He patted it gently, "Thank you."

In response, a reluctant thought pushed against his mind, warm but sulking, like a child grumbling though it had done the right thing.

Ikenga chuckled quietly, his voice lowering to a murmur.

"I know. You don't like it. But still… I am grateful."

The plant pulsed faintly, its leaves quivering as if in embarrassed protest, before going still again.

The plant's thought pressed into Ikenga's mind, hesitant, yet insistent.

"We want to do more for you."

Ikenga arched a brow, amused at its boldness "Quite selfish of you," he murmured. "What can you do that I do not already know?"

At his words, the plant stirred with sudden resolve. It slipped free from his hand, streaking upward beyond the moon's thin atmosphere.

Zarvok's eyes narrowed as the small sprout began to change. Its body swelled, drinking hungrily from the void, its leaves stretching and thickening into vast, cosmic fronds. At its crown, the flower once small and delicate unfurled, revealing where it held the eye it had once gotten from Ikenga.

The petals peeled open like the maw of a great beast, and with a slow, dreadful grace, it descended upon the moon. Vines wrapped across craters and ridges, digging deep, and then the flower's head swallowed the entire body whole.

In an instant, the moon was gone.

Where once hung a barren rock, now there was only the massive plant, glowing faintly with the stolen mass. But just as swiftly, it began to contract, shrinking down until it was once more a small, fluttering thing.

It returned to Ikenga, nestling gently into his palm.

Ikenga gazed into the open flower at its crown and there within, suspended like a marble in dew, he saw the moon shrunken and sealed, its essence folded neatly inside the plant's bloom.

Zarvok leaned close, studying the sight with a mixture of fascination and disbelief. Then he shook his head and chuckled "What a lucky fellow."

Ikenga glanced at him, brow slightly furrowed.

"Tainted by the divinity in your eye," Zarvok continued, his voice low. "It gained a conscience… and a gift for space itself. To devour and preserve the heavens? A talent most of the vacuum creatures would envy."

Ikenga turned his gaze back to the little plant, the weight of Zarvok's words lingering in the silence. The flower shook as if proud of what it had done.

Ikenga turned the plant over in his palm, feeling its weight. It was heavier now, but still manageable. He thought of his works, the rare few that stood out among the expanse of his creations.

First were the twin treants, Brix and Aqua, then Bara, who had merged inseparably with his son, flesh and spirit woven into one. Then the great solar vine, the plant that drew light from his brother sun and brought radiance to his realm. And now… this little fellow, born of accident.

He would need to give it a name worthy of its odd gift. For now, he only spoke "Find your place."

The plant stirred, as though considering, before fluttering upward. It circled him once, twice, then came to rest upon his ear. Its small body anchored itself like a living ornament, its flower dangling as a curious earring. Ikenga smiled faintly at the new look, one that seemed both regal and strange.

By now the abyss had finished its feast, the last fragments of the world swallowed into its eternal dark. The gaping maw lingered a moment longer, vast and unspeakably silent, before beginning to close.

Ikenga, Keles, and Zarvok drifted upward together, their forms cutting through the void. They passed through the abyss's black lips just as they sealed shut behind them, and with that final snap, an entire world was gone, Forgotten, unwritten, another story erased from the cosmos.

Far away, in another universe…

A world so massive it dwarfed suns, with countless smaller worlds locked in its orbit, drifted in the vast dark. Within its depths, in a secluded chamber hidden from mortal eyes, an old man sat cross-legged in meditation. His frail body trembled violently, blood leaking from his eyes, ears, and nose.

His breath hitched as the vision consumed him. His eyelids snapped open two scarlet streaks trailing down his face and a ragged scream tore itself from his throat. Reaching desperately into his robes, he produced a small, unassuming bell and shook it.

No sound came.

But in an instant, his body was no longer in the chamber. Space folded around him, and he now hovered in a vast void spangled with endless stars. Before him, eight colossal eyes, each a different hue, blinked open in unison. They gazed at him with impossible weight.

"What did you see, Fate-Mage?" a voice boomed, its depth shaking even the emptiness. At the same time, an unseen force coiled around the old man, stopping the collapse of his body, barely holding his being together.

Through cracked lips, with blood bubbling in his throat, he whispered the only words left in him:

"Extinction… in all planes."

The power holding him together was swept away at the declaration. His body could no longer endure. With a final shudder, the old man burst apart into a cloud of dust.

But the dust did not scatter.

Instead, it gathered, forming a luminous tableau in the star-dotted void a vision etched by the old man's last breath. Shapes and silhouettes of realms collapsing, suns devoured, moons swallowed by flowers, abysses snapping shut like jaws… and beings of light.

The eight eyes regarded the vision in silence and then, one by one, they began to blink.

The eight eyes became six as a figure stepped forth a human male, middle-aged, ordinary only at a glance. The dust of the dead fate-mage gathered into his pupils; motes of sight flickered, orbiting his head like fireflies caught in gravity.

He exhaled, a weary sigh "Another misfortune caused by another smart, ambitious young one," he said, voice even, "only this time he's been found out and now he puts everything at risk."

"How do we deal with this?" another presence asked from the dark.

"As we always have," the man replied. "We make our stance known, and then we see what happens after that." He lifted his hand, and the dust dispersed back into the void yet a single string of light remained, trailing from his fingers like a captured timeline.

"I will go deal with this," he said, and with that he vanished.

The six eyes that remained gazed at one another in solemn silence. In the fading echoes of the vision they had glimpsed wings and radiant forms, beings of light and many others besides. None spoke. All understood.

Meanwhile, the man who held the light-string walked a mountain road that climbed into clouds and stars. Each step was deliberate, slow, eyes kept shut by discipline more than fear. Even with his power, he did not dare claim he could withstand what he would see once he opened them.

Higher. Colder. Quieter.

The figure continued his ascent until at last he reached the mountain's crown. Nothing stood upon it save for a single door,a door suspended midair, without wall, frame, or hinge, held aloft by nothing. Its wooden surface was unmarked, its iron handle floating in perfect balance, as if time itself respected its existence.

Reverence flickered across the man's face. He knew well what it was.

One of the treasures left behind by the First Mage,the first mind to weave order from the chaos.

The Door of All Planes.

A threshold said to grant passage anywhere, to any plane, to any universe. It could be wielded in countless ways, but its true nature was far greater: a reminder that no boundary was ever absolute.

The figure exhaled a quiet sigh, lifted his hand, and knocked.

Silence answered. A silence so deep that even the stars seemed to hold their breath.

Then, after what felt like ages, came the sound of tumblers shifting, an ancient lock yielding, click by click. The man released the breath he had been holding.

His hand touched the floating handle, and as he opened the door, he also let slip the string of light. It drifted gently forward, as though it had been waiting for this, and the moment it crossed the threshold it unraveled into brilliance, expanding, stretching, until within the door's frame hung the vast image of a galaxy, alive and burning in another plane entirely.

The figure's eyes hardened, their reverence gone, replaced by cold resolve. Slowly, deliberately, he reached out his hand, fingers extending into the very heart of that galaxy.

Far from the now-swallowed world, in the universe where the goblin empire was, drifted the planet-sized vessel that had terrorized them for generations. Once pristine and awe-inspiring, it now floated battered and tattered, its hull scarred from centuries of use and battle.

Inside, only a handful of mages remained. Many had fallen, claimed by age, rival powers, or experiments gone awry but their absence had not diminished the resolve of those still alive. The vessel itself hummed faintly as it moved, a living testament to the relentless ambition of its inhabitants. Research and experiments continued unabated, large-scale projects unfolding across its corridors as if the world outside were irrelevant.