Within a dimension where space and time held no meaning, chaos reigned absolute. There was no ground beneath one's feet nor sky above one's head, only an infinite expanse of pure chaos where multicolored nebulae twisted unnaturally, vomiting lightning that fell in all directions without fixed origin or destination.
Strips of violet gas collided with sickly green clouds, generating explosions of light that faded as quickly as they appeared. Space itself seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting in an irregular rhythm that pressed against the chest of any being foolish enough to set foot in that place.
And at the center of that chaos, motionless like the eye of a hurricane, stood a being.
He stood on two muscular legs, and his long tail serpentined slowly behind him to balance his immense body. His scales, of a dull olive green, reflected the flashes of the nebulae as if light were afraid to settle upon them. His head was flattened and broad, with a wide mouth and features reminiscent of a goblin, and his pale green eyes observed the army surrounding him with a cold, ancient intelligence. Two curved horns rose from his skull, framing a floating orb that rotated slowly between them, pulsing with its own light. His wings, spread on both sides, were enormous sails of leather and bone that extended as far as the eye could see. Over a hundred meters tall, his body stretched nearly two hundred meters in length, and his wingspan matched that length, casting a shadow that devoured the light of the nebulae.
This creature was known by countless titles. The Eternal Serpent. The Horn. The God-Emperor of Madara. The Planeswalker. Elder Dragon. Tyrant of Worlds.
The name of this being was Nicol Bolas. An entity whose evil was matched only by his limitless intellect.
Eons ago, Planeswalkers were ageless shapeshifters whose power was limited only by their experience and knowledge.
Nicol Bolas had become in that era an almost omnipotent Dragon God, but he was magically stripped of all names and titles by his twin brother Ugin to prevent him from continuing to wreak chaos across the infinite planes. For millions of years, he was dead to the Multiverse, his survival known only to Ugin.
Mortal and bound to the plane where his brother had chained him, he was imprisoned as a nameless dragon.
Thanks to a chance event, he managed to escape his bindings. But he was no longer the exalted being he had been before his imprisonment. He was no longer immortal. He was stripped of his powers, of most of his memories, and of his Planeswalker spark. But Nicol Bolas still possessed the main trait that had allowed him to rise above entire universes: his great cunning and perseverance.
Thanks to this, he managed to evade his brother's search while slowly growing until he regained his power and his spark.
Now he stood one step away from rising above a multiversal-rank existence and becoming a being of rank eleven, an entity of the sixth realm, an Empyrean.
Surrounding him, an immense number of beings clustered densely, glaring at him with hostility and murderous intent. There were humans in armor that glowed with their own light, elves with centuries-old gazes, dragons with iridescent scales, and many other peculiar creatures: fire elementals crackling in the void, winged beasts of impossible shapes, entities of shadow and light writhing on the edge of reality. Among these individuals were everything from lower entities that had barely begun their path of transcendence, to beings that had risen beyond the universal level, reaching rank ten.
Among them all, two stood out from the rest.
The first was an elderly man of scholarly appearance. He wore an immaculate white robe that fell in soft folds to his ankles, with golden embroidery on the cuffs and collar that depicted geometric patterns from an unknown language. His beard, long and snow-white, reached his chest, and his hair, equally white, was tied back in a low ponytail. His eyes, of a pale, almost translucent blue, shone with a calm that contrasted violently with the chaos surrounding them. In his right hand, he held a staff of light wood, topped with a crystal that floated without touching the wood, spinning slowly on itself.
The second was a woman whose temperament and appearance were unmatched. She wore a Shinto-style garment of white silk with crimson trim, fitted to her figure by a wide obi from which hung golden bells that tinkled with every movement. Upon her head rested a jade crown, carved in the shape of nine fox tails that converged at the center, where a solar gem pulsed with its own light. Her hair was long and black as a raven's wing, gathered in a braid that fell down her back to her waist. Her eyes, golden as the dawn sun, observed Nicol Bolas with a mixture of fury and determination. From her back hung a cloak of white and gold feathers, and in her left hand she held a polished bronze mirror that reflected images of distant worlds.
—It seems we are in a rather bad situation —said the woman, her voice resonating clearly despite the dimensional chaos—. We cannot escape this dimension, and our Planeswalker seeds are not working.
She recalled precisely how she had arrived at this place. One moment she had been seated upon her divine throne, contemplating her domains from the summit of Takamagahara, her divine realm, when suddenly an unbreakable red thread coiled around her wrist. Before she could react, the thread pulled her with an impossible force and dragged her through a spatial hole that opened in the center of her throne room. And like her, other planeswalkers had suffered the same phenomenon. Ripped from their planes, kidnapped by that dragon who now watched them with the patience of a predator.
The elderly man beside her sighed with his soft voice that carried the weight of countless eons.
—Then only one path remains.
Though his tone seemed resigned, his eyes became resolute as he stared coldly at Nicol Bolas.
—We will have to carve our way through slaughter.
He raised his voice, addressing the green dragon that stood at the center of the chaos.
—Nicol Bolas!
The dragon slowly turned his head toward him. His pale green eyes narrowed with disdain, and when he spoke, his voice boomed through the entire dimension like an earthquake.
—Ugin.
He said a single word. But laden with tremendous power. The elderly man in the white robe was none other than Ugin, the twin brother of Nicol Bolas, the one who had defeated him back then and sealed him for millions of years.
Nicol Bolas laughed then. An euphoric laugh that echoed throughout the dimension.
—HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
His laughter contained such immense power that the very fabric of the dimension trembled. Invisible waves propagated from his mouth at an impossible speed, crossing the battlefield like an unappealable sentence.
The weakest planeswalkers did not even have time to understand what was happening.
Their bodies exploded on the spot.