The Supreme Monarch of Continuum

It had been exactly one week since Klaus had been dragged, willingly or not, into Emily Donaldson's world. Seven days of deserts, talking, and what she called "bonding." Seven days of lessons on how to be human, which mostly consisted of him listening to her rant about pop culture, history he didn't care for, and modern slang that made his skin crawl. But he didn't mind. It was entertaining watching someone get so excited over such trivial things. 

Emily had insisted he needed to blend in. That meant clothes, many of them, and none of which included animal pelts, ripped cloaks, or armor made of dragon hide. She burned his last set herself. With glee. Klaus didn't complain. She also bought him a phone. Sleek black device that looked like a cursed artifact to him. Slim, fragile, glowing.

Now, Klaus sat in his new apartment, a minimalist one-bedroom on the fourth floor of a high-rise she had also leased in his name, staring at the rectangle of doom on his bed. The phone.

It lay there like a loaded weapon, face-up on the duvet, black screen gleaming dully under the recessed ceiling lights. It hadn't made a sound in over two hours, which somehow felt worse than if it had been vibrating nonstop. Silence could mean it was done trying. Or it could mean it was waiting. Calculating. And Klaus didn't know which terrified him more.

The apartment itself felt like a showroom, curated to appear lived-in, but sterile in a way that resisted human presence. The kind of place featured in magazines that promised transformation through subtraction. Bare walls. Floating shelves with no books. A single, leafless fiddle fig tree in the corner like an art installation. The couch, if you could call it that, was sleek and angular, upholstered in something too rough to be comfortable. The cushions were decorative, meaning you were not meant to lean on them.

Emily had picked everything. Even the scent. A discreet diffuser plugged into a wall socket gave off a constant whisper of something citrusy and antiseptic. Clean. Clinical. Klaus had no memory of agreeing to any of it, but there his name was, on the lease, on the mailbox downstairs, on the paperwork stacked neatly in the drawer of a nightstand he hadn't opened until today.

He was still in his clothes from yesterday, black jeans, threadbare at the knees, and a charcoal sweater stretched out at the cuffs. His shoes were by the door, not aligned, just kicked off in a tangle like the only evidence he actually lived here. No photos, no trinkets, not even a coffee mug with a chipped handle to suggest he'd brought anything from his old life.

And the phone, always the phone. It was more than a device now. It was a tether, a judge, a lifeline and a noose all at once. The last message he'd read had been short. Just a question. "Well?" That was it. No punctuation, no emojis, no elaboration. But it had sent a tremor through his chest so sharp he'd had to sit down. And then he hadn't moved since.

Every now and then he imagined reaching for it, swiping up the screen, composing a reply, something decisive, something final, but the weight of implication was too much. The message wasn't the problem. It was what came after. The next step. The consequences, spoken or not.

A breeze drifted through the half-open window, lifting the edge of the sheer curtain and bringing with it the faint sounds of a city that hadn't noticed he'd moved. Below, traffic pulsed and lights changed and people shouted across intersections. Life continued, fast and impersonal.

Inside, Klaus remained still. Watching. Waiting. The phone did nothing. And somehow that was the loudest part of all.

It was midnight. The digital clock blinked red against the dark, as Klaus hovered over the device like a war general confronting a ticking bomb. He poked the screen. It came to life, bathing his face in a dim, blue glow.

Klaus jerked back, startled by the bright light displayed by the screen. "It's bright." That was an understatement. 

The home screen stared back. He cautiously touched one of the squares, an icon shaped like a camera, and the screen shifted. He saw himself. Disheveled black hair, faint scarring, tired golden eyes. He nearly threw the device in panic. He was being watched. By himself.

Then he calmed. He recognized now, it was a mirror. A scrying glass. But small. Very small. He turned it around, confused. Where was the magic core? The glyph arrays? There were none. Just a glowing rectangle powered by some invisible daemon he couldn't understand.

