The Five Evolution

『"A thousand years is nothing to something that has never known time."』

The scene shifted, and the Five found themselves in the same impossible void as before, only much farther away this time.

Below them, El had reacted against the newborn cosmos, destroying everything.

Hiro stared for several seconds before letting out a low whistle. "...Wow." He rubbed the back of his neck. "The world’s first crash out."

Raj scratched his cheek as he watched the eight radiant beings surrounding El. "I mean..." he gestured toward El. "He was just trying to help his buddies, right?"

Sophia scoffed. "Help?" She pointed toward El. Then slowly swept her hand across the broken expanse where creation itself had nearly been erased. "You call this helping?"

Raj shrugged helplessly. "It wasn’t intentional."

Amara sighed quietly. "Intentional or not..." she murmured. "He was standing in the way of creation."

Ethan’s attention never left the eight figures. "You called them the Divine Council?" His eyes narrowed. "They’re here to put a stop to El aren’t they?"

The Book turned to him. "Well, Him who created El wouldn’t necessarily destroy his first creation now would he?"

Hiro’s eyebrow climbed up. "And why is that?"

"To destroy El would be to unmake the first act of creation." The Book’s voice dropped. "...And to do that would be admitting that the first thing made was a mistake."

Amara watched as two members of the Divine Council stepped forward. One carried Primordial Darkness. The other, Primordial Water.

The two primordial companions of El were drawn together and made to gather around him until he was surrounded.

Then another member approached. Between their hands floated a perfect sphere of Light.

The sphere drifted forward and fused with the gathering mass around El, stitching together the Darkness and the Water until it took the shape of a cage.

One by one, the remaining five members of the Council stepped forward, and reached into their own chest. Each drew out something impossible that couldn’t be described.

Hiro leaned forward. "...What exactly is that?"

The Book’s pages fluttered softly. "The Substance of Eternity."

The five radiant figures each placed a fragment of that shimmering substance into the forming prison, and these five substances became the binding agent to the Cage.

"They’re imprisoning him," Ethan whispered.

Raj watched Darkness and Water forming the prison itself. "...And they’re making his own friends help." His voice dropped. "That’s... not cool."

"Raj." Amara didn’t even look at him. She simply shook her head once, and he fell silent.

She didn’t fully understand what she was witnessing. She doubted anyone here did. But she understood enough to know that it was necessary.

The Book continued narrating. "Sculpted from the essence of Him who created El. They were proxies to carry out his will. But they were not like El. They were limited in ways that El was not."

"They don’t look so limited to me," Sophia said.

"They were never meant to replace him," the Book replied. "Only contain him."

"So..." Hiro forced a weak laugh. "We’ve officially witnessed history’s first crash out... and history’s first jumping."

Sophia smacked him across the arm, and he rubbed the spot dramatically. "Good to know pain’s still a thing in here..."

BOOM!

Their attention returned to El as he hurled himself against the prison again and again, his black eyes blazing with a fury.

Each time he rammed into the cage, reality shook.

They watched as his fury became a pulse, a wave of destructive energy that radiated outward from his prison, passing through the bars of his cage.

El’s power was not diminished by his imprisonment. It was merely delayed. The pulse of his rage, his destructive will, traveled across the gulf between eternity and creation.

The Book’s voice became almost reverent. "A gulf that would be measured in something that would one day be called time, but was not yet anything more than the potential for change."

This was the terrible truth Amara witnessed. The cage held El. It did not hold his rage.

"We’re leaving," the Book announced.

The plot began to dissolve around them, the Council faded. But just before the scene vanished completely, Amara looked back at the cage one final time.

The cage was disappearing into the void, and El sat motionless in it.

Then...

One eye opened. Only slightly. Just enough for a sliver of endless, horrifying blackness to stare directly at her.

Amara’s breath caught.

That wasn’t possible. They were observing the recorded story of the past through the Book. There was no way he could see them. No way he could know they were there.

But as the void dissolved around her, she could not shake the feeling that something had looked back.

"Are you okay?"

Ethan’s voice came from beside her. He must have noticed her tense.

"Yeah, yeah. I just thought..." She exhaled. "I don’t know what I thought."

The Book’s pages began to flip and they were being yanked out of the scene.

Before they knew it, they were back in the white expanse of the Before, surrounded by countless flipping pages, and the five of them stumbled forward as solid ground formed beneath their feet.

