[Klyntar]

Black murky substances could be seen flowing out of the crevices on the barren crust of the dead planet as if they were conscious. The entire hidden planet was slowly being covered with the writhing semi-living black substance and every now and then, a mad cackle would seep through the planet's crust and reverberate through the entire planet.

The being trapped in it couldn't help but let out a maddening grin split his face in a disproportionate manner. He could feel that abundance of light which only belonged to one race he was very well acquainted with, popping on and off the periphery of the planet. They were anxious. Good!

His mind started becoming increasingly overwhelmed with chaos. How much chaos he would spread, how much death and despair will spew forth from his awakening… How much darkness he would bring.

His senses were getting better by the day and his prison bars became slacker. He could already cover a sizable amount of this tiny universe and that was more than enough for him to glean something.

This universe was weird.

No, that was wrong.

This universe had become weird.

It had become too… fixed, for lack of a better word. But no matter, it would fall sooner than later. His first step out of his prison will drown this pitifully bright congregation of stars to a muddy swamp of black.

One again.

As long as darkness never ends, Knull will always rise.

…

We watched as the multiverse started moving in a direction none of us could ever foresee.

A stage as grand as this that none could compare to.

The Judge.

The Abstracts.

The Celestials.

The Elder Gods.

The Darkness from the Beyond.

Knull.

Galactus.

And a host of other players that had not yet made themselves known on the board.

A multiversal war that threatened all of existence. A war that caused trepidation in the hearts of all those involved due to a simple question.

Will he finally act?

Even our stance of non-interference was being threatened. There were no but a handful of universes we've watched that had forced us to a similar situation as the one we were currently watching.

But something about this event made it glaringly different from its other similarities.

It was all centered around a singularity.

The man named Draul St. Cross was an enigma that even we were finding hard to understand.

First and foremost, the individual known as Draul only existed in one universe out of the countless myriad others out there in the multiverse. For this reason, trying to see through or predict his course of action was harder than it ever was, now impossible than it ever could be.

Viewing someone's future was no different than watching the most similar alternate timelines where most of the actions mirrored each other, but in his situation, that wasn't the case. The most similar alternatives were all past timelines to the main one which made seeing the future in his case a lot harder than it should. The moment he had fused with the universe was the moment we lost everything about him, past and future. All we could see was the present.

Who would win in this free for all?

Who would be the first to lose?

These were questions that none of us had an inkling of an answer to and that made the experience even more exciting than it should be because this defined our very existence as the all-present spectator of the multiverse.

This was a once in a lifetime moment that could not be missed. There was no past to make a reference to, no future to draw conclusions from, only a slowly moving present that was too precious to be missed even for a second.

Ah.

It looks like something is about to happen very soon. We all eagerly waited with bated breaths for the beginning and conclusion of the next encounter from any of the forces of the constant multiverse and the singularity known as Draul. How long will he continue to win? Who would he finally lose against? Can he be overwhelmed?

The stakes for this battle was one that will turn the multiverse on its head and maybe something else we all feared.

The birth of a new firmament.

A complete overhaul of the multiverse that once was to a new one that knows not of the old. The number of beings that have lived through such experiences were few and far in between, with Galactus and Knull being a prime example.

At that point it wouldn't matter if we interfered or not because the multiverse would have already been destroyed to a point that any repairs on it would be damaging what could no longer be fixed.

… Despite all this, all our eyes still trailed every motion of this universe, waiting and waiting for the moment where everything goes to shit and we are forced to act. Until such time arrives, we'll dutifully carry out the sacred duty we've been given until the very end.

…

[Draul St. Cross POV]

After getting Yelena a little progress in her abilities, I opted to do a little… sightseeing, if you catch my drift.

The reason I didn't just twitch an eye and have reality change in respect to Yelena's ability was because it would sooner more than later make everything vain. If all we ever needed was to be produced by the snap of a finger, then most things would lose their meaning.

Struggle was a form of human needs and self-sustenance was the actual proverbial demon. Everything was supposed to be on a measured scale according to the world around you; suffering, pain, glory, grace, blessing, life, even death. Being completely sheltered from everything except life and death was in essence a useless life lived. Just because I've lost my sense of contentment with almost everything doesn't mean that I should let them feel the same way.

Back to my sightseeing.

On my quest of finding the best place to spawn a particular Dreaming Celestial, I, with my genius, decided to ask someone who I knew would be the best person for the information I needed.

