

The man who had greeted him watched silently from a distance, his star-filled eyes observing with quiet approval.

Male’s voice grew quieter, almost a whisper now, but still connected.

"I am... the end that was always coming..."

The void around him answered.

From the depths of the darkness, the same colossal eye he had seen in the memories emerged — vast, unblinking, its surface a swirling abyss of pure Nonexistence.

It moved toward him with deliberate slowness, growing larger until it filled his entire field of vision.

Then it merged with him.

The moment it made contact, a raw, guttural scream tore from Male’s throat — not from pain exactly, but from the sheer, overwhelming sensation of something ancient and absolute forcing itself into his being.

His voice cracked and distorted as the eye seared into his eye sockets like molten void, replacing what had once been his eyes with two bottomless pits of absolute nothingness.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH—!!"

The scream echoed through the emptiness, raw and primal, as his body convulsed violently.

His long black hair whipped wildly, his pale skin rippling as the essence flooded through him, rewriting him from the inside out.

Every nerve, every fragment of his existence burned with the cold fire of Nonexistence.

In the next moment, he was encased in a cocoon.

It wasn’t made of silk or light — it was a shell of pure, compressed Nonexistence, dark and impenetrable, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat from the end of time.

The man, he only watched in silence. He tilted his head slightly, a rare look of genuine impression crossing his featureless face.

"Impressive," Nihil murmured, "I don’t know what truly makes you so special, but ascending so fast is indeed something."

He floated closer to the cocoon, studying it with quiet fascination as Male’s power continued to rise rapidly inside.

In mere moments he ascended into a 21st Dimensional being.

The cocoon pulsed once... twice... then burst apart.

For a fleeting moment, Male was gone.

The place where he’d stood was utterly vacant — no sign, no hint he’d ever been there at all.

Then, with a single blink of Nihil’s eyes, Male reappeared.

He stood exactly where he had been, as if he had always been there but had simply gone unnoticed.

His long black hair drifted lazily in the void, his pale skin now carrying faint, shifting veins of absolute darkness.

His eyes were no longer just eyes—they had become embodiments of both the end and the beginning.

He tilted his head slightly, his voice calm yet curious, laced with an eerie, layered echo.

"So... what is the coliseum?"