The architect didn't design every living creature to host an Anima. More often than not, he allowed life to take its own natural course developing and changing in the way that it would following the whims of natural selection. Life on its own was capable of coming into being without the architect's intervention. Despite having created the universe, and many universes besides, he had allowed his own laws to carry creation. He had a hand in everything and nothing in a way that only an unknowable being separate from the four dimensions, length, width, depth and time could have a hand in everything. Even Anima did not necessarily require his direct intervention to create. Every creature that had a sentient mind had an anima, and every animal that was intelligent enough to go against its own instincts could have a rudimentary anima of sorts. However, being an anima directly created by the architect came with both privileges and responsibilities.

Adham was one of those Anima.

Someone with responsibilities.

He was the oldest Anima to have existed, and with years of experience he had grown in power, striving to follow in the footsteps of the architect. From the beginning he had been saddled with great purpose, and that purpose had followed him since. Once he had stood on Earth's surface feet bare on the moss and grass of Eden nestled at the head of its four rivers, and there he had been given his task , dominion over earth, father of humanity , the first soul run through the gauntlet.

Now this is where the fourth dimension of time gets tricky. Adham was the first anima, despite the celzex existing long before humans did, but when extradimensional beings are involved time gets complicated. he was the first, and since he had watched the creation of thousands of more anima under him, but now.... All that was over.

No more anima were coming.

He didn't know why, and he didn't know how, but the last Anima had already been born. How long ago was that?

About thirty years give or take.

Adham was the first, and so there was the last. Martha and Jim Vir couldn't have known that they doomed all of creation into an Adam sandwich when they named their youngest son, but here they were, in a world of annoying symmetry beginning with Adham and ending with Adam. Personally, Adham had the sneaking suspicion that the architect was trying to be funny though he certainly never would have said that. The first and the last, neither of them the best.

As he stood on a bridge of stars Adham couldn't help but think back to the times before, to the warm wind of earth, the smell of the trees, the dirt under his toes. Even the pain was a fond memory, however distant. Because even back on earth without the benefit of technology, medicine, or painkillers, the experiences of earth were nothing in comparison to this.

Before him stood a multitude of anima stretching in an infinite wall above and below him. They came in all shapes and sizes, Tesraki warriors, Greek heroes, Drev saints, Celzex lords, modern soldiers, Rundi fables, and the odd religious icon. It was a glorious show of force, a wall of impenetrable light. If that show of force wasn't enough, they were bolstered from behind by a thousand troop carriers ships in all sizes and shapes, outfitted for the soul purpose of cosmic war equaled or dwarfed In comparison to their ancient allies, the leviathan.

It was an incomprehensible scene of complete awe and power. The multitudes of Revelation come, and yet it took everything Adham had to stand his ground, took even more not to tremble in fear as he looked at what they faced.

Nothingness.

A mass well of non-existence.

Ruin

Damnation

The end.

Incomprehensible beings of power and darkness stretched from eternity to eternity, their very existence maddening and impossible. They defied all the laws of the architect, because they were born outside his laws, in other world and dimensions disturbed by the architects new and burgeoning creation. Angry and hungry.

Flames licked upwards from the blade of his sword, heating his face with a warm white glow. The flame shouldn't have existed in the vacuum of space, without oxygen, but inexplicably it managed to survive. To his left stood his second lieutenant, a hybrid man somewhere between human and starborn. His skin was alabaster white, and a trail of ribbons flowed down from his back, though his body was thick and muscled like that of a warrior. To his other side stood Adhams eternal companion.

The mother of humanity pursed her perfectly bowed lips together dark hair pulled back in a tight knot.

"This is almost insulting."

He didn't see how she could focus on this with everything that was behind it, but somehow he appreciated her glibness.

Before them, standing atop their bridge of stars was the ambassador. The creature was difficult to describe and maddening to look at, but at least it had a head, and soemthing that was probably a rear, unlike most of the others who most consisted of incomprehensible masses of darkness and the occasional tentacle.

Even so, the ambassador had no intention of talking to them directly.

Their liaison knelt on the bridge, small and overwhelmed completely by the dark forces that stood behind shaking in her shadow black armor, once so grand, now like child's play in comparison to the creatures she represented.

Adham looked over his shoulder, to the line of warriors, and somehow managed to find the face he was looking for.

The warrior in gold had his head bowed unable to look at what his lover had become. Some worried that he would flip during the battle, that he could be corrupted by his feelings for her, but Adham trusted him.

Kazna was shoved forward on to the bridge, her still-mortal, or at least mostly mortal body, shimmering and flickering as she moved. She was coming apart at the seams, and was barely managing to hold herself together. No construct had ever been intended for use in a situation like this, and it was only the power of her dark masters that managed to hold her together, albeit rather shakily. She was a puppet to their dark purposes, behind her trailed two figures locked in chains of darkness, and behind them came hundreds more, the anima of those she had harvested slowly being drained of their life force by the growing power of the void.