And who better than He Who Remains?

He was arguably the only person I knew, not personally, who could at least hold an actual conversation without us turning to our guns.

It was a little hard finding the place but given the scope of my powers, all it took was a little time before the shining beacon of energy was imprinted in my senses.

Upon getting the location of the TVA, I warped directly to the side of the person I wanted to meet.

"Woooh! Let me guess – you're here to kill me, ain't ya?" I was met face to face with the goofy version of Kang who had, unbelievably, somehow won the Multiversal War of Kangs.

"Oh no no. I'm just here for a few things, and some information if you will." He looked at me for a second and shrugged before plopping down on a chair while trailing his eyes on me as I made my way to his desk and pulled out a few drawers.

"There they are." I grabbed the Infinity Stones laying around and just stuffed them in my pocket dimension and got to assimilating them.

"I'll be the first to admit that that's a new one. You know those only work in their home universe right?" Kang asked before munching on an apple that miraculously appeared in his hands.

"Oh I know. You don't have a problem with me taking them right?" I asked as I made my way to one of the chairs opposite him and couldn't help the sigh that escaped my lips as my back hit those soft cushions. "Damn. Where'd you get these? I think I need more than a few for my house."

He seemed amused at my laid back reaction and offered me an apple that I gracefully accepted before answering my questions. "Well they're nothing more than rocks to me so I just keep them lying around everywhere. And those chairs are from 3031. I know a guy."

We remained in silence, with only the sound of our occasional munching rhythmically breaking through the silence. He never once let his stare completely leave my body meanwhile all I did was just lay back and started collecting all the Infinity Stones scattered throughout the TVA. If they had found a way to harness the energy inside the stones in another universe, then this Kang wouldn't have had to worry too much about his variant selves.

"Sooooo, am I supposed to know why someone as strong as you suddenly decided to pay lil'ol me a visit?" There was a small smile on his face with the tiniest amount of concern as he looked at me.

"Like I said, I just came for the stones and a tiny bit of information." I shrugged. Sure I could just read his mind but where was the fun in that? Sometimes a little conversation can go a long way.

"And since you've gotten the stones you came for, might I know what information brought you here?" He asked with growing concern.

"Zombies. Dead planets, but still filled with sentient life. Do you know of any universe like that?" I asked after finishing my apple. That really was some tasty apple, no cap.

He looked a bit surprised and then frowned in cautiousness. "That's awfully… specific. Any reason why you'd want to go to a zombie infested reality?"

"So you do know of one, that good. As for the reason… let's just say it's for a friend. I'm assuming you got the coordinates?"

He burst out into a crazy fit of laughter and though he tried stopping himself, he just couldn't. I let the paranoid man get it out of his system once he realized that I actually wasn't here to kill him.

"Yes yes, I've got coordinates." He tapped on his wrist and a holographic image came to life and displayed a lot of spatial coordinates. While I could find the universe I was looking for, it would however be a pain in the ass since I would have to look through a host of universes before finding the one I want. At least with Kang I have a starting point.

Having memorized the coordinates, I nodded at Kang and got up in a bid of resuming my quest.

"Might I ask you a question? Just take it as a curiosity."

"Sure, shoot."

"What universe are you from? You're a human right? It's just that no one I've met, not a single one of my variants, has any information on someone like you. Not a single bit of data, so my curiosity is righteously piqued. I have information on almost everything and everyone of major importance, even to the tiniest detail, but you? Not a single thing."

And yet again, someone just confirmed my existence in the multiverse. I find it truly surprising that there truly is no one with my face or identity in the multiverse. "Hmm, you could say I'm something of a special existence. They are quite a few people who can be considered a singularity out there in the multiverse and I'm one of them. That answers your question?"

"Absolutely." I was about to warp myself away to the coordinates with me but stopped at the last second as I remembered something. "Can I get a few of those chairs? The texture was nice."

He smirked and waved his hand in motion and some chairs started appearing only for them to disappear immediately after as they were all sucked inside my own pocket space.

"Alrighty. I'll be out of your hair then." This little adventure was quite the find as I harvested over a hundred stones of each type. I knew this was but a tiny drop in the ocean when compared to the rest of the multiverse, but to me it was a lot different. I never planned on absorbing all Infinity Stones across realities after all because I knew that a lot of forces won't just sit back and let that happen and sooner or later I'll have to face the Living Tribunal because of what was happening.

