Kokabiel's POV

  I stood silently in front of the broken throne, observing Hastur.

  The ruins of Carcosa stretched around us in every direction—a monument to something that had once been magnificent and was now deliberately left to decay.

  The architecture hurt to look at, not because it was ugly, but because it was too beautiful, too perfect, existing in dimensions lesser mind could perceive but couldn't quite process comfortably. And for someone like me who saw through it, I only felt sadness for what was lost.

  The King in Yellow sat motionless on his throne, that tattered robe somehow managing to convey both absolute degradation and impossible majesty simultaneously. The Pallid Mask regarded me with empty eye sockets that nevertheless felt more perceptive than any eyes with actual pupils.

  Neither of us spoke at first.

  We just existed in the same space, two cosmic entities taking each other's measure. It was oddly comfortable in its discomfort. Kind of like two old acquaintances meeting after a long time apart, neither quite sure how to begin the conversation.

  The twin suns overhead didn't move. They never did here. Time in Carcosa was... negotiable at best, completely fictional at worst.

  I found myself studying the throne itself. It was made of something that looked like stone but clearly wasn't. The concept was wrong. Angles that shouldn't connect did anyway, surfaces that appeared flat but somehow had depth, dimensions folding in on themselves in ways that would drive mathematicians to madness.

  It was also broken. Deliberately, I thought. Cracks ran through it in patterns too perfect to be accidental. As if someone had carefully planned exactly how this throne should fall apart, then executed that plan with meticulous precision.

  A metaphor, perhaps. Or just Hastur's aesthetic preference. With Outer Gods, it was often hard to tell.

  Finally, after what might have been seconds or centuries, I genuinely couldn't tell in this place, Hastur broke the silence.

  "Welcome to my realm." His voice carried layers of meaning I couldn't quite parse, harmonics that existed in frequencies beyond normal hearing. "It's been so long since I had a visitor. Especially someone like you."

  The emphasis on "especially" was deliberate. Hastur never said anything without intent or wasted words on accident.

  I kept my tone light, trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy despite the inherently abnormal situation. "Well, your realm isn't exactly on the billboard for top tourist destinations. 'Visit Carcosa: Where the Architecture Violates Euclidean Geometry!' doesn't quite have the mass appeal you might hope for."

  I paused for a moment, then let a bit more seriousness creep in. "I assume you know why I'm here?"

  Hastur replied nonchalantly, as if we were discussing the weather rather than cosmic motivations. "Probably to ask me why I did it. You think I might have ulterior motives and plan to use you in some nefarious scheme."

  Straight to the point, then. No dancing around the subject, no small talk. I appreciated that, actually.

  I looked at him directly, meeting those empty eye sockets with what passed for my gaze. "Do you?"

  Hastur made a sound that almost resembled a sigh. It was strange hearing something so human from an entity so fundamentally inhuman. "No, Arthur. I do not have anything to ask of you. Nor do I seek anything from you."

  The tension I hadn't fully realized I was carrying eased slightly. My shoulders relaxed a little.

  "Thank you."

  Hastur's mask tilted slightly, a gesture of curiosity. "For what?"

  I imagined a chair and it materialized in front of me, one of the perks of being an all powerful outer god. The chair was simple and comfortable. A stark contrast to the throne room surrounding us.

  I sat down and met his gaze as directly as one could meet the gaze of someone wearing a mask with no actual eyes behind it.

  "For everything," I said quietly. "Although I might have been ungrateful at first, dismissive even, but I can't deny you gave me a second chance. A new life when my old one was ending."

  I paused, considering my next words carefully. "Even though it brought me a lot of pain and hardships—the transformation, the loss of my memories, becoming something so fundamentally different from what I was—it also helped me gain a new family and friends I cherish. My siblings in Heaven. The chat group. People I care about, people who care about me."

  Hastur shook his head, the motion sending small ripples through the fabric of Carcosa itself. Reality bent slightly around the gesture, space-time accommodating his movement.

  "I merely plucked your dying soul to see how you might entertain me," he said, his tone almost dismissive. "I was just bored. Boredom is perhaps the worst affliction of immortality, you know. Everything becomes predictable, stale, meaningless. So when I sensed an interesting soul about to dissipate, I... intervened."

