Forever Wasteland

The world cracked wide open.

Not with noise, but with stillness. A quiet deeper than death swept through the school courtyard, drowning the rustle of leaves, the distant city hum, even Emi’s breath. Bleeding the sky away and freezing the sun’s light rays in midair.

And in its place unfolded the Forever Wasteland.

It did not replace the school – it absolutely unmade it.

The ground beneath their feet decayed into ashen ice. Snow, silent and black, began to fall from a sunless void above. Structures withered into brittle silhouettes. The horizon expanded into something unknowable – a realm too vast for the eye, yet claustrophobic in its dread, spinning the stars out of orbit and straight into their destined end of cold nothingness.

Cracks webbed beneath Orion’s boots. Through them, he saw not the soil – but bones.

Glassy skeletons lying half-buried beneath the frost, curled in poses of despair or prayer. Human, in shape – but the souls were long gone. Or rather they may have never been there in the first place.

Emi gasped behind him. The breath came out as a pale mist. And now, instinctively, she jumped clinging to his arm, her own hands shaking from the frost.

And then – the eyes began to open.

In the sky, in the ground, in the streets, on the streets, in the dirt, on the trees, beneath the bridges, in the air, on the frozen students, the salarymen going home on their trains, and even in the stars and beyond.

They slithered like serpents through reality. Thousands of them – glowing of a bright searing yellow, making it difficult to stare into them for more than a few seconds at a time.

More eyes peeked from some of the frozen flesh, clung to the surfaces of cars, even shimmered in the distant dimming light of the last fire, the fire witnessing all things coming to an end.

All of these eyes – all of them Vizio’s.

His own body now frozen into an ice statue where he just stood mere moments ago. Facing Orion with a grin he was too happy to leave carved on the frosty surface.

“Do you understand now?” Vizio’s voice echoed.

Emi and Orion spun their heads around, looking for the source of his voice – only to find the eyes vibrating with dense shockwaves. Vizio continued:

“This is my heart. My forever.”

“So, you’ve finally mastered this technique,” Orion commented.

“I learn from the best, my Master.”

The frost around Orion and Emi’s feet continued to deepen, rising like broken glass sculptures from the ground.

“Stay behind me,” Orion commanded Emi. “Do not move. You go far, you die.”

Knowing how harsh he usually was, Emi should have felt belittled from how he was talking to her. But glancing at his expression, she found a deep focus, one she had never seen before.

It was almost as if…

He was afraid?

“He can see into the future,” Orion explained to Emi. “Not all of it, but a good amount.”

“Oh, I can do much more than that,” Vizio cackled. “I had hoped that this would not be the case. And that the gravity around you would be so strong it would bend the flow of prophecy. But here – you are too weak for that to be the case.”

He raised a hand, and several of the snake-eyes focused all at once on Orion. Just for a second.

“Behold – my evolution.”

With every eye all surrounding them now aimed at the two of them – the eyes began to bleed.

Seeping beneath it, a single red line downward.

With each passing minute, strain rippled through Vizio’s countless eyes, bleeding threads of red into the frozen world. Each drop a sacrifice – each gaze a wound. The excruciating pain shot through his veins located deep in the fabric of all that was surrounding them, pumping the air with the beating sound of a heart.

A frozen heart.

Icicles formed around the Starheart, located deep inside Orion’s chest. But through the vibrations of the subatomic strings he could see with his eyes, Orion soon realized precisely what Vizio’s new ability was. He did not know the specifics, but the instant he saw moments gradually slowing to a halt, the hours were no longer possible, then the minutes, and soon it was clear – even the next few seconds would also refuse to move.

For this was the pinnacle of the tyranny of ice:

Time stop.

Vizio, in his infinite scheming, had already formed forth giant spears of ice – long, jagged, and glistening like death. Suspended in midair, aimed at Orion’s throat, heart, and eyes, they hovered like frozen verdicts. A glacial execution that no living being should be able to escape.

Timing it precisely at the moment time was frozen, Vizio threw all the spears right at both Orion and Emi.

Out of desperation, Orion moved – but only barely, just enough. His hand twitched, and a pulse of telekinetic energy erupted in a sphere around Emi, wrapping her in invisible protection. The frost couldn't reach her.

But outside that sphere, the rest of time had already collapsed into silence. He had no protection left for himself. His body stood still – arms outstretched in a protective stance, cloak stiff with frost. Ice crept slowly up his legs, threading through his form like a creeping poison. The Starheart pulsed in his chest, flickering dimly, but getting colder now.

And through the cold silence, Vizio’s voice rippled like oil across still water.

“That’s right… sleep now, my King. You’ve ruled long enough.”

His laughter echoed faintly through the vast emptiness. The eyes bleeding in the sky began to blink, one by one. The frost whispered louder. The ground cracked. All of Forever Wasteland quivered in quiet anticipation, as if the universe itself were holding its breath.

But then…

It began to tremble.

Not the ice. Not the ground. Not even the air.

Orion.

Inside the cage of time-stopped death, something moved. Not a limb, not a muscle – but something fundamental. A shift in pressure. A change in gravity. The sensation of a slumbering star beginning to open its eyes.

And then, in that impossibly still place, a voice broke the silence.

Not with rage.

But with something worse.

Judgment.

“You dare wear my face.”

Each syllable rippled with weight, dragging the temperature down even further. Cracks spidered outward from beneath Orion’s boots, racing across the ground like veins of defiance.

“You dare spit on my mercy.”

The light around him bent. The air folded in on itself. The icicles shook violently in place, no longer certain of their destined path. Even the Starheart began to glow again, each beat now louder, resonating like a war drum echoing from the heart of eternity.

“You dragged her into this.”

His voice deepened – not louder, but simply heavier:

“Innocent of our affairs. I see clearly now, you are not the warrior I trained. You – are a child. A boy panicking in his father’s absence.”

The world split.

“What the… how?” Vizio’s voice broke into panic, eyes darting wildly across the collapsing Wasteland.

Like glass under strain, the Forever Wasteland shattered. A thunderclap ruptured the realm, folding time and frost into dust. The spears fell harmlessly to the ground, melting as they struck the sudden warmth radiating from Orion’s body.

“You’ve underestimated me for the last time.”

His voice lowered, calm and final.

“You have much to learn.”

And with those words, the ice – the whole of this world – they all exploded. The Wasteland cracked open like an eggshell, unable to contain the force of what was rising inside him. Emi screamed as the false sky ripped apart. Lightning, violet and alive, snapped through the air with a voice of its own. Time reasserted itself with a violent lurch.

Vizio’s body twisted violently as the energy around him collapsed. Pulled from the sky like debris caught in a gravitational riptide, he was yanked into reality with bone-snapping force. No longer a phantom. No longer in control. Just a man torn from his own kingdom of frost.

And standing above him now – was Orion.

Still, calm. As if he hadn’t just broken the rules of the universe.

His eyes opened – brilliant and terrifying.

Twin storms of purple lightning. Arcing beams coiled and writhed around him, not like weapons, but like judgments given form. They split the air with a high-pitched scream, sentient, merciless, and perfectly obedient.

And then…

The drums began to beat.