That which has never existed, need not be killed.
Luna's heart grew erratic. What did it mean, to wipe something from existence?
To remove all traces of it. All information and connections to reality that something bore.
It required the entire universe to correct itself, generating another timeline in which something simply never existed.
It required even conceptual correction. It was something that could only be achieved by something even above gods.
Like he who was above all.
Order.
The highest concept in the Universe, beside Chaos.
Perhaps only it could erase something from all existence. After all, even in Death, a person's information still lived within the minds of others.
The person had affected the universe, no matter how inconsequential those effects were. To erase something's entire existence was to erase all those effects.
To go back in Time and eliminate the Cause before all their Effects.
Luna almost shivered at her revelations. As if she had finally unraveled the universe's most monumental secret.
At the same time though... she noticed her surroundings.
Utter darkness, besides that eyeball that still floated before her.
"You know of the Archons. Their existence has been reintroduced to this Universe. You contain their existence."
It stared at her, and Luna's soul trembled. All her incarnations were suddenly recalled, her entire existence, physical and conceptual, grasped in the invisible hands of this being.
"You must be erased."
With those words, her soul began to disintegrate.
Luna found her conceptual selves disappear. The very concepts seemed to turn on her as she was not just expelled from them, but attacked.
The physical laws broke down her body. The magical laws flipped and obliterated her soul.
She turned to nothing, the information that comprised her very body returning to zero.
And then, she was gone. But...
"Solomon!"
Suddenly, the eyeball roared. Luna had reappeared, except she was now located in the outmost bounds of the very universe.
Where even light had yet to reach, Luna floated aimlessly. Could distance affect her connections to the concepts? It seemed like they had, because she couldn't find her conceptual selves.
"It's alright, little girl. You'll just need to stay away from the concepts for the time being."
Suddenly, Luna's head snapped around.
Beside her was... a king. A man standing with a royal disposition, his robes adorned with golden embroidery and jewels. He looked like a king from medieval times.
Yet, his entire wardrobe had been eroded through time. The colors of his robes fading, the gold lackluster and cracked, and his hair a thick but pure white.
The wrinkles of his face matched well with his sharp beard, but he couldn't hide his age. Luna felt the aura of the ancients on this man, like a relic from another long forgotten era.
"Solomon..."
Luna knew. The one who had always been watching, guiding Dream's development across his younger years.
Had he predicted even this?
Solomon, that king, looked at her and smiled.
"I only know up to here, if that's what you're asking. Not even I can know what comes after nothing. I'd say it's quite beyond me, quite my opposite. But I hold hope."
"Hope? How can you?"
There was another voice, and Luna looked over. It was Alice, who looked almost unable to contain herself.
"Dream died before I did... That wasn't supposed to happen. I was supposed to lead him through Death."
"The very fact that you remember him means that he hasn't died."
Solomon spoke simply, though Alice didn't seem to understand.
He looked at her. "Death is nonexistence. He gave himself to it. Yet you still remember him. It means he's already succeeded in realizing Nothing, yet maintaining his existence. He's made it past the paradox of Death."
"How?"
"Through all of you."
Solomon scratched his beard.
"If he wishes to reclaim his existence, he must use the information stored within the universe pertaining to himself. All the things he's ever done, all his anchors to reality, everything down to his footsteps on a beach. That by itself shouldn't be too difficult, should that girl do her job... But he's trying to reach further."
"You mean neutrality?" Luna guessed, remembering what was beyond Order and Chaos.
"Khroia, yes." Solomon confirmed. "You could say that he needed to start over in order to reach it. He couldn't reach it with his anchors to Order and Chaos. And well, everything in this universe has anchored him to either Order or Chaos. He had to escape it."
"So when will he come back?" Alice spoke with more hope, yet obvious worry.
Solomon only sighed. "Who knows? Who knows how long it might take to reverse engineer his existence. How long it will take to trace his entire life again, to bend Time, restructure his existence... I can't tell you. I can only say that you should look out for the visions."
"Visions?"
"Memories that may come back to you randomly, an alteration of your past." He pointed to his head. "Restructuring existence might mean restructuring you. It's restructuring everything. But when you see it, at least you'll know it's happening. You'll know that he's coming back."
"..."
Luna and Alice were silent. Suddenly, Solomon's eyes widened again.
"Oh! One more thing. You guys need to fight for Order and Chaos. And let Sophia in. She'll rely on you. The more you comprehend your concepts, the faster she can work. The faster the universe is replicated. The faster Time is realized."
"As for that eyeball... well, don't worry about him for now. Where we've gone, he can't reach you."
