Meet Again

The hunger had changed. It was no longer the same mindless pull, no longer just the need to consume. It had evolved.

I had evolved.

Black holes collapsed into me one after another, their singularities unraveling as they were devoured. But what I gained was no longer just mass, no longer just gravity. The Singularity Creed pulsed at the core of my being, each consumption peeling away another fragment of something greater—an understanding I had yet to fully grasp.

And then, engulfing a black hole, I saw it.

A realization, vast and incomprehensible, surged into my awareness like a supernova breaking across the void. The universe—this universe—wasn't alone. There were others. Endless others. An infinite expanse stretching beyond anything I had ever known.

That entity had hidden me in one of them.

A veil had been cast, separating me from the System's grasp. I had always assumed I was lost in the vastness of space, beyond detection. But no—I had been removed entirely. Placed in a whole other universe. A precaution so absolute that it defied even the System's omnipresent gaze.

And yet, it had found me.

It wasn't an alarm. No warning pulses. No execution order lighting up across the void. Just a shift. A subtle, almost imperceptible disturbance across the very fabric of space-time. The weight of something watching. Calculating.

The System had noticed.

I extended my awareness outward, stretching beyond the remnants of the black holes I had consumed. The realization was immediate, undeniable. The sheer number of singularities vanishing in such a short time had left a scar across this universe—one the System could not ignore.

I had been hidden well, but my own actions had betrayed me.

And then, the pressure in the void shifted.

I knew what was coming even before it arrived.

The Paradox Hound.

Its presence rippled through space, twisting the very nature of existence as it came into being. It was no different from before—formless yet defined, a creature flickering between states of existence. Its body, if it could be called that, did not simply take up space. It reshaped it. Reality itself bent and adjusted to accommodate its presence, as though the world itself had waited for its arrival.

But this time, I was not the same anomaly it had once hunted.

I did not need to run.

I did not need to fear.

The Hound moved first. It did not hesitate, did not pause to assess as it had before. It knew what it had come for. Its body flickered, distorting the space between us as it lunged. Its claws tore through the abyss.

I let it come.

I did not recoil. I did not evade.

Instead, I unleashed my pull.

Gravity surged. Space collapsed. The moment its claws touched my event horizon, I pulled. Not just at the mass, not just at the force behind its strike, but at everything it was.

The Hound reacted instantly, twisting itself away, severing the limb before it could be consumed. The claw collapsed into me, disappearing into my second core—a fragment of power that should not have been possible to take.

I felt it.

The shift.

The imbalance.

This was not just an attack. The Paradox Hound was not made of flesh, nor matter, nor even energy in the conventional sense. It was a being constructed entirely of authority—of pure existence shaped by its own will. To consume it was not to take from its body, but to strip away pieces of its power.

And now, it had lost a part of itself.

The claw reformed instantly, seamless, as if the loss had never happened. No change in size, no alteration to its presence. But I knew better.

It wasn't the claw I had devoured.

It was its power.

And if I took too much… it would cease to exist entirely.

Seeing this, the Hound hesitated. For the first time, it hesitated. It had once been an executioner standing above me, an entity beyond my reach. But now, the balance had shifted. It had come to erase me, yet I was the one erasing it.

Its form flickered—wavering, unstable.

The shift was slight, almost imperceptible, but I saw it.

Doubt.

It doubted its own authority—its ability to rewrite reality itself.

For the first time, hesitation and doubt crept into its form.

It had always been certain. Unwavering. A being of absolute command, shaped by the System's authority. There had never been room for doubt—never a reason to question its own existence, its own power.

Until now.

It faltered.

It knew.

Knew that if it stayed, it would lose more than just the claw. That I would strip it apart, piece by piece, until nothing remained. That it had miscalculated. That it had underestimated me.

And so, it turned.

It turned and—it ran

A decision made in an instant.

A calculation—the only viable path it could take.

It was not mindless.

It was not a beast acting on primal instinct.

No.

It had recognized my absolute authority—over my Creed, over the Singularity Creed itself.

I moved to pursue, pulling space toward me, but the Hound was not like others. It was not bound by movement in the conventional sense.

The moment it fled, it rewrote the laws around it.

Reality twisted.

The farther it moved from me, the less real its previous position became. Each shift was a rewriting of its existence, a reconfiguration of its place in the universe. It wasn't just running. It was remaking itself into something further away.

It had only stayed within my range before because my own Creed had prevented it from slipping too far. But now that it was fleeing, it could exert that authority freely.

Before, it couldn't do so because the authority of my Creed disabled it from coming too close. But now that it was running, it could rewrite the laws governing its own movement, Bending the very fabric of space as it fled. And the farther it ran from me, the more freely it could exert its authority over reality itself.

And so, it started erasing and creating rules—rewriting over and over, changing the very coordinates of its existence to push itself farther and farther away from me.

It was escaping.

If I let this moment slip—if it escaped my range—it would vanish into another universe entirely

It wouldn't stop there.

Because I knew—the System adapted. It always adapted.

If the Hound escaped now, it wouldn't return the same.

It would come back stronger.

It would come back ready.

And then—

A shift in space.

It was interfering with space itself, denying me the very void I consumed to move—pushing its authority to the absolute limit.

A last, desperate act.

P.S. Hey everyone! Just dropping by to say hi. If anything feels too over the top, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! I'm always happy to clear up any confusion.