Chapter 17: Chapter: 17 The Ones Who Thought They Knew Everything
What happens when every god, every author, every being who thinks they control the story… tries to summon the one who rewrites fate with a glance?
They call.
He hears.
And then?
He shows up—but not like they expect.
This chapter? It changes the rules.
Welcome to the table, Voidwalker.
Scene: The Assembly Beyond All Realms
A place with no walls, no ceiling, no concept of "outside." It isn't a room—it's a convergence. The table stretches forever, yet every being sits face to face.
The Presence watches in silence, ancient eyes dimmed with caution.
TOAA leans back, arms crossed, no longer smiling.
Featherine Augustus Aurora adjusts her headgear, her quill paused above a blank page. That never happens.
Zeno, both of them, swing their legs nervously.
Across from them—hundreds more: cosmic entities, reality makers, deathless minds. All present. All powerful. All confused.
A holo of Nero plays mid-air: silent, still, sitting on the edge of the Void with a chicken on his head.
Featherine breaks the silence. "He defeated me."
The room murmurs—gods shifting, authors raising brows, beings who haven't felt fear in eons suddenly feeling very, very mortal.
"He didn't fight," she continues. "He erased."
"He erased you?" the Presence finally asks.
"No," she says. "He erased the idea that I couldn't be erased."
Silence again.
TOAA speaks next. "We've all felt it. He's been touching the threads. Not rewriting stories. Not ending them. Just… unmaking what shouldn't exist."
"He's walking across our narratives," someone whispers. "Unaffected."
Zeno raises a tiny hand. "Can we summon him here?"
"No one can summon him," TOAA growls. "He doesn't obey rules. He isn't bound."
Still, they try.
Reality folds in on itself—every power source, every ritual, every narrative mechanism fires off at once. The summon attempts what no story has done before: call the Voidwalker.
Nothing happens.
Until—
He appears.
No fanfare. No light. No distortion.
Just... footsteps.
A figure now stands at the edge of their table.
Nero Angelo.
Expression unreadable. Pale silver eyes. And on his head—Clucknor, fluffing smugly, like he owns the multiverse.
TOAA blinks. "That… wasn't us."
Nero speaks, voice quiet, distant. "You called. So I came."
He does not pull out a chair.
He creates one.
From nothing.
A throne of silence, forged from the threads of stories no longer written—stories that never had a chance to begin.
It doesn't sit beside the others.
It rises above them.
High. Centered. Undeniable.
Not in arrogance. Not in defiance.
But because that's simply where he belongs.
And he sits.
Back straight. Eyes calm. The Void wraps around him like a second skin.
Clucknor, perched upon Nero's head, stares down at the gathering of gods like they're a flock of lost pigeons.
They don't question it.
They don't dare.
Because somewhere, deep in their unknowable cores, each of them realizes something terrifying:
They didn't summon Nero.
They invited judgment.
And it answered.