The Grand Scheme

PROLOGUE

There he drifted through the void of space.
Awakened.
Emboldened.
Empowered.

Deified.

What was once a young man with few things to go for is now on the pinnacle of creation.
His eyes shone like the sun.
His aura was resplendent.

But below him was the exact opposite.

A darkness beyond comprehension.
A void of pure nothingness.
Invisible except for the threatening flaming aura it gained as it siphoned a moon.

In the center of this void was another man, his skin corrupted by darkness and his body surrounded by rapidly rotating mystical power.

"This is it Master! This is the power of the Void!" that man yelled as he made the power rotate around him even more rapidly.
"What you have rejected will be your end."

The other man hovered stoically as another celestial body was absorbed by the darkness.

"Everything you wanted is worthless! The only thing that matters in this world, and in all the others, is power!" the man in the void added.
"Behold! I am more powerful than all of creation, Master Jenos! But you, you peaceful coward, you are nothing!"

"You are a mistake." Jenos murmured as he felt the Void's power grow.
"I never should have taken you under my teachings, Gnosos. To think the young boy I raised up would turn out to be such a disaster."

"The Void may be a disaster, but it is also power!" Gnosos crossed his arms, "Power you will never reach!"

"My teachings were never about power." Jenos responded, "They were about reaching everlasting harmony with all of creation. You have corrupted the signs of the heavens for your own selfish gain-"

Jenos stopped when he felt the firmament of heaven shake.

Even though he was millions of lightyears away from his homeworld, he held a deep worry for the fate of that place.
Everything he had left to ascend beyond the stars was still on his mind.
The people that he had talked to.
The parents he had loved.
The disciples he had left behind.

"This is it! Gravity at its most perfect rotation!" Gnosos screamed in malevolent joy as the black hole around him started to grow rapidly in size.

"What the!?" Jenos gasped as he felt a surge of raw power blast through his body.
"I-I can't move!"

"Behold the power of the Void!" Gnosos pointed at his former master, the gravitational rotation swirling around him even more noticeably than before.

Jenos' glowing eyes widened behind his mask as he noticed he was now in the Void's accretion disk.

"All of creation will be part of the Void!" his adversary yelled above the chaos of stars and planets being absorbed.
"And nothing can stop it!"

Jenos called upon his cosmic power and started to try his hardest to fly away from the pull, but it was all in vain.
"Gnosos! Stop this at once!" he called out to his fallen student.

Gnosos did not even bother to pay respond to him and chuckled to himself.
"So this is the power of the perfect gravitational rotation…" he felt his own power surge through his body.
"Such power…" he looked up from the singularity of the Void and saw the fabric of Space-Time tear like an old curtain.

Jenos was now in the event horizon and he saw the same things.
His divine vision shifted dynamically from various points in time and space, all of them being absorbed by this phenomenon.
"What power…" he managed to gasp out as he felt his being shift between reality.

"I will have dominion over everything because everything will be part of the Void!"

Jenos had enough.
He knew the time had come to make a decision.
Even though the end of the Universe was at hand, it was still a difficult choice to make.
He had raised Gnosos as his own son, and even though he had detached himself from earthly connections, he still held a deep care for his favored disciple.

"Gnosos… Why?"

At that question Gnosos' arrogance suddenly stopped in its tracks. He was befuddled and dazed by such a question. However, this was only for a moment as that shock was replaced by rage.
"You neglected my potential! You cursed me for seeking what was good for me!"

"Life is about sacrifice… It is better for one to not have what was good for them if others can."

"The others admire power! They adore he who has strength! They find joy in him as well!" Gnosos retorted.
"That is the one lesson you will never teach nor learn Master!"

"Please, Gnosos. I appeal to you as not your master… but as a father…"

"You are no father of mine."

Jenos, a god, could not hold back the pain that came to strike him after those words.
"Then I have no choice…"

The Ascended suddenly stopped in his tracks as he started to glow.

Gnosos gasped.
"What!?"

"Gnosos, I must stop you!" Jenos growled as he charged his divine powers.
"Though the power of the Void is mighty, it will not prevent me from saving the cosmos!"

"You are a fool to challenge the Void!" Gnosos roared.
"Especially when I hold the perfect gravitational rotation!" he stretched out his arm and fired a spiraling beam of null energy.

Jenos could not prevent being struck by it and was sent flying back; however, this was not the end of his troubles.
"AH!" Jenos groaned as he felt his body and spirit swirl. He felt a violent tugging dragging him, and drag him it did.
Jenos' being shifted through time and space more rapidly than when he was in the event horizon.

Gnosos could see his master struggle to comprehend his fate.
"As I speak, Jenos, your body and soul are being dragged through all facets of reality in a looping cycle. If you were a mortal, you would have died in the first few shifts, but as a god, well… You are endlessly trapped until the Void consumes all of creation. This is the power you neglected!"

Jenos mustered up his divine powers but could not stop shifting.

"As you have abandoned the world, you also abandon a concrete place in time and space." Gnosos gloated in his victory.

Jenos sighed.
The hour had come.

"Did you say… Time and Space?" he called out.
"Well… There is one master of both. A master forged from humility and peace. A master who was blessed ages ago. A master who understood that harmony between his world and all of creation was above all things. A master, who by that understanding, came to hold powers even immortals would struggle to comprehend."

Gnosos stopped and stared at his master through the Void's power.

Jenos stopped shifting for a moment, his arms cupped behind his waist and his body hunched over, "Powers that extend Through Time and Space!"

Gnosos' dark red eyes shot open in shock.

"Gnosos, there was still so much for you to learn! But I will show it to you now! BEHOLD!" Jenos yelled at the top of his lungs as a blue aura of spiraling cosmic energy came out from him.
"THE LIGHT!"

Gnosos saw his master shine in a golden aura before a beam of pure power came towards him.
"Impossible!" he cried out as the beam tore through the shifts.

The fallen disciple cried out and fled into the Void, but the beam followed even thence.

Even in the singularity, where nothing, not even the light of creation could escape, the beam traveled. Nothing Gnosos was doing could stop its incoming impact.
Not switching between spaces.
Not switching between times.
Not even the safety of the Void that he had put all his faith into could save him.

"Master… Please!"

Jenos maintained silence as he watched his beam get nearer and nearer.

"MASTER!"

"Life… is about sacrifice…."

"MASTERRRR! AUUGHHHHHHHHH!" Gnosos screamed as the beam started to consume him.

0000000000

Jenos returned to his time and space and looked to where Gnosos and the void once were. However, he soon fell to his knees and held his heart.

"Never again will this happen…"