"And where are we, exactly?"
Luna asked curiously. She had wondered why the eyeball, a supposedly all powerful existence, didn't immediately go after her when it failed to kill her.
Solomon gave Luna a glance.
"This... is what you might call Limbo. A place that exists beyond the Totality. Another universe entirely. And... the Graveyard."
With a solemn frown, Solomon clapped his hands.
Then, the surrounding darkness changed. Like curtains being drawn away from a stage, the light was revealed. This universe was exposed.
Luna's eyes widened, her body trembling in awe.
7 bodies of monumental size drifted around them.
The first and most obvious, an utterly massive body of both nothing yet indescribably chaos. A body of abyssal depth and nuclear ruin that sought to bring oblivion to all.
The second, a humanoid with purple skin, a third eye, and the most brilliant wings of which there seemed to be infinite pairs. He stood with his head hung and staff held beside his body. Although he looked defeated, he emitted an aura of absolution. Nobody could defy even his very presence. The only thing that dimmed this absolute light was the ruined robes that covered his body.
The third, a man standing before a seeming plane of existence, as if he were using an entire dimensional plane as an anvil. In his chest was a quasar, a supermassive black hole that had swallowed nothing less than an entire galaxy. It radiated blinding light, some of which had streamed beyond his body and into his arm where it gathered in his hand. It looked like a forgemaster swinging a hammer to shape his craft, yet this one had died in the middle of his unknown creation.
The fourth, a cyclops with six arms, held in which were six blades that had shattered yet were being held together by an unknown force. Each blade seemed to roar with a different form of annihilation, and this cyclops were swinging all of them to his front, as if his mortal enemy were right before him. A picture of absolute violence and ruin, captured and frozen in eternal time.
The fifth, a shrouded figure with no sure definition or face. It was entirely wreathed in darkness, simply standing there, making no apparent moves. Yet, when Luna gazed at it long enough, she felt herself slipping into nothing, almost like a deep sleep that she would never wake from. It reminded her of Death.
The sixth. Possibly the most beautiful woman, but to these beings, what was gender? Still, this feminine being radiated the opposite aura of that wreathed figure. Just gazing upon her rejuvenated the soul. And before her, in her hands of indescribable size, was an entire galaxy. She gazed upon it lovingly, yet the sorrow mixed within her endlessly vital gaze was unmistakable. Like a mother looking at her child, joyful to have been there for her child, yet endlessly woeful for not being able to stay with it forever.
And then, the seventh. An infinite being, that when one gazed upon it, they would never see the same person twice. From an old lady to a teenage boy, of all species and figures. Always changing, always taking on new forms. Just looking at it, one might accidentally see the entire lifetime of a person, or the entire lifetimes of every denizen across the cosmos. Time everlasting, and dictating the movement of every thing in the universe.
7 beings of immeasurable power, of immeasurable size and influence. Their bodies spanned the width of thousands of galaxies, looking so massive from so far away. Luna felt like she could reach out and touch them.
And yet, even such beings of infinite power were laying frozen in time, deathly still, put to rest in this empty universe.
"The Seven Archons."
Solomon spoke, filled with reverence yet regretful of the sight.
"Their final place of rest after their overwhelming defeat."
"What could defeat them?"
Alice spoke in horror. She couldn't comprehend beings, who were basically manifest concepts that maintained the universe, falling to someone's hands.
But to her question, Solomon shook his head.
"I don't know who defeated them. I know it couldn't be the System of our universe, nor any of those gods of Order or Chaos. It's impossible for them to die, unless by someone beyond Order and Chaos. But, as far as I'm aware, such a person does not exist. The only one that may come into existence is Dream..."
He drifted off. Either way, the death of the Archons was a mystery to all of them.
Then, Solomon suddenly shrugged.
"Well, their deaths don't matter now. What matters is your own power. Luna, Alice, and... Iris, there you are."
Suddenly, another person popped into existence. It was Iris, and she formed before them in her massive abyssal fox form, a twisted image of doom she had become to the people of the universe.
"What's going on?!"
She screamed, yet she couldn't exercise her power. She couldn't help it as she shrunk, forming back into her womanly figure.
Her brilliant red eyes flickered between Luna and Solomon. Then, she grit her teeth.
"Shit. What do you want, Solomon? Did Dream finally do it?"
"He did."
"I knew it. That eyeball didn't come for nothing."
"What? How could you know what happened?"
Luna narrowed her eyes at her sister. She above all knew that Iris had been completely absent, never making contact with Dream after they basically forged his soul and helped him survive the concepts. She had been doing nothing but eating and fighting, spreading chaos throughout the universe, devouring trillions of innocent lives.