...

After departing from Kang's hiding place, I warped to the universe he showed me according to the map of the aligned alternate universes laying atop each other.

The universe I arrived in was interesting to say the least.

I knew I was taking a big risk by coming here but this was the only thing I could think of rather than siccing Tiamut somewhere else and having him kill billions.

My senses covering the universe told me that almost all life here had been infected. The zombies even started a space exploration program just so they could infect other worlds.

First on my list was killing a few people of interest like Hank Pym, Reed Richards, Strange and a host of others that were known for their bullshittery when it came to finding the unknown. Having gotten the direction of this universe down, I ensured that there was absolutely no one that would be able to find out that a Celestial seed was placed underneath their planet's crust.

With that done, I warped back to my universe to have another talk with Tiamut.

"Hey big guy. How have you been doing?" I asked after connecting my consciousness to his.

"I am buried underneath a planet, so you could say I've been rather grounded." He answered in such a monotonous voice that would have let the intent of his statement fly past my head if I had not been paying attention.

"Did…did you just make a joke?" It felt like I was seeing my very own autobot grow up and start learning the human way.

"Yes, I believe I just did. I have been using my extensive time to learn as much as I can from your race. I've recently come to realize that jokes can be used to 'set the mood'. And judging from your reaction, I'll say it was successful." I was too stunned to do anything else other than nodding along to his words. "Now that we've gotten that out of the way, might I ask what brings you here?"

My focus was brought back to the situation at hand and I gave Tiamut the rundown of the plan.

"It is feasible but there's just one glaring issue I see that you've failed to put into consideration. What will happen if Arishem finds out that my location has been changed?"

Oh.

My expression grew pensive when I realized that I truly didn't think about that. Given how the Celestials were in full surveillance mode, anything that happens to a single one of them was cause for alarm. If they were to find out that Tiamut had been moved to another universe, I honestly don't know how they'll react.

"What if we merged both universes?" His golden eyes bore into me with a gaze I've grown to understand as curiosity. "I already possess the Infinity Stones of that universe so all I need to do is shrink it to a palm-sized ball and connect you right to it, or maybe just stuff it in you. That way you wouldn't have to take a step and you'll have a universe's worth of energy for your emergence." I'd already made sure that there was no way the virus would be able to affect a Celestial as strong as Tiamut with a thorough reality warping ever since I got a hold of the universe. There was a part of the comics where even Galactus was affected after all, so there was no way I was taking any chances.

"I… see. That should work. And since my consciousness is already stirred, I'll be able to warp myself inside that universe when I'm ready for my birth. Quite thrilling the concept of birth if I do say so myself." Tiamut mirrored a tick of mine and started stroking his Celestial armored chin but I was amused by the sight that I didn't even bother to call him out. "Oh that reminds me. A Celestial visited me a while ago and I believe my emergence and you plausible interference is already within Arishem's judging gaze."

I frowned at that because I haven't felt any Celestial near this galaxy so they must have used a form of communication I wasn't aware of. Well, no matter. As much as I think Arishem would love to judge the hell out of my ass, he has more than enough on his plate than spending his efforts on old me. "We'll deal with that when the time comes." I refrained from asking him what he felt about his brethren Celestials because although the comics illustrated Tiamut as different form the others, he was a Celestial in the end. His role was out there in the multiverse.

Clasping my hands together, blinding light seeped out from it in huge amounts before it started receding on its own until a swirl of bright gas hovered above my palm.

This was the zombie universe.

I placed the universe next to Tiamut's consciousness and no sooner did he start absorbing the energy he needed to start his emergence.

"How long do you think it'll take?" I asked.

"A handful of minutes to a few hours I reckon. Would you mind hiding my energy release from the other Celestials? I feel like I should spend a few moments alone before I take on whatever duty is expected of me." I nodded my head at his request and casted a shield over the Earth that'll block every iota of cosmic energy he was releasing.

"See you soon, Draul." He said as his consciousness faded away to focus on his birth.

With nothing else to do I'm, I figured I'll use this time and get familiar with my abilities.

Creation and reality warping was easy for me to understand as there was nothing in this universe I couldn't create and no law I couldn't bend. I could change the fundamental force of the universe if I ever wanted to so reality warping was just another word for who I am.