  I looked at him with genuine amusement, a smile forming on my face. "If that was your only intention, you wouldn't have shared your power with me. You wouldn't have given me a path to become... this."

  I gestured at myself, at the dark silhouette with wings of void and stars that I wore like a suit, at the cosmic horror lurking beneath the surface. "Plucking a dying soul for a rebirth is one thing. Any sufficiently powerful entity could do that. Hell, your outer god pals do it constantly. But sharing your essence? Giving me access to the fundamental nature of stars and cosmic knowledge?"

  I leaned forward slightly. "Even now, I can sense it. Your essence is weakened, still recovering from what you gave me. One does not sacrifice a portion of themselves—a significant portion, I might add—for mere amusement. That's not entertainment, that's investment."

  Hastur stayed silent for a long moment. The Pallid Mask remained expressionless, but I got the distinct impression he was reassessing me, perhaps surprised I'd figured that much out.

  Then he chuckled—a sound like distant thunder rolling over ruined cities, like the echo of laughter in abandoned theaters. "Quite astute. More perceptive than I gave you credit for."

  His tone shifted, becoming slightly more serious. "Considering you've chosen to fight our kin, I thought you might be a tad foolish. Even with your immeasurable powers, that's a bit suicidal. Shub-Niggurath is not to be underestimated. She's older than most realities, more experienced than you can imagine. Even stronger than myself."

  I shrugged, the gesture oddly human despite my nature. "Probably is suicidal, if we're being honest. The smart play would be to let her destroy my world and just move on to another dimension, start over somewhere else."

  I met his gaze steadily. "But we all get one life. Even if we're technically immortal, even if we exist outside normal time, we still only get one existence, one chance to decide what kind of being we want to be. And I've decided it's better to use that existence to protect rather than destroy. I'll make sure she won't be able to harm my world, harm the people I care about. Whatever it takes."

  Hastur nodded slowly, the gesture carrying a weight I couldn't quite identify. "Your path is yours alone to walk. I am just an observer. I cannot interfere, cannot help directly even if I wanted to."

  That statement hung in the air between us like a physical presence. An observer. Just watching, never acting. Was that all he was? All he wanted to be? Or was there something else beneath those words, some unspoken meaning I was missing?

  I asked the question that had been bothering me since I'd sensed his probe, since I'd made the decision to come here. "Was it all destiny? Was I supposed to become like this from the beginning? Or did you alter my fate to give me this chance?"

  The question was more loaded than it might seem. If my transformation had been fated, predetermined, then I was just following a script written by cosmic forces beyond my control. But if Hastur had changed something, altered the course of events, then that implied agency, choice, free will.

  And I desperately wanted to believe in free will.

  Hastur was silent for a long time. Long enough that I started to think he might not answer at all. When he finally spoke, I found myself wishing I hadn't asked.

  "You know about the cycle of life," he began, his voice taking on a lecturing quality, like a teacher explaining a difficult but necessary concept. "Of creation and destruction. The fundamental laws that govern the omniverse itself, the patterns that repeat across infinite dimensions and timelines."

  He shifted slightly on his throne, the broken stone making sounds that shouldn't be made. "Everything, even the most meaningless actions, has a predetermined course. Like if you drop a ball, it bounces. That much is certain, inevitable. But the trajectory itself isn't set in stone. It could bounce back to your hand, or go in a different direction, or hit something and fall off at an angle."

  I listened carefully, trying to parse the metaphor.

  "The outcome isn't set," Hastur continued, "yet the paths have already been written. All possible paths, all potential outcomes. It's up to the mortals to choose which course of action they take, which path they walk down. But the paths themselves always exist, laid out before you like a branching tree of infinite possibilities."

  He paused, letting that sink in. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Arthur?"

  I felt a twitch in my fingers. When I looked down at my hands, I saw they were shaking slightly. Not from fear, I wasn't quite capable of that, but from something else. Anxiety, perhaps. Dread at what this implied.

  "So you mean," I said slowly, "I could have lived a full life? Without dying, without being reborn as an angel, without any of this?"