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She was practically evil incarnate, the very embodiment of the chaos she comprehended. There was no way she could know what was going on.
But Iris just scoffed, as if Luna were the stupid one.
"You think I can't make my guesses? It's not that damned difficult to see what he was doing. The only way to know what's beyond death is to die, so I knew he was going to kill himself at some point. And when that time came, that eyeball would finally emerge. He wanted what Dream was going to get, and there was no use for us then. So now we're here."
"So you knew we were going to die?"
"Of course!"
Iris answered with a snicker that filled Luna with rage.
"Then what the hell were you doing?! I've been leading my angelic armies for nearly two centuries, trying to comprehend Life and Creation! I was trying to make sure Dream wouldn't kill himself when the time came. What were you doing during all that time?! What were all those trillions of deaths for?!"
"I was doing whatever the fuck I wanted! As if we could fight against the very god of Order. I doubt even two thousand years would prepare us any more for what happened just now."
Iris huffed, as if she finally decided that Luna was far below her.
"You felt it too, right? How easily he obliterated us, destroyed our souls, wiped our minds and memories. It was so effortless. Every concept in the universe seemed to bow to him and kill us for him. We were literally expelled from the universe, the very concepts rejecting our existence. He conducted this with a mere thought. That, right there, is a true god. So no, I wasn't stupid enough to attempt to kill him. I just focused on myself."
"You..."
Luna shivered, looking like she was about to tear Iris' throat out. But she couldn't find the words to refute her.
Perhaps deep down in Luna's mind, she knew all this too. They were too young, too weak, to even think of fighting such a being.
When that eyeball seemed to degrade her, stating that she knew nothing about what was happening, although she agreed with him, she didn't even know what she didn't know.
From Solomon, to Dream's death, to Sophia's apparent entry into Time. All of it was far beyond her. Compared to those things, her attempt at comprehending Life and Creation was but a cute pastime. And she didn't even know it.
Suddenly, a hand was placed on her shoulder. Her rage calmed, and Solomon spoke from behind her.
"Dream was weak. He weakened himself. But he still inserted himself into the four highest concepts under Order and Chaos. Then, that girl Sophia bent my own System in order to enter the Legacy space. I handed her Nill, and she used his god core to enter Time. And Dream, through the four concepts he subjected himself to, learned far more than just the comprehensions available to him. So, you're wondering when they surpassed you, and when you were left so far behind that you could only stand there and be killed by the beings now involved in this game."
Luna only nodded.
She had been guarding Dream. Alice had also spent every free hour by his side, only leaving when there was someone that needed to die.
Both of them had done this since Dream threw his comprehensions away. He had become powerless, unable to cast even a simple spell. His entire existence was constantly degrading under those concepts.
And luna let him, but only because she thought her comprehensions into life were high enough to save him should anything happen. But after he let himself die, and her power did nothing...
When that eyeball appeared, killing her with but a thought. He had declared her death, and under that power, no amount of hope could save her. She had died, only surviving because Solomon could bring them to an entire other universe.
She had thought herself so high and mighty. After all, even the gods of other concepts bowed before her. She had led angelic armies numbering in the billions for nearly two centuries. She had orchestrated galactic conquest. All in order to protect a single person.
She thought she was doing good. But what was that in front of Time? What was that when Dream was pursuing the thing beyond Death?
He had made it past the paradox of Death. Truly, she had no idea what that meant when the eyeball spoke it to her. She didn't truly understand what it meant to dive into nonexistence and retain one's existence.
When had they surpassed her?
Or, perhaps she saw it wrong. Had she ever been above Dream? Or was his pursuit of power just so different and beyond her comprehension that she didn't realize when she was left behind?
It sure didn't seem like a corpse of a man glued to a chair was more powerful than her. And in a sense, he wasn't.
But at a certain point, power became... incomprehensible. It wasn't just being unable to see the top of a mountain. It was not knowing that beyond your mountain, beyond the sky above you, beyond the galaxy and universe and dimensions you resided in, there was another universe filled with dead Archons and a being capable of killing them.
These revelations... they were beyond sobering. They were catastrophic.
Luna felt like she was realizing another universe. How could she be so narrow sighted? Scales of power she could never even imagine were now presented in front of her.
The very embodiment of Life, Creation, and Order. Those three beings floated before her... But they weren't dead.
What was Death to Life? They were opposites. One couldn't become the other. This meant that Life couldn't die and couldn't cease to exist.
What was Creation to Annihilation? Creation couldn't suddenly start annihilating. Then it wouldn't be Creation. And annihilation couldn't suddenly start bringing things into existence.
