Prologue: In a Void Bordering Three Worlds
"One good witch. Two pine twins. Three great friends."
"You're making a mistake!"
A panicked voice echoed out in the darkness. It sounded so familiar... Who was it?
"I'll give you anything! Money, fame, riches, infinite power—your own galaxy! PLEASE!"
That tone... How did he not recognize it? It belonged to the most unfathomable, dominating, and handsome being in all of reality—himself. But this didn't sound right. Bill Cipher, the Demon of Dreams, does not beg.
What was going on here? Was that really him, or an illusion?
"NO! What's happening to me?!" Bill sounded utterly frightened, and he failed to see why.
Before he could concentrate on the noises, he heard himself utter an incantation. He spoke fast, but he knew exactly what the incantation was. Why was he invoking his name? What impossible entity could've possibly forced him to use such a humiliating last resort?
Bill wondered this, but his voice only grew louder and louder, drowning out his present thoughts. Then he heard it.
At the end of his incantation, Bill heard himself shout a name with such vigor, anger, and fear that it'd put gods to shame. A name he so desperately wished he never uttered.
"STAAANLEEEY!"
Bill's eye shot open. It was all coming back to him now. Gravity Falls. Weirdmageddon. Those kids. Stanford...
Stanley...
They... They killed him? They ruined everything and killed him! How did they, a bunch of mortals, ever manage to slay him? He was a being of pure power. It didn't make sense!
This isn't right! It isn't fair! Primordial anger bubbled to the surface, instantly changing the color of his triangular figure from yellow to red. If he had ears, steam would probably be coming out of them.
Before Bill threw a fit, he noticed his surroundings. Gone were the blue flames that engulfed him and Stanley in that claustrophobic room. He didn't find himself in his fearamid or in the town of Gravity Falls. From the looks of it, he wasn't even on Earth.
Bill slowly spun in place, surveying the area closely. Around him was nothing but a black and blue ambient hue, with stars of various shapes and sizes sparkling like the sunlight reflecting off the ocean's surface. He was in space. Not the Mindscape or Nightmare Realm, but space.
How was this possible? Hadn't he been erased? Wasn't he supposed to be in a new form? No, if that were the case, he wouldn't remember anything, right? He never had to go through reincarnation, so he wouldn't know.
It aggravated Bill to no end that this was happening. Actually, no. That's not what aggravated him. What truly irritated him was the fact that he had no clue what was happening. For the first time in all his eons of living, Bill was stumped.
"Good. You've become aware again." A voice—no, thousands of voices, spoke loudly from behind Bill.
Even though he had done a three-sixty-degree surveillance of his surroundings mere seconds ago, he suddenly felt the presence of something behind him. Something that hadn't been there a moment ago.
Something... ancient.
Instead of turning around, Bill's body shapeshifted itself so that he was now looking at the unknown entity.
The entity had a humanoid appearance. They were slender, if their torso and arms were anything to go by. Only their head had visible skin, which was pure white. The bottom half was partially covered, leaving the eyes and nose uncovered. They didn't appear to have any ears.
Their eyebrows, if you could call the black markings that, were similar to a human's—albeit very blocky. They separated in the middle, like you'd expect from eyebrows. However, they wrapped around the back of the entity's head, creating a semi-barrier that separated the top of their head from the rest.
Speaking of the top of their head, where hair or a smooth white surface should've been, a black gas wafted into the air, similar to smoke from a campfire. Countless sparkling stars, galaxies, and other cosmic entities were within the 'smoke.' All of which seemed to move with the gas as it drifted through space, gradually fading out after reaching a certain distance.
"Be calm." The entity spoke in their thousands of voices again. Bill swore he heard echoes of it talking seconds before it actually spoke. His belief was further instilled when the entity's sentence echoed long after it finished.
Bill assumed the entity took his silence as a sign of fear. That was not the case. If anything, he was more so confused. Bill continued observing the entity's odd appearance, giving himself more time to process things, which he couldn't believe he needed time to do.
