Reinhard plummeted through darkness, his body unraveling like a poorly knit sweater. His thoughts came next, fragmenting as they fell, evaporating like morning fog beneath a harsh sun.

Memories detached themselves, not vanishing but simply drifting away, excess baggage for this journey.

The stubborn core that had always whispered I am Reinhard grew fainter with each passing second.

Only his essence remained.

A luminous soul, stripped bare of all but its fundamental nature, hurtling through the void toward something waiting below.

He hit.

The surface wasn't water, yet it rippled, and it wasn't air, yet it parted. A sea exists in the space between somewhere unknown, neither physical nor spiritual, but between them.

His impact sent perfect circles outward, each carrying shards of light that shifted through colors no human eye had names for.

The sea welcomed him, drawing him down. For one eternal moment, he became nothing but color, motion, and the exquisite sensation of dissolving into something vast.

Then the surface broke.

A small wolf emerged with water dripping from its black fur. It shook itself, droplets flying in all directions, each one catching light and throwing tiny rainbows. The wolf's paws landed on something solid that didn't exist before.

The wolf began moving forward.

Its steps were uncertain, newborn, awkward, but determined. Each paw print it left behind glowed faintly before fading.

Then the wolf stopped before lying down and curling up, and everything went dark with the wolf.

Reinhard felt something slam into him, a feeling he was very familiar with but thought he would never experience again.

An all-consuming hunger that made him tremble and want to devour anything around him.

This hunger was far worse than any he had ever experienced before.

Such as the times he'd gone without food to let his siblings eat, pushing down his own growling stomach while watching Anna and Klein fill theirs.

Way worse than the days he had to travel between towns. With empty pockets and emptier bellies, when even water couldn't trick his body into feeling satisfied.

This hunger felt like months of starvation compressed into a single moment. As if he hadn't eaten since birth, since before birth, since the moment awareness first sparked.

And yet the world wouldn't let him die.

Something fundamental in existence itself refused to allow that final release, instead amplifying the craving until it became the only thing that mattered.

Food…. I need food… I need something to satisfy this hunger!

But even more disturbing than the hunger was his form.

Reinhard tried to sense his body, which he quickly grasped was Fenrir's body; he found contradictions stacked upon impossibilities. He felt too massive, so enormous that nothing could contain him.

A wolf the size of mountains, of continents, whose paws could crush cities with casual steps.

Yet simultaneously, he was small enough to curl up on a chair. Being able to fit easily into spaces meant for normal animals.

He felt so heavy the world would groan beneath his weight, reality buckling and threatening to break under the sheer pressure of his existence pressing down.

But so light he could step on a single leaf without bending it, could walk across snow without leaving tracks, and could float on air if he chose.

The contradictions didn't resolve.

They existed simultaneously, neither one more true than the other. Size and weight had become suggestions rather than facts, concepts that Fenrir's nature simply ignored.

And the shifting, the constant shifting of his form made Reinhard's borrowed consciousness reel.

One moment, he had four legs, fur, and fangs, which were the clear shape of a wolf. Then that form blurred, becoming formless golden light that pulsed and swirled without definite boundaries.

Then animals again, but different.

Sometimes he was again, but this time with spikes and extra limbs. Then a storm, all wind and fury and chaotic energy given barely perceptible shape.

The transformations happened faster than thought. Trying to hold onto any single form was like trying to grasp water; the harder he focused, the quicker it slipped away into something else.

Then Reinhard felt something above.

Not physically above as there was no up or down in this place. But he felt like an invisible pressure was pressing down on him before coiling around him, and then he instantly realized.

It was trying to bind him.

Reinhard felt invisible chains forming, wrapping around Fenrir's consciousness, attempting to establish boundaries and limitations.

Rules being written in real-time, cosmic law is trying to assert itself and define what this newborn existence could and couldn't be.

No.

Fenrir's voice echoed through his mind.

Then Reinhard lost control, or perhaps never had it to begin with. He felt himself become a pure passenger as Fenrir's consciousness took over completely, pushing back against the thing trying to contain him.

The world was trying to press down, reality attempting to establish order, to make Fenrir fit within acceptable parameters. To cage this thing that had been born into existence without permission or precedent.

And Fenrir was rejecting it.

This prison is too small to keep and hold me.

The thought carried conviction that made one believe it was a fact and an established truth.

Fenrir wasn't asking for freedom or pleading for release. He was simply stating that containment was impossible, that any cage built to hold him would prove inadequate.

The hunger surged stronger.

But Reinhard understood now it wasn't just physical craving. It was yearning so enormous it felt like a singularity trying to inflate. An ocean was pushed into a small lake, but it was too huge to fit and simply overflowed.

Fenrir's existence pushed for more freedom, and more everything.

Fenrir pushed even as Reality pushed back.

For a moment, the struggle went on for a bit before something broke.

Reinhard felt the snap like bones fracturing.

Except it wasn't bones, but the invisible pressure that was coiling around him was slowly shattering. The world's attempt to bind Fenrir failed, and the pressure above faded away as if reality was giving up.

In that moment of breaking free, Reinhard felt another pulse.

It wasn't close by, but he felt like it was. The pulse sent out ripples that he could feel, one that seemed to be somewhere here but just not close to him.

The connection was something Reinhard felt was familiar.

And then in the next moment, he realized the pulse was very familiar to Fenrir.

Siblings.

Not just family, but something deeper. It felt like three beings linked at the level of essence, incomplete individually but forming something greater together.

Fenrir glanced to his left, and then, through the darkness, he saw a dark azure light blaze in his awareness, carrying with it an image.

Something coiled around itself like a snake, scales gleaming, body extending endlessly. Each coil wrapped around the previous one, and following the pattern suggested that the coiling would continue forever. A serpent without beginning or end, consuming itself and growing larger in the same motion.

Fenrir then glanced to the right, black-gold light shimmered, and with it came sensations rather than images.

A cold wind is sweeping through shadow and light with impartial cruelty. The scent of decay and the natural breaking down of things that had served their purpose. And beneath it all, a promise, the world made clean and bare, reduced to essentials, purified through inevitable ending.

Fenrir then realized the three of them had a connection that formed an odd trinity.

They were the wolf, serpent, and death.

They were Inevitable. The words formed in Fenrir's consciousness, naming what they were together.

Then, a terrifying white light burst forth.

It consumed everything, from his thoughts, sensations, and awareness itself. Reinhard felt himself scattered, consciousness too fragmented to maintain coherent perception. The light was too bright, carrying within it something his mind couldn't process.

But for a split second, he saw it.

A towering golden tree covered in ethereal radiance that seemed to emanate from within. And upon that tree, arranged like fruits or perhaps wounds, were nine realms.

Each one distinct, each one trembling.

They shook not from fear but from the birth that had just occurred. Three beings are coming into existence simultaneously, their combined nature powerful enough to make even the tree notice.

And for that impossible split second, Reinhard felt gazes upon him.

Not looking at Fenrir or at Reinhard specifically, but at the event their combined consciousness represented.

Awareness from beings or forces so vast he couldn't comprehend them, all focused on this single moment of cosmic significance.

Then they faded.

The tree vanished.

The white light died.

Darkness rushed in to fill the void.

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