(Soron’s POV, Edge of the Blackhole)
Soron had flown billions of miles to reach the heart of a galaxy, moving undetected until at last he found the supermassive black hole that lay at its core.
The structure itself hung between veils of collapsing stars and shredded worlds, as though the laws of existence itself were being rewritten by its gravity.
And even for a God of his stature, the journey to reach it had been arduous, for slipping past the sight of rival gods, rival clans, and the endless patrols of the Universal Government required more than stealth— it required patience, layers upon layers of concealment techniques, and the discipline to drift through the void like a phantom for days at a time, all so that none could guess what he intended to do here.
Now, standing at the threshold of the abyss, he felt the pull of it in every strand of his being, as the monstrous gravity tugged at his flesh, his bones, his circuits, and even his thoughts, reminding him that this was no mere celestial body but the mouth of a higher law, a place where existence folded back upon itself.
To mortal eyes, a black hole was nothing more than an emptiness that consumed light, yet to Soron, whose vision stretched beyond the veil of dimensions, it was a storm of infinite color hidden behind the absence, a spiraling cathedral of warped time and fractured space where stars elongated into threads and then vanished, and where moments stretched into eternities, and eternities collapsed into moments.
He knew why no mortal body could pass through such a place, for the event horizon was not merely a boundary of gravity but of perception; as one drew closer, time itself slowed to a crawl, every heartbeat expanding into centuries, every blink becoming an endless dream, until the body forgot itself and unraveled particle by particle, as though reality no longer acknowledged its right to exist.
But Soron was not bound by those chains, for he was of the fourth dimension, and while the black hole could try to tear at him, while it could try to claw and gnash at his every fiber, he had the ability to perceive his being not as a flat sequence of moments but as a layered continuity, a rope woven of infinite strands rather than a single fragile thread, which protected him from unraveling apart.
That was the difference, between a God and a Mortal, and between beings that existed above time and being constrained by it.
*Grab*
*Tighten*
Steadying his breath, Soron pulled out the slab of Origin Metal from his storage ring and gripped at it as hard as he could to prevent it from being sucked into the black hole.
This was the only place in the universe where the origin metal could be refined for the origin metal was not a simple ore but the condensation of primeval law, the remnant of creation itself, which made it a material so pure and so absolute that no forge, no flame, no crucible of the mortal or divine grade could ever hope to shape it.
Only here, within the unrelenting turbulence of collapsed dimensions, could each origin particle be stripped of its bindings, broken down and re-woven under the pressure of eternity, making it suitable for future refinement into a weapon.
*Sigh*
Letting out a deep sigh, Soron closed his eyes for a moment as he recalled the lessons that his father passed on to him regarding the Origin Metal.
Before him, the only figure to ever enter a black hole and successfully refine the Origin Metal had been his father, and the man had described the process as one of the most challenging trials of his life.
’Oh father, please lend my broken body the strength to finish this refinement.
Please let me come out of this refinement with the strength of a God intact, so that I may use it to exact my revenge.’
Soron prayed before diving in, as he steeled his resolve and hardened his gaze.
*FWOOOOOM*
The world around him inverted instantly, as though he had plunged into water and fire at once, his body pulled apart in every direction even as his mind perceived a pressure intense enough to fold him into a singular point.
*Gasp*
Each breath became a thousand, each thought echoed endlessly, as he felt himself slipping between dimensions, his hands both gripping the slab and not gripping it, his eyes both open and closed, his form both dissolving and enduring, as it was here, inside the maw of the blackhole, that he finally began with the refinement process.
*SPREAD*
*Crackle*
Spreading his aura carefully around the slab, Soron prevented it from being pulled apart from all sides, as instead he only allowed the pressure to act at a single point, as he used it to isolate a single 0.001 gram of chunk away from the rest of the lattice, before instantly coating it with his own will and storing it as a tiny bead sized ball.
*THRUMMM*
*BZZZTT*
The slab resisted violently, vibrating as though it despised his intrusion, every particle thrumming with raw creation, but slowly the blackhole’s crushing forces aided him, stripping at its surface, peeling back its density layer by layer, allowing him to guide the process instead of being swallowed by it.
Seconds elongated into eternities, while eternities collapsed into seconds, the very flow of time breaking apart around him, yet he remained seated in stillness, his mind locked on the task, his aura knitting itself against collapse with every cycle.
He could already feel how impossible this was for any who possessed only a mortal frame, for even his body—tempered through countless lifetimes of war and already reforged by higher law—shuddered and cracked under the strain, blood leaking from invisible fractures that stitched and unstitched themselves as fast as they appeared.
The Origin Metal, though barely scratched, had begun to yield, its first particles shifting under his command, whispering of the promise of power to come.
And in that moment Soron understood the scale of the path before him.
At this pace, to refine the slab fully would take him 400 days of unbroken endurance, with no pause for rest, no lapse of focus, as he fought against the singularity and against his own decaying flesh.
Slightly more than a year locked in the jaws of eternity, where one faltering breath could scatter him into dust.
Perhaps he would succeed.
Perhaps he would die.
But either way, there was no turning back now.