In contrast to its white skin, the humanoid wore a metallic-black robe. It concealed their legs while constantly rippling and shifting. Along its robe were many white cracks, big and small. Within each of these white cracks were visages of cosmic space, similar to what was displayed within the entity's cosmic smoke.
The humanoid hovered over to Bill with its hands folded in a way where only their fingertips touched. "Does my sight... alarm you?" It questioned.
Alarmed wasn't really the right word. "Alarm me? Buddy, I don't even know what you are!" Bill declared, pointing at the humanoid. He's seen many figures in his time, but surprisingly, none were quite like this creature.
The entity stared at Bill with an unblinking expression. Their eyes were pitch black and uncannily big, with irises shaped like a circle in the form of a thin white line. Within the center of that circle were white spiraling galaxies, acting as the entity's pupils.
"I see..." it said in a low tone, slightly looking away.
Due to the lack of emotion in its voice, Bill couldn't tell if the entity was sad or grumpy at his response. Was he supposed to know what it was? Normally, that wouldn't be an issue. The mind was a very powerful place, after all. An individual's thoughts could reveal all there is to know about them.
Unfortunately for Bill, the moment he laid his eye on the entity, he already tried to read their thoughts. He found it was barren, utterly devoid of anything—like a black hole.
The entity's spiral-shaped pupils realigned to stare at Bill. Not once did it blink. "I have many aliases. For simplicity's sake, I am The Harvester."
Wow, what a name. "Well, uh, nice to meet you, harvester guy. The name's—"
"I know who you are. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to you as Bill." Bill squinted his eye. The Harvester felt off... He didn't like it.
"Ok. Well, if introductions are outta the way, tell me—where the heck are we?!" Bill had been unable to determine their location. At first, he thought they were in space. But after getting a feel for the atmosphere, he's come to learn that they were just in a place that resembled space.
"My domain." The Harvester answered.
"Gee... such an informative answer." Bill closed his eye, rubbing it with two fingers before turning around. Why was he even talking to this... thing? He had better things to do. "Listen, buddy. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not in a real talkative mood. That old pine tree really ticked me off! I mean, where does a guy like that get the nerve to kill me? ME?!" Bill's body turned red again. "He's gonna suffer for this. I'm gonna make sure he experiences a thousand deaths! No—a million!"
"But you are not dead." The Harvester informed.
Bill immediately calmed down. "What?"
"You never died." It clarified.
"But... I was erased...?"
"They tried to erase you." The Harvester hovered over to Bill's side. "They didn't follow through."
Bill gave The Harvester a weird look. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"They erased the mind of the host you resided in. But the mind wasn't completely gone. They helped the host remember." The Harvester explained, turning away from Bill. "That brought you back. Shattered. Fragmented. I put you back together. I made you... whole." It turned to face Bill. "I couldn't have done it if you were dead."
Bill raised a hand. "Hold on there, hotshot." He placed both hands on his sides. "And you know all this how? You stalkin' me or something?"
The Harvester remained quiet for the next few seconds. Was it trying to come up with a lie?
"Are you aware of Time Pools?" it questioned.
"Eh, they sound familiar."
"They are a concept I borrowed from the Demon Realm." The Harvester's cosmic smoke flared. Soon after, the celestial bodies it once showed disappeared, being replaced with various instances of Bill at different points in time. "I studied how time works in this quadrant. It is—"
"Boooooorrrring." Bill crossed his arms. "Stop stalling and answer the question."
Again, The Harvester did not respond immediately; It elected to stare at Bill for a few long seconds. Its cosmic smoke stopped showing depictions of Bill and returned to displaying the different celestial bodies. Then it responded. "I created windows. Windows that show the past. They've allowed me to observe your past in... great... detail..."
"Aha! So you have been stalking me! Why?"
"Because I require your assistance." The Harvester stated. "Assistance that only a being such as you can provide in this quadrant."
"Uh-huh, and that is?"
"The Convergence."
"Huh?"
The Harvester turned its back to Bill, slowly hovering away. "It is something that must happen for my journey to come to an end." It looked up, staring at the sparkling sea of stars. "Then finally, my goal will be complete."
"And what is your goal?" Again, there was silence. Bill started to get annoyed at how often The Harvester's responses were delayed.
"You wouldn't understand."
A spike of anger surged through Bill. "Oh, that's just rich! You ask for my help and won't even tell me what I'm helping you achieve? Quit wasting my time!" Bill raised a finger, a blue flame formed at its tip.
"But what is time to a timeless being?" Bill hesitated, something he didn't do often. "I cannot tell you what it is I'm trying to do. But I can tell you how to help me do it."
"And why would I?"
The Harvester turned around. "Because the reward is great."
Bill thought about what his reward would be before lowering his finger. "Revenge on the Pine Family?"
The Harvester shook its head. "Do not think so... Two-Dimensionally."
The Harvester broke the formation of its folded hands and formed a ball of pure energy in one of them. The ball floated over to Bill, and he held it with both hands. It displayed people and worlds he had surprisingly never seen before, which should've been impossible, for he sees everything.
"Bill Cipher. Some places exist just beyond your reach. Not only can I grant you access to these realms, but I can also give you your physical form back." The Harvester floated closer to Bill. "No more being stuck in the Nightmare Realm. No more being trapped in Gravity Falls. And no more being fooled by mortals. You'd truly be free." The Harvester stopped a few feet from Bill, and the ball disappeared from his hands. "All you need to do is help me..."
The Harvester had him at the whole omniverse being his sandbox. The humanoid clearly didn't know just how many parties Bill would be able to throw! Getting revenge on Stanley and his family would definitely happen, but it could wait a bit longer.
Of course, Bill didn't know how serious this harvester guy was. If it was powerful enough to grant him all that, why did it even need help? More importantly, was it stronger than the Axolotl?
Many questions zoomed through Bill's mind.
"Well?" The Harvester's tone almost seemed to urge Bill to make a decision.
Not giving me time to think at all, huh? If The Harvester could piece him together, then it wasn't too far-fetched to say it could take him apart again as well. Especially in his admittedly weak state.
He'd play ball...
For now.
"Well, seeing as you did me a solid by bringing me back, I guess I'll return the favor and help you out! Besides, it's not like I got anything else to do," Bill snickered.
"Good." The Harvester folded their hands again, ensuring only their fingertips touched.
"Now then, what's first on my to-do list?"
The Harvester gestured behind Bill.
Bill turned to see massive pyramids hovering in the blue space. Actually, they weren't pyramids. They were ships in the form of pyramids. The ships were pitch-black with minimal external lights; There were hundreds of them.
"For The Convergence to happen, these anchors must be placed within hub worlds."
Bill took notice of thousands, or maybe millions, of smaller entities floating around the anchors.
They were also humanoid in appearance, similar to The Harvester. However, their skin was the same as The Harvester's cosmic smoke. Aside from their lizard-like tails, sharp pointy ears, and large claws, they had no discernible features since they were made of constellations. Not to mention, they blended perfectly into the background.
"Whoa, what are those little guys?"
"They are my helpers. I refer to them as Cosmic Minions." The Harvester answered. "You may take command of any number of them to assist you in your tasks if you wish."
Bill clasped his hands together, rubbing them like a stereotypical villain. "Oh yeah. We're gonna have some fun!"
He spun to face The Harvester. "Now, these hub worlds. What are they?"
"Core worlds of this quadrant. They will have the strongest connection, making The Convergence happen faster. Earth, the world you seemed infatuated with, is one of them." The Harvester's cosmic smoke shifted, displaying Earth.
Bill's eye curled upward in absolute delight. "Really?"
"Really."
The demon couldn't help but let out a hearty yet sinister laugh as he hovered closer to the cosmic smoke, gazing directly at the blue planet.
Earth's image reflected off his pupil. "In that case, I think I know exactly where to start." His pupil trailed down to The Harvester. "Say, ever heard of a little town called..."
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