The Endless Abyss is a world birthed in the lower dimensions, shaped by hands that defied convention.

It was Cillian's creation and unlike the tidy divine domains of his peers, constructed with balance, order, and harmony, the Abyss bore scars of intentional madness. Its rules bent and fractured, never staying still, as if chaos itself had been given dominion.

Ordinary laws here did not remain ordinary for long. Gravity, time, fire, light, each one was dragged beneath the weight of distorted higher principles, forced to reshape themselves again and again.

Gravity was the simplest example, as even it betrayed reason.

In some planes of the Abyss, it behaved like the worlds of mortals, steady and predictable. But elsewhere it twisted into extremes. Whole continents drifted in near weightlessness, their demons clawing desperately to anchor themselves before they floated into eternal darkness. And in other places, gravity pressed down with such brutal force that even mighty abyssal beasts were crushed into pools of black ichor, if they had not adapted accordingly.

The Abyss did not stop at gravity. It rewrote the way energy itself worked, cycling it through alien equations. It twisted landscapes into shapes no sane god would have drawn. Forests grew upside down. Rivers boiled into clouds that bled fire, and seas froze solid yet still carried storms within their ice.

Above all, it possessed one trait that no ordered domain could boast. It had no limit,

In every test Cillian had run, no matter how much was poured into it, resources, laws, entire populations, the Abyss never resisted. Other divine worlds eventually reached capacity, groaning beneath the weight of what their masters demanded. The Abyss simply widened its maw and swallowed more.

For a long time, this boundlessness had been a source of pride. Proof that his path, as heretical as it might be to others,had far more potential in comparison.

But now it began to worry him.

Because within his Abyss lay planes that followed a stranger, far more dangerous principle: idealism.

Not the weak philosophical musings of mortal thinkers, where thought and existence were linked in some fragile dance. In these planes, the distinction between matter and thought blurred to the point of vanishing. He could not tell whether substance persisted there at all, or whether it had been devoured by will itself.

If matter no longer held sway, then what of the demons who entered? Did they remain as flesh? Did they shift into pure will, or into some new form of existence that Cillian had no name for?

He had tried to watch, to peer into those planes from afar. Each time, his sight was repelled. What he glimpsed were visions so strange, that even he, the creator of the Abyss, could not tell if they were truth or illusion.

The thought gnawed at him: had he built a flaw into his world? Or was it something worse, something deliberate?

⸻———x——————

The traders had brought him the resource continents without question. A hundred of them, vast as worlds in themselves, each one crammed with raw elements. To the traders, these were treasures beyond measure. To the Abyss, they were a meal.

Cillian guided them inward. The moment they crossed the boundary, the Abyss lunged.

The sight would have broken weaker gods.

Massive continents, glowing with stored essence, tumbled like pebbles into the black-red vortex. The Abyss seized them in silence, its hunger so vast it needed no sound. In moments, what should have shattered a divine realm instead vanished without trace.

The female trader who had delivered them froze where she stood. Her eyes widened, lips parting, but no words came. She had seen countless worlds trade hands, countless gods shape their realms, but never a divine world that swallowed resources like children's candy.

Cillian spared her no explanation. He turned, and retreated to a private rest area. His focus was elsewhere, deep within the Abyss, where the new resources were being devoured and distributed.

Some became new planes, fresh landscapes pulled into existence. He could feel them quickening with chaotic life, their soils and skies eager to birth creatures of their own. Others were immediately shattered, ground into fragments by the Abyss's unstable rules and cast as fuel across older planes. Their destruction was not waste, it was sustenance.

A chosen portion he sent to the Corruption Pool, the war engine at the Abyss's heart.

Already, its hunger stirred, feeding on the new power. Soon the Incubation Pool would awaken, spitting forth tides of minor demons, countless in number, ready to infest every corner of his creation.

But then came the part that unsettled him.

Some of the resource continents vanished into the idealistic planes.

Normally, the absorption of a continent, however vast, caused the Abyss to swell, if only slightly. He could measure its growth and chart its expansion. But those that slipped into the idealistic planes gave nothing back. No growth, nor feedback, it wasn't the only thing that felt truly wasteful.

His jaw tightened. Again.

This was not the first time. Each time he poured resources into the Abyss, some portion was lost this way. At first, he ignored it. What was a handful of fragments compared to the Abyss's appetite? But the losses had grown.

Now, seven or eight full continents had disappeared without return. The price was too great to overlook.

He stood in silence for a long moment, then exhaled slowly.

"It seems I have no choice. I must see them for myself."

Since leaving the Academy, he had spent his time exploring secret worlds, gathering power and expanding the Abyss's reach. He had neglected these strange planes. But now their theft of his resources left him no option.

With a thought, his consciousness plunged into the Abyss.

He moved past storms of raw chaos, through rivers of dissolving rules, into the deepest regions where the idealistic planes awaited. His essence stretched thin, sharpened, until at last he crossed the boundary into one of them.

At once, he was engulfed in mist.

It was not white, nor grey, nor any color the mortal mind could name. It was the color of shadow itself, not the absence of light,something without form and It stretched forever, without a horizon.