The void could not produce its own power, at least not at the rate of any creature born for the purpose of creation. Anima had an unbelievable amount of power, a single Anima could have kept Revelation burning for a thousand years, and it was for that reason that these creatures even bothered with them at all.

They wanted power

Like all greedy things did.

Kazna stumbled yanking on the chains to her two pets.

A shadowy figure to her left stumbled, but was caught by the strong hands of a rather strange looking human. As usual the last Emperor of the Celzex did not bow to sentimentality, trading his original body for a more practical one. He and the void corrupted Kelly were the only unfaded Anima. That made sense of course as both were examples of the Architects attempts to inoculate his creations against the void.

The last anima more powerful and resilient than many of the architect's other creations. That could be seen here.

Even though Kelly was infected with the void, they could still not siphon her power. And then there was lord Celex, proud and unbroken at her side, holding the void Kelly in his arms with all the pride and courage of a man not in chains. He held his head high, undisturbed by the void at his back or the architect's multitude at his front.

He almost seemed bored.

That was one mean, resilient bastard.

Kazna was not so unphased. Perhaps it was her mortal construct that hampered her ability to take in the world around her. Perhaps it was the weakness of her anima itself, but still she managed to step forward and lift her head to them. The ambassador stepped back, its body practically dripping with distain. Kazna was here because it had absolutely no intention of speaking to them as equals, better make its broken toys do it instead.

"The void demands that you surrender." Her voice quivered like a dead leaf in a light breeze.

At Adham's side the mother of humanity lifted her chin in defiance, and turned to give him a look. He nodded to her and she took a step forward over the bridge of stars.

She held a flaming short sword in each hand, "Unlikely, void spawn." She ignored Kazna entirely and stared at the ambassador.

Kazna shivered looking sick, "You will surrender, and we will suck the power from your bodies, use it to return these dimensions to their former state of truth. To their formers state of equilibrium."

Behind her the entire wall of void creatures shifted. The air around them was filled with the maddening jibber of a thousand voices speaking in incomprehensible tongues.

The mother of humanity made a face, "it seems that the art of negotiation is soemthing not taught to your void children. So let me explain, you give us terms, we demand a compromise, that suits us, ou tweak that compromise, it goes back and forth until we both get something that sounds reasonable to live with."

The jabbering chatter rose.

Kazna winced and clutched at her head, "We will not negotiate. You will die."

Eve lifted her chin, "Than you will fall to ruin at the end of our blades along with the hubris that brought you."

Adham could feel the tension in the air, a rumbling murmur that stirred up his very being. He uncapped the power held inside, light beginning to shine from the skin of his outer shell. Behind him others were doing the same. Warriors morphed slowly into comfortable forms of battle, mock constructs to hold their energy in, and give them a sense of familiarity and power. Leviathan whipped and spun behind them.

Kazna was on her knees now, her hands over her head.

Adham ignored her, his eyes fixed on Lord Celex who had gone unusually still, holding the chains that bound him and Kelly taught between two hands. His multicolored eyes were still and cold. The void Kelly hung onto the chains, and it seemed to Adham that she looked at her companion, despite not having a face.

Soemthing was going on there, though he had no time to think what it was.

"So you have chosen destruction." And then came the call, a deep bombing roar, a chatter of insane laughter, and the chanting of voices speaking things that should never be spoken in any mortal tongue.

Kazna fell to her knees, and the ambassador roared.

Adham roared back and raised his sword. Behind him the lines of anima warriors pulled together into tight walls, shields of golden light appearing in interlocking hexagons before their faces. And the void charged.

The ambassador came first swinging a blade of darkness over its bulbous incomprehensible head.

Adham was almost to distracted with the coming battle

But not distracted enough to ignore what followed.

I nthat moment with Kazna on her knees and Kelly holding onto the chains, Lord Celex acted, leaping forward into the path of the ambassador. Right into the swing of tis dark blade. Adham was almost sure he was going to watch the emperor die, but at the last moment, he twisted to the side. Back on the ground, void Kelly braced herself and pulled the chain between them taught. The dark blade missed the emperor by less than an atomic fraction cleaving straight through the chain and causing it to snap with a distant chatter of shadow.

The chain vanished into smoke.

The ambassador was past him now, an entire hoard coming up the bridge hungry for blood. Adam began to run.

Just as the next void creatures had reached the bridge, void Kelly ran and dove off the edge. She intercepted lord Celex mid fall, slamming into his chest and sending the two of them spinning out into space.