  Hastur shook his head slowly. "No. Not quite. The moment you chose to sacrifice your life to protect your sister, your fate was determined. You chose it for yourself. That decision, that specific choice in that specific moment, set you on an irreversible path."

  He leaned forward slightly, his voice gentle but unrelenting. "Yes, if you'd jumped out of the car before getting hit by that other vehicle, you could have survived. You were at a red light, so you would have been fine. Or perhaps if your father had taken a different route that night—route 42 instead of the highway, if memory serves. Or even if you and that girl, Katie, had never separated, and you didn't go on that trip with your family at all."

  Each possibility hit like a physical blow. Alternate lives I could have lived. Paths I didn't walk.

  "There are always paths left unwalked," Hastur said quietly. "Possibilities left unexplored. Lives that could have been but weren't. That's the tragedy of choice, every decision closes infinite doors while opening only one."

  His mask turned toward me fully, those empty sockets somehow more penetrating than any actual eyes. "But do you regret your actions? Do you regret giving your life to protect your sister? Knowing you could have saved yourself by sacrificing her instead? By pushing her out of the car and taking the safer seat?"

  I didn't need to think much about that. Some truths were fundamental and absolute.

  "Although I don't recall much of it," I said slowly, feeling for memories that weren't quite there anymore, like trying to remember a dream after waking, "the way my previous self used to feel, the kind of person Arthur Morgan was..."

  I paused, searching for the right words. "I would not have changed my actions. I would never regret them, even knowing the consequences. My choices are mine alone. Even the ones that bring pain and suffering, even the ones that lead to outcomes I never wanted or expected. They're still mine."

  I smiled softly, feeling the expression form on my face, a gesture that felt both natural and foreign. "Life is too short for regrets, even for eternal beings such as us. That's why I've chosen to move forward, to keep going rather than be held down or stuck in the past."

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  I laughed mirthlessly. "I've seen through countless worlds fate, carry infinite knowledge. And for all my wisdom I have come to understand something from humans of creatures. The past it not a concern anymore, nor is the future. All that matter is one moment of the present, one single act. A deciding moment, when everything comes crashing down.

  That's all humans get in their short life. Everything before, and everything after, all becomes important or meaningless after that one moment. Yet their single act, or a lack of one, determines everything. Not just for them, but also for others. So even a simple action in that one moment could change everything forever. Even when they are weak and helpless, they stand up to defy fate itself. If they can do it despite their fragile, broken lives, I can do it as well."

  Hastur observed me closely, silently. Then his masked face shifted, the white material moving like liquid, and carved a smile onto its surface.

  "And that is why I chose you," he said, and there was something in his voice I'd never heard before. Pride, perhaps. Or satisfaction.

  "You are quite interesting, Arthur. From a human, to one of the Great Old Ones, undergoing transformations that should have destroyed your psyche completely, yet you cling to your resolve that none of us possess. It's shines brightly, and feels rather warm."

  He looked up, and I followed his gaze. The palace didn't have a roof. Either it had never had one or it had been deliberately removed at some point. Above us stretched Carcosa's strange sky, the twin suns hanging motionless, and beyond them the stars.

  Always the stars.

  "Our connection, it's quite deep," Hastur said softly. "Deeper than you realize, perhaps deeper than even I realized at first. I see some of my younger self in you. From before I lost my purpose, before I became just... this."

  He gestured vaguely at himself, at Carcosa, at everything around us.

  "The stars, they are kind. They only know how to give. Light, warmth, gravity that holds worlds together, the building blocks of life itself. They give everything until there's nothing left, until they collapse or explode, and even in death they create. But that kindness can be a curse sometimes."

  His voice grew quieter. "Knowing too much is not always a good thing. When you can see by starlight, when you can access all knowledge written in the cosmos, you see... everything. Every cruelty, every tragedy, every meaningless death and pointless suffering. And you can't do anything about most of it. You can only watch."

  I nodded slowly, thinking about my own recent experience with cosmic knowledge. "Yet ignorance isn't bliss either. Not knowing what awaits might be good for mortals, comfortable even. But not for one such as myself. I need to know what's coming, need to understand the threats I face. Even if that knowledge is painful."