The mist pressed in on him. Not heavy, nor suffocating but It was everywhere, yet nowhere he could touch and he felt no ground beneath his feet, no air against his skin.

Yet the plane was not empty.

It was alive.

He could feel it shifting around him, expanding and contracting as though it breathed.

The mist itself seemed aware, reshaping silently, beyond his command.

For the first time in many years, unease stirred in Cillian's chest. He stood amidst the living shadow, divine fire burning faintly around him, and felt no certainty.

This was his creation, his Abyss. And yet, as the mist curled and whispered, he found himself asking a question he had never dared before:

Had he built this world… or had it built itself through him?

Cillian frowned.

No matter where he looked the entire world was drowned in a thick, shadow-colored fog.

"…"

To be precise, the mist was the world.

"This mist isn't just filling the plane," Cillian muttered to himself. "The mist is the plane. Aside from it, there's nothing else here."

An entire world made purely of shadowed fog. A world with no land, seas, nor sky, just the mist.

"But… how does this mist consume resources?"

The fog was dense, and its light transmittance was extremely poor. Cillian tried summoning a form of light often seen in the abyss, curious to test it. Yet for some reason, its reach was limited. The glow barely pushed a few dozen meters into the haze before it collapsed into dimness. Compared to other planes of the abyss, it was pitiful. Forget illuminating the world, even piercing through a fragment was nearly impossible.

Though he had realized that the mist itself was the world, there were still many mysteries hidden here. After all, this was his first time studying a plane that was purely idealistic in nature. Much of it would have to be uncovered through trial and experiment.

"Alright," he said softly. "Let's first test whether there are creatures hidden within this fog."

Cillian closed his eyes, then opened them again. His black pupils shifted, warping into a spiraling black-and-red vortex. Through them, the abyss became clear in ways beyond mortal sight. Every detail of this strange plane revealed itself.

And then he froze.

"Alive? But…"

He suddenly reached into the void and pulled. Something twisted emerged from the mist, caught in his grip.

It was a hideous creature, half insect, half leech, its body writhing grotesquely. But the creature didn't fit here. Its structure clearly belonged to a species that needed solid ground or oceans to live in, not an endless fog.

The bug had almost no intelligence. It couldn't comprehend Cillian, the creator who stood before it. Yet some primal instinct screamed within it. Out of sheer terror, the creature let out a piercing cry, a sound so sharp it could have shredded the sanity of any ordinary being. The sound echoed through the plane, filling the fog with madness.

But Cillian was unmoved. He was the architect of the Endless Abyss. Such lowly things could not shake him.

Then, without warning, the bug dissolved in his hand.

Its twisted body unraveled into wisps of shadow-colored mist, blending seamlessly back into the plane.

"It's… made of the fog?"

Cillian's eyes narrowed.

"Then it wasn't the bug that was alive… it's the mist itself."

To test his suspicion, he stretched out his hand again. With a mere thought, he summoned countless more creatures from the fog.

In an instant, hundreds of grotesque beings appeared around him. Insects, monsters, horrors without names or language. Their forms were distorted beyond recognition, each a nightmarish reflection of something real. The sight made even Cillian's chest tighten ever so slightly.

They screamed as one. And then, just like the first, they dissipated, each body breaking apart into the same shadow-colored mist.

This was enough. The proof was clear, the fog was alive.

It lacked reason, wisdom, or organs. Yet here, in this purely idealistic state, it lived.

And worse still, every form it shaped was something that Cillian hated.

These creatures, though pathetically weak before his power, were the very things that gnawed at the corners of his fear. This mist wasn't random, it was reflecting the darkest fragments of his heart.

Even as the ruler of the Endless Abyss, even as one who made demons tremble, this plane had glimpsed something no abyssal creature could. Not demons, not horrors, not even the abyss itself could see into his heart. But this mist could. It reached past his strength and revealed the shadows within him.

"Could it be… that the sole purpose of this fog is to manifest one's deepest fear?"

Instead of fury, a spark of curiosity flickered in Cillian's eyes. Rather than outrage, he felt the pull of discovery.

"This plane shows no sign of true thought. It only moves with instinct," he reasoned. "Perhaps it has never touched intelligence before, so instinct is all it knows."

His gaze sharpened.

"But what if it does encounter intelligent life? What if it collides with beings from a world of order? Would it… grow? Could it develop consciousness of its own, using fear as its foundation, until it becomes a hidden existence lingering in lower dimensions?"

Ideas swirled in his mind, each more fascinating than the last. But speculation alone would never satisfy him.

Without hesitation, Cillian withdrew from the abyss and returned to his real world. He left the resting chambers and entered the trading district. There, with little effort, he bartered for a city sector, an entire district filled with intelligent alien life. The trade came cheap, it was worthless for most others after all.

With a single thought, he transported the city into the Endless Abyss.

Under the shield of his divine fire, the city landed intact, untouched by corruption. But the moment it arrived, something stirred. The coordinates of the city shone like a beacon in the fog-plane.

Cillian narrowed his eyes, his attention fixed.

"Now… let me see what you will do when you encounter true life."

His abyssal gaze locked on the city. And in its outskirts, slowly, the fog began to gather. Shadow-colored mist crept closer, seeping in at the edges.

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