And Order could not be killed, because it was on par with Chaos. And Chaos was above even Death.
So these Archons... they weren't dead, yet they weren't alive.
And this universe they were in wasn't a true universe.
At least, not yet it wasn't.
This universe... these Archons...
They were a seed. They were the concepts themselves taken form.
In their home universe, the concepts had strewn themselves throughout all existence, spawning a true universe. Here, they didn't do that.
But they were still concepts. They could be comprehended, though perhaps in a different way than normal.
Luna suddenly remembered Dream, and how his comprehension led to a direct takeover of the concepts. This was due to his connection to the Archons.
In that case, would it be the same here? Would comprehending these concepts...
No, it wasn't comprehending concepts.
Luna faced Solomon.
"What did you bring us here for?"
Suddenly, he smiled, as if she finally asked the right question.
"I think you already know what your purpose here is. And because of that, it's about time I took my leave."
With those words, Solomon turned around. Then, he approached Time, that infinite being of everything.
That infinite being, everchanging in its forms, suddenly ceased to change. Instead, it stopped on one particular figure.
A girl with brown hair and wearing a sundress. Perfectly sculpted, yet humbly featured. She gazed at Solomon, a smile blooming on her face.
He bowed.
"Sophia."
"Hi, Solomon. I see you've finally moved them."
Sophia gazed over his shoulder, her eyes piercing through Luna, Iris, and Alice.
"...Sophia?"
Luna felt it hard to breathe. What used to be Dream's skill had now become something akin to Time itself. No doubt she still had a long way to go, but as Luna now understood, her power was far below Sophia's. Just because Sophia might not be able to destroy like she did, didn't mean she was lesser.
It was a different kind of power.
Luna reached out. She suddenly had a bad feeling.
"Solomon! Where are you going?"
"Going? Why, I'm not going anywhere."
He didn't even look back, keeping his focus on Sophia.
"I'm becoming something else. Through giving myself to Sophia, she'll become far greater than now. She'll attain the one piece she's been missing this entire time."
"You're... giving yourself?"
Luna couldn't seem to understand.
"But why? You've come so far..."
"It's hard to think that someone can so easily sacrifice themself, but for myself, the choice is a given. You could say that this moment is what I've lived my endless existence for, my being's purpose all falling upon this single moment."
He seemed to age thousands of years with each word.
"I... am the god of Wisdom. I hold the ability to see through Time by conjuring lesser dimensional timelines within myself. I can predict a person's life, the lives of everyone they affect, and the pasts of their lineages. I was spawned from Sophia herself, yet also born as an entity within the original universe. I discovered, not by chance, the Graveyard of the Archons. I constructed a System, whose sole function was to support a connection between the original universe and the Graveyard. An unintended consequence of this connection was the existence of the Wanderers, a people who live beyond the confines of the true System. And the Seekers, the spawns of the other Archons.
"I am the first Seeker, but not destined to be the last.
"And now, I relieve myself of my burden. The Archons... have found their successors. I have brought them here. Now, I must give myself, and take my last step forward. I must return from whom I spawned. And I'm only glad that I've become worthy of she who embodies Infinity."
Solomon reached out his hand. Luna watched as Sophia took it with a smile.
Then, his body flickered. He both aged and returned to his youth.
It was Sophia who turned into a younger version of him, and Solomon who aged until he withered into a skeleton. Then, his body turned to dust, becoming nothing.
Luna's eyes were glued to Sophia.
Her form became that of a baby, who grew into a toddler, and then a teenager. She watched as Solomon grew. Every instant in his life was played out, from beginning to end.
Then, Sophia became Solomon, as if they were never two different people. Only when Solomon reached his present form did he freeze, turning back into Sophia.
She stood before them, her eyes deeper than before. Filled with the profundity of countless eons of thinking.
When she smiled though, all that was washed away. She waved at Luna, Iris and Alice, giggling at their enraptured faces.
"Don't worry. You could say that this is his form of insurance. A seed of gratitude he planted within us to guarantee his future. He's slyer than he makes himself out to be. Anyway, you guys should get to it. The faster you work, the faster you can go back. When you've finished, you'll be granted entry back into the main universe. Only then can we work on getting Dream back."
Her words faded, and at some point, her figure went back to its ever-changing form.
The three girls stood there for a few moments, and then, they turned.
Luna faced that motherly figure cradling a galaxy in her hands.
Alice faced the shrouded figure of abyssal nothingness.
Iris faced the cyclops with six arms and six broken blades.
The Archons... the successors...
Could they truly take their place?