An anomaly

The loop is broken.

The Damned Soul is gone.

But the Great Entity stands at the edge of existence, watching the aftermath unfold.

This was never supposed to happen.

For eons, the loop had contained the Damned Soul, keeping it in perpetual suffering, preventing it from reaching the inevitable truth.

And now… it's loose.

Not the Damned Soul. No. The thing inside it.

The Great Entity exhales, the sound like a thousand dying breaths. The void shifts beneath its feet, whispering secrets only the dead should hear.

The Damned Soul was never meant to survive.

The bargain had been a lie.

A necessary deception.

Because what the Damned Soul truly lost in that fire wasn't just its family.

It was its humanity.

The Great Entity looks at its hands—black bones wrapped in unraveling time.

It is the keeper of lost souls, the warden of forgotten existences.

But even it has limits.

And for the first time ever since the cosmos came into existence the great entity is afraid.

Fear of the unknown creeps in.

---

It had seen it before. A thousand times.

The Damned Soul clawing at the walls of its existence, dying over and over.

The loop was designed to grind it down, to break its will until it was nothing but a husk.

Because if the Damned Soul ever remembered… if it ever pieced together the truth…

The world itself would begin to rot.

And now, the rot had begun.

---

The Great Entity closes its eyes.

It feels it.

A shift in the balance.

The dead are whispering.

The barriers between realms are cracking.

Time is bleeding.

The Damned Soul was never just another lost spirit.

It was an anomaly.

A mistake.

A punishment meant for something else.

And now, because of one broken loop, reality itself was coming undone.

The Great Entity opens its skeletal palm. A single, burning sigil glows there—the mark of the Damned Soul.

It's fading.

The Damned Soul is changing into something else.

And if the Great Entity doesn't stop it in time…

Nothing will be left to reap.

----

The void around it pulses, whispering in forgotten tongues.

The Great Entity does not move. Does not breathe. Does not blink.

It knows what it must do.

The Great Entity's guilt was striking again.

And in a desperate attempt the great entity calls for help to prevent the destruction

******

The void trembles.

Not from violence. Not from chaos.

But from awareness.

Something unnatural has stirred. Something that should not be.

For the first time in an eternity, the Universe stirs from its deep slumber.

It is not bound by time. It is not bound by rules. It simply is.

And yet—it feels.

A wrongness.

A disturbance buried within its fabric.

An anomaly.

Something is threatening the balance. Something has broken free from where it was meant to stay.

The Universe does not rage. It does not panic.

Instead—it grins.

(If it had a face, it would be smiling.)

It has been a long time since it felt something worth correcting.

A long time since it last saw a problem worth fixing.

And boy, doesn't it love fixing things?

---

The Universe turns its attention inward.

To the depths.

To its oldest memories.

It searches in the darkest corners of existence, where all forgotten things go to fade.

And there—buried in the endless black—it finds the name it is looking for.

A name wrapped in death.

A name tied to the endless cycle of souls.

It speaks.

And at once, the Grim Reaper is pulled into existence.

---

The Reaper kneels, its cloak heavy with the weight of countless lifetimes.

It does not question why it has been summoned.

It already knows.

But the Universe, ever patient, ever amused, hums in acknowledgment before speaking.

"For as far as my memory stretches… you've made a lethal mistake for the first time."

The Reaper says nothing. It does not need to.

The Universe's presence alone is absolute.

"But don't worry."

The grin widens in the abyss.

"I'm not angry."

A moment of silence.

Then, almost fondly—

"We're old friends, after all."

The Reaper lifts its head. Shadows flicker where its face should be.

But the Universe is already moving forward.

It does not need permission.

It does not ask.

It simply fixes.

"I'll handle the problem for you."

The void twists.

Reality groans.

The rules begin to shift, to bend, to correct themselves.

"You can rest now, child."

The Reaper's form flickers—fading, dissolving into nothingness.

It does not resist.

Because when the Universe itself moves to fix something…

There is no choice.

Only obedience.