He scrolled. Or rather, he swiped. Accidentally. The screen moved. Now he was on something called Instagram. A feed of photos. Mostly food, women, and cats. And more women. He tilted his head. Why were so many people obsessed with sharing pictures of themselves?

He clicked on a reel.

Instantly, music blared at maximum volume, crashing into his ears like an avalanche. Klaus flinched violently, jerking back as if struck by an invisible force. He slammed the phone down on the table, eyes wide in disbelief, clutching his ears until the ringing subsided. Slowly, cautiously, he uncovered them, squinting at the device as if it had just screamed ancient curses at him.

Gingerly, he picked it back up. This time, prepared. The audio still roared, but now he noticed a set of buttons on the side. Tentatively, he pressed one and the volume lowered. The sound began to fade. A victory.

To Klaus, the concept of a phone was alien. With each passing second, as his power as the Continuum Monarch continued to dissolve into nothingness, so too did the vast omniscience that once made knowledge effortless. What he had once invented, designed, and woven into the very physics of existence now returned to him as a mystery to be solved, step by frustrating step.

He swiped down.

Another video loaded.

A man danced in a supermarket aisle, slapping cheese on random strangers' faces while someone behind the camera yelled, "LET'S GOOOOO!" in a voice that could only be described as caffeinated agony. Klaus blinked. Once. Twice. Was this… warfare?

Next reel.

A girl, maybe seventeen, maybe thirty-seven, who could tell anymore, stared into the camera with dead eyes, mouthing the lyrics to a song that sounded like it had been processed through seventeen layers of auto-tune and a blender. Words flashed across the screen: POV: Your toxic ex comes back after seeing you glow up. She raised one eyebrow like it was supposed to mean something.

"What... is the meaning of any of this?" Klaus whispered aloud, his voice dry as an empty galaxy. He kept scrolling, thinking perhaps enlightenment waited just a few reels deeper.

It didn't.

Instead, he was greeted with a man pretending to be a dog for internet fame. Then a woman aggressively crying while applying contour to her nose. Then a twenty-two-year-old "entrepreneur" explaining how buying a used car and flipping sneakers made him richer than God.

"Ah," Klaus said softly. "Madness. This is what madness looks like."

Swipe.

"TOP 5 SIGNS YOU'RE AN ALPHA MALE—"

Swipe.

"Watch me eat nothing but protein powder for 30 days and nearly die—"

Swipe.

A monkey doing taxes.

Swipe.

A couple dramatically breaking up in front of the Eiffel Tower, only for the man to kneel and propose seconds later with an engagement ring made of pizza crust.

Klaus set the phone down and stared at the wall.

A long pause.

Then: "This… this is what has replaced knowledge?"

He rose from the bed slowly, like an ancient prophet who'd seen too much. His pupils trembled with the weight of civilization's collapse. He walked to the window and gazed out upon the human world, the cars, the joggers, the pizza delivery man dropping a box, the TikTok influencer filming a fake "random act of kindness."

He placed a hand on the glass.

"There was once a time I believed this species could evolve. Ascend," he said. "But now…" He clenched his fist. "The only logical path forward… is total, unrelenting, merciless annihilation."

A beat.

Then he blinked, shoulders dropping, and gave a casual shrug. "Eh."

Klaus shuffled back to the bed and picked up the phone like it had mildly insulted his mother. He swiped to the home screen, found the Instagram icon, and held it down.

Delete App?

Yes.

Are you sure?

Yes.

He exhaled through his nose.

"That was enough dopamine poisoning for one lifetime." He tossed the phone aside like it owed him money, leaned back into the pillows, and stared at the ceiling fan spinning slowly above.

From this day forward, he swore, he would never, ever, access social media again. He would live among humans, learn their ways, eat their food, pretend to laugh at their jokes. But never again would he scroll into that pit of digital madness.

It was far too late to save them from themselves.

But maybe, just maybe…

He could save himself.