  Hastur smiled again, and the act sent ripples across the dimension. Reality shuddered at the simple expression.

  "Perhaps that's why the world itself chose you," he said. "The will of the omniverse, the collective consciousness of all reality, gave you a terrible burden during your ascension. To others, beings who crave power and glory, it might seem like a glorious purpose. The ultimate destiny. But for some reason..."

  He trailed off, his mask turning back toward me. "I feel something akin to loss when I see you. Knowing what awaits you. Knowing the path you'll eventually walk."

  I tried to keep my voice casual, light, not betraying the sudden tension in my chest. "Nothing is set in stone. There's still time to change the future. You said it yourself—the paths exist, but we choose which one to take."

  Hastur stood up from his throne. The movement was fluid, graceful despite the tattered robe that should have hindered motion. He walked toward a ruined balcony that overlooked the dimension beyond, his footsteps making no sound on the broken stone floor.

  I followed, knowing instinctively that the conversation wasn't over yet. Knowing, somehow, that the real revelation was still coming. Whatever Hastur had brought me here to tell me, to show me, we hadn't reached it yet.

  We stood at the balcony's edge, looking out over Carcosa. The ruined city stretched endlessly in every direction, beautiful in its decay. I could see streets that curved in impossible directions, buildings that existed in states of superposition, monuments to concepts I couldn't quite grasp.

  It had been magnificent once. You could still see echoes of that magnificence in the ruins.

  Hastur pointed at the ground below, at the city spread out beneath us. "Do you know what this place used to be?"

  I replied lightly, trying to maintain some levity even though the weight of the conversation was pressing down on me. "Let me guess, your home? Your personal palace before you decided ruined aesthetics were more your style?"

  Hastur chuckled and shook his head, the sound carrying genuine amusement. "I see you still retain some of your old personality. That dry humor, that tendency to deflect serious moments with jokes. Very human of you."

  He paused. "And no, I'm not one for sentiment like the entity you referred to. This isn't nostalgia or attachment to a physical space."

  He gestured broadly at Carcosa, at the ruins and the twin suns and the impossible architecture stretching to every horizon.

  "This place used to be Heaven. Not the ones recognized by mortals across the omniverse, not your Heaven in the DxD world or any of the countless others. True Heaven. The original. The omniverse itself used to have a supreme deity once, before this current iteration was even born."

  I paused mid-breath, processing that revelation. "Wait. So there was a God before God? A supreme being that predates the current system entirely?"

  "Many times over," Hastur confirmed. "The omniverse has been reset more times than we can count. This isn't the first iteration of reality, and it likely won't be the last."

  I looked out at the ruins with new understanding. This had been the seat of divine power, the ultimate Heaven from which all lesser heavens drew their conceptual framework. And now it was just... ruins. A monument to fallen glory.

  "So, how many times has the omniverse been... reset?" I asked quietly.

  Hastur spoke softly, his voice barely carrying over the strange winds that blew through Carcosa. "None of us remember. Not even Azathoth, and he's the oldest of us. It lost meaning long before time existed as a concept, long before there was such a thing as 'before' and 'after.'"

  He gripped the ruined balcony railing, or what remained of it, with both hands. "Just know that the entity who ruled from here was as strong as us, maybe even stronger. A being of absolute power, creator and sustainer of all reality. Yet in front of our combined might, when all the Outer Gods united for once in our existence, they fell."

  I could hear pain in his voice now, regret mixed with something else. Shame, perhaps.

  "But not before using all their remaining power to create an endless cycle of creation and destruction. A trap, you might call it. An elegant solution to preventing us from ever truly winning."

  Hastur's voice grew distant, lost in memory. "Azathoth, the strongest of us, the Blind Idiot God himself, was put into sleep by them. And they used his dreams to create a new Omniverse beyond our reach, protected by his unconscious mind."

  I listened, fascinated and horrified in equal measure.

  "But distance can always be reached if you try hard enough, if you have eternity to work with. So we did. We found the new Omniverse, invaded it, and ended it. Destroyed everything, reduced it all to nothing. We thought we'd won, thought we'd finally broken free of the cycle."