Raj steadied himself. "...This is sick."

Beside him, Hiro pressed a hand against his stomach. "Well..." he swallowed. "...I think I’m gonna be sick sick."

Unfortunately, it was merely a pitstop for them. Amara along with the group was immediately pulled away like someone had pressed the fast-forward button on them.

Entire ages folded over one another as the Book hurried through centuries with casual indifference.

Before any of them truly understood what they had witnessed...

One thousand years passed.

This time, they found themselves suspended impossibly high above only what Amara could describe as everything.

Creation no longer looked newborn. Stars had settled into their places, and galaxies spun with purpose.

Countless other worlds revolved in elegant harmony around various laws that had taken a millennium to establish.

Everything had found its rightful place.

"Nothing fucking matters," Hiro whispered, running a hand through his hair. "We’re all so infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things."

Amara looked at him. "I think the whole point of this is that it all matters, Hiro." She looked back down at what was basically a fraction of the cosmos and it was amazing. "Everything matters."

Raj folded his arms. "I have no clue as to what I’m looking at, but it sure looks peaceful."

The Book floated beside them. "Remember the pulse?"

Raj blinked. "Yeah... why?"

Before the Book could answer, if it was even going to, a black wave swept through everything. It had taken a thousand years but it had finally arrived at the threshold of creation.

It wasn’t powerful enough to destroy anything. All it did was to weaken the boundaries between planes of existences. But that was enough to throw all of it into absolute Chaos.

The cracks multiplied as other realms began breaking open.

The Realm of Flame spilled infernos into worlds that had never known fire. The Realm of Frost answered in kind, freezing suns where they burned.

Dreams leaked into waking reality. Nightmares gained flesh.

Places where thoughts became matter suddenly found themselves connected to places where matter had never possessed thought.

As the pages flipped, the scenes and settings of the story changed around them.

"What in the hell..." Amara’s fingers clenched tight. Her gaze drifted to a corner for a moment before returning back to the Chaos that ensued around them.

Out of all those dimensions, one of them stood out to Amara because it looked painfully familiar.

The infinite black expanse...

Holy fishsticks...

"The Chaos Sea..." she whispered, watching Wraiths pour into the mortal plane.

Hiro’s eyes narrowed and Amara noticed.

"Hiro?" she called. "You good?"

Hiro nodded rapidly. "Yeah, yeah... totally."

But Amara could tell something was cooking up in that head of his. Something they all couldn’t see yet.

Meanwhile, as the story progressed, every law... every order... every carefully constructed boundary... All of it, began collapsing.

And the beings who ruled those realms noticed.

***

The scene shifted to an empire of celestial beings crossing into neighboring heavens without permission.

Flip.

Ancient sovereigns beneath forgotten mountains marched into territories they had never before been able to reach.

Flip.

Old rivalries reignited overnight.

Flip.

Entire pantheons mistook the chaos for invasion.

Wars erupted. Not between mortals, but between realms.

Creation had essentially, turned against itself.

"What the fuck!" Raj said, looking utterly overwhelmed.

Permanent scars ran across existence. Scars that every generation afterward would simply accept as normal.

Sophia snapped her fingers, trying to remember something, and everyone turned toward her.

"Shit..." she snapped again. "What about those eight guys?" She gestured wildly. "Y’know, the glowy ones that made the cage?"

Ethan raised an eyebrow. "The Divine Council?"

"Yeah, yeah!" She pointed at him. "The Divine whatever." She exhaled. "Where the fuck were they during all of this?"

The Book closed shut and they immediately found themselves in the Before.

"Glad you asked," it said. "Because that takes us to the next story."

Amara folded her hands. "I also have a question." She asked it before the Book could respond. "What does any of this have to do with the Apostles?"

The Book’s pages flipped dramatically. "Don’t you know anything about good story telling?"

"Seriously," Ethan asked. "What does this have to do with the Apostles?"

It opened and closed angrily. "Unlike some time-travelling doctors who tell you a good story starts in the middle, I believe I’m the expert when it comes to stories."

"Sheesh." Amara dropped her arms. "I’m sorry we hurt your feelings."

"You didn’t hurt my!—" the Book stopped itself and deflated. "Next stop, the Court."

Before anyone could protest, they were all pulled out of the Before in a sickening sensation, and Amara knew for a fact the Book enjoyed every moment of it.