Chapter 3
But in the middle of her words still hanging in that gray air, Meshya's head was struck once again by pain.
Not an ordinary pain, but one that pierced from within, as if cold hands were tearing apart layers of memory she had never realized existed.
And without permission, a foreign memory played across her vision.
A park in the morning, dew still clinging to the tips of the grass, and a young couple sitting together on a wooden bench.
Their faces were blurred—deliberately obscured by something stronger than mere fog—yet the warmth felt real, so real that Meshya could almost feel the morning breeze brushing against her cheek.
"We'll always be like this, right?" the girl's voice in that memory asked, and Meshya flinched—because it was her own voice.
But that cool morning did not last long.
The sky suddenly split open, and the reality around them burned away without a trace, leaving only the two of them in the middle of a silent ocean of fire.
"No… don't…" whispered the Meshya within that memory, her voice breaking.
Then the young man—whose face she could never see—was suddenly pierced by a massive sharp object, larger than his own body, appearing from nowhere.
He did not have time to scream.
He only smiled—one final smile whose shape Meshya could not even grasp—before his body slowly disintegrated into black dust, scattered by a wind that itself was burning.
"What else?!" shouted Meshya within that memory—her past self now turning around, and for the first time, her face was clearly visible.
She looked exactly like the Meshya standing in the gray space now, except her eyes were not yet pitch black, and there was a wound in her heart so fresh it made her entire body tremble.
"What else do you have to take from me?!" her voice shattered into sobs so loud, so deep, that even the already-burning sky trembled.
Strangely, the destruction around her—fire, ash, the gaping void—did not silence those cries.
Instead, they celebrated them.
The flames danced like lanterns at a festival, black dust swirled into cheerful spirals, and the dying universe seemed to smile in satisfaction at the lament of a woman who had just lost everything once again.
"Why… why do I not remember this?" murmured the present Meshya, her pitch-black eyes blinking rapidly, as if trying to expel an uninvited ghost.
"I never had a lover. I never… saw anyone die in front of me like that."
But her body remembered.
Her chest tightened with a sorrow she did not recognize as her own.
Meshya shook her head hard—once, twice—until her Abyssal Transparent hair swung wildly.
"That is not my memory," she whispered, her voice trembling between denial and doubt.
"That cannot be my memory."
She clenched her fists, trying to steady her increasingly erratic breathing, then slowly lifted her face again—toward the same gray space, toward the figures who still stood watching with wary eyes.
But something had changed.
Right before her, only a few steps from the tip of her shoes, floated a fragment of yellow light—soft like melting butter in the morning, yet so piercingly bright that even the shadows around it vanished.
The light slowly took shape: vague, like a human figure made of the yolk of a setting sun, without a clear face yet with an overwhelmingly heavy presence.
The yellow light was no longer merely floating.
It pulsed—once, twice—and from the center of its vague, human-like form made of sunset butter, emerged a sound that was not a sound.
More than a vibration, less than an echo, yet carrying such authority that even the gray space itself seemed to bow.
"I am The Monitor of God," the entity spoke, and each syllable created ripples in the air like stones dropped into a silent pond.
"The extension of the Almighty's hand in every fiction. My duty is to safeguard the security, safety, and the natural order of every narrative and the characters within it."
Meshya stared without blinking, while behind her, Alexander Richard held his breath and Nirmala Surdaya unconsciously clutched her pounding chest.
"What has happened to you, Meshya Anggraini Putri," TMOG continued, its voice softening yet still resonating, "is the result of Singularity. An inevitable consequence of a universe born not from its rightful origin."
It paused for a moment, and within that silence, all present felt the weight of the unspoken words.
"And you… you are the only product of that Singularity event that is not meant to be erased."
"Not meant to be erased?" Meshya repeated, her brows furrowing.
"By whom?"
TMOG pulsed brighter.
"By that forbidden universe itself. Singularity—a birth that violates the established order—would normally be erased by the system that maintains fictional stability. But you… you are an exception. For reasons unknown. Even I do not know why."
For the first time, the voice of The Monitor of God sounded imperfect—there was a small crack within it, like a flaw in a bell that should have been pure.
"Thus, I come to you with an offer," it continued, and the yellow light slowly formed something resembling an outstretched hand.
"To become my extension. To observe universes that will experience Singularity events. Because often, there are universes born with dangerous essences to other fictions—yet most of their inhabitants are not barbaric. If that occurs, you will redirect the burden of Singularity to another universe, under the authority I grant you."
Meshya fell silent.
Her pitch-black eyes stared at the luminous hand, then slowly she asked,
"And if their inhabitants are truly barbaric? If they deserve to be erased?"
TMOG answered without pause:
"Then you have the authority to accelerate the Singularity event. Burn them. Destroy them. Without mercy."
And from that moment on, Meshya wandered.
From one fictional universe to another—crossing boundaries unseen by ordinary eyes, piercing through layers of narratives hanging like laundry across the interfictional realm.
She found dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, then millions of universes.
Some of them she deemed worthy—places where their inhabitants lived with awareness, with love, with a natural fear of death.
"You are fortunate," Meshya murmured during one of her countless journeys, standing atop the roof of a peaceful universe, watching the sun rise twice in a single day.
"I will not touch you."
But just as often, she spat—truly spat, with disgust spilling from her lips—at the threshold of another universe.
"You," she said one day to a universe filled with chaotic barbarity, where its characters slaughtered each other over the color of their clothes, "you are not even worthy of being called fiction. You are merely trash that happens to have form."
She often clashed with them, often wounded—there were scars on her arm from the universe Cultivation Wheel: The Last Descendant of Reincarnation, wounds on her back from Corner of the Room, Corner of Fear, and a deep wound in her chest from Open Door, Nurtured Darkness—but at least, it was far better than allowing such foolish beings to continue existing.
"I've even forgotten how many," Meshya whispered to herself at one point, in the midst of her endless journey.
Her Abyssal Transparent hair flowed without wind, and her pitch-black eyes swept across the expanse of universes stretching like a sea of burning paper.
"Perhaps Cultivation Wheel. Perhaps Corner of the Room. Perhaps Open Door. Or perhaps… none of their names matter anymore."
Because after hundreds, after touching thousands, after surpassing the scale of trillions—the names of those deviant fictional universes had merged into one.
Ash.
To be continued…