The problem however laid with my destruction and its ability to turn everything null. Even with over a thousand Mind Stones working together to figure this shit out, I still haven't made as much progress as I'd hoped.

And I haven't even added darkness to the mix.

It felt like it was the exact opposite of what I currently was and in some way, it was true. The universe was born out of light with then birthed creation while what I was trying to wield was destruction and darkness in its truest sense.

I formed an orb of destruction in my hand and saw as the space around it started shrinking and contorting on itself as if it was being burned which created a black hue that surrounded the dark red orb in my hand.

For as far as I could tell, destruction has always flowed through my veins, quite literally in fact, whenever I got angry and looking back at it now, I was resisting the urge to go back in time and give myself a big slap.

I had such a thing flowing through my body at all times and what did I do with it? Shoot omega beams and use it to look menacing as fuck.

With my current mastery, I could use it to erase almost any physical thing in existence be it Vibranium, Adamantium and even Uru but the problem was using it to erase some specific type of energy and even concepts.

To be honest, I had a lot of things to test out in a real fight so I was very much looking forward to anybody who came first for a fight.

I've had various degrees of success in combining destruction and reality since out of all the aspects I possessed, those two had the most similarity out of all of them. Reality in a nutshell was saying 'fuck you' to all preconceived notions of order. Anything it wanted was what it got, like a petulant child.

I was already the perfect embodiment of a few aspects except darkness and destruction. I could control darkness and wreck destruction across multiple planes of realities but I wasn't truly them, not in the sense of how I was with the Infinity Stones.

The orb fizzled out due to my lacking concentration but I didn't pay much mind to it and kept focusing on how to truly be darkness and destruction because one thing I've learned was that they both went hand in hand.

If I were to compare embodiments of darkness and destruction according to some characters I knew then it would be beings like Chthon, Dormammu, Knull and Lord Chaos. These beings personalized their aspect to the point that they became physical manifestations of those aspects. I was not the primal aspect of Space, neither was I the primal aspect of Time, Soul, Mind, Power and Reality – I was simply an usurper and I was quite okay with that. But it would take more than simply usurping to get to the next plane of power.

'The comics always made it look super easy.'

Having gazed at Yog-Sothoth, I finally understood just how vast were the realms of power between me and him. And that wasn't even his true manifestation. His true form, along with that of the rest, resided in the same place with Azathoth as they were too powerful to fully immerse themselves on any multiverse.

I could already see the cracks on Klyntar increasing with every passing moment and the deranged laughter that echoed out simultaneously. Even with the distance between us, I couldn't stop the chill that went down my spine with every laugh he echoed out.

'I guess you really die when you are killed.' Whoever said that quote deserved some sort of accolade for being so fucking obvious.

Not just Celestials, I could also feel multitudes of Gods finally getting out of their golden cities while some went into hiding. It wasn't just Knull that they were coming to fight, it was whatever happened during the fight with Knull. This was not just war. This was chaos, death and… destruction.

I wonder how many Gods will try to kill me? Probably more than a handful.

Will the Celestials try to kill me too?

Or maybe the Elder Gods?

Knull I know will definitely try to kill me. What about those from the Overvoid, the Outer Gods? Which one will try to kill me?

Will one of the stares I constantly feel be the ones to do it?

Or maybe the Abstracts? I'm pretty much on Eternity and Infinity's naughty list that's for sure.

Or maybe the Judge himself will deliver the verdict when the chaos becomes too much.

It was a clusterfuck with promised death at every side, and not just my death but also the death of my family. If it was possible, I probably would have bailed on this fight. The stakes were just too disproportionate and some people were already shifting cards even before the game began. Alliances were being made and dissolved. It was all based on two things – survival and profit.

I had a few hands to play that I was sure could change the flow of the game but when I was playing against over a hundred veteran players, the odds were never in my favor. But I guess the universe had never been in my favor since the beginning but that didn't stop me from owning the bitch so I'm absolutely sure this won't either.

If I die then I'm pretty sure one of the Outer Gods already has dominion over my soul and to be honest, I don't know which one I prefer. Death or an eternal prisoner of the void.

That was a pretty damned hard choice but not one I will be choosing until I'm the last man standing.

My thoughts were pulled to a screeching halt as I felt the familiar energy of Tiamut and one of my universe being obliterated to fine dust which I'm pretty sure wasn't supposed to happen.