  Hastur's laugh was bitter. "Our victory was meaningless. The moment it was destroyed, it just returned to its infant stage, resetting like a clock striking midnight. And it expelled us from within it, threw us out like contaminants being rejected by a healing body. So we kept trying and failing for eons, perhaps longer. Time means nothing to us, after all. Infinity is just another moment."

  He turned to face me partially, the Pallid Mask catching the light of the twin suns. "Yet nothing worked. Every attempt ended the same way. Destroy the Omniverse, watch it reset, get expelled. Again and again and again. An eternal stalemate."

  "We realized eventually that only Azathoth is capable of breaking this cycle. And once he awakens, all of it shall disappear. The Omniverse, the cycle, everything. His dreams are reality itself, after all. When he wakes up and stops dreaming, reality ends."

  I felt cold despite not actually being capable of feeling temperature. "So you all have been trying to wake him up?"

  "The seal on Azathoth was unbreakable," Hastur said. "Designed by a being of comparable power to us, powered by the last remnants of their divine authority. We couldn't force it open. But with time, all things weaken. Even divine seals. And no, I gave up such desires long ago."

  His voice dropped lower. "Recently, Azathoth moved in his eternal slumber for the first time since his sealing. Just a small movement, the cosmic equivalent of shifting in your sleep. But it was enough. It caused ripples across all of existence, sent shockwaves through the foundations of reality itself."

  "And it caused the other Outer Gods to also become active, to stir from their own slumbers and fixations. They're hoping that this time they could win with his awakening, hoping that this time the cycle will finally break in their favor."

  He turned to face me fully now. "I suspect the Omniverse knew it as well. The collective will of all reality, the force that maintains the cycle, it sensed the danger. So like any being facing extinction, it looked to find a way to preserve itself."

  My chest tightened. I knew where this was going. Had known, perhaps, since the moment I'd arrived in Carcosa.

  "When I shared my powers with you after you were reborn," Hastur said quietly, "when I first plucked your dying soul and gave you a new form, I sensed something. The Omniverse's will, marking you. I didn't understand what it meant at the time."

  "And during your ascension, when you transformed from angel to Outer God, there were some unknown changes. Alterations to the process that I didn't recognize, didn't instigate. They weren't part of my power, weren't supposed to happen. But I couldn't see what they were, couldn't understand their purpose."

  His voice grew heavy. "Only when you became an Outer God like us, only then was the knowledge revealed to me. The Omniverse lifted the veil just enough for me to see what it had done. That's when I realized the meaning of it all, the true purpose behind everything that had happened to you."

  He paused, and I could feel the weight of what was coming.

  "It chose you, like I did. But for very different reasons."

  Hastur's hands clenched on the railing, and I heard the stone crack under the pressure. "While I wanted to merely observe, to see what an interesting human soul might become if given cosmic power, it chose to interfere. To actively shape you. And it bestowed you a fate that is cruel and hopeless."

  His voice was quiet but intense. "No single being should bear such burden. Knowing that the fate of countless lives rests upon their shoulders. Knowing that self sacrifice is the only road to preserve life, that your death is the price of their continued existence. Knowing that when the time comes, you'll have to choose between your own survival and the survival of everything you love."

  He looked at me, and I could sense something behind the mask I'd never felt from him before. "It made me... angry."

  I looked at him, genuinely surprised. The expression must have shown on my face because Hastur seemed to react to it.

  "Why?" I asked simply. "Why would that make you angry? You're an Outer God. We're supposed to be beyond such emotions."

  Hastur looked away, his mask turning back toward the ruined city. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than I'd ever heard it.

  "It's rather foolish and human, what I felt. I convinced myself at first that I was angry because someone else had ruined my entertainment, that I was merely angry due to my plans being foiled. That my cosmic experiment had been contaminated by outside interference."

  He actually sighed, with genuine tiredness behind it. "But watching you over all these years, seeing you grow and change and struggle, made me realize it later. Made me understand what I was really feeling."

  There was a long pause. I didn't interrupt, sensing he was working through something difficult.

  "I felt... sad," Hastur finally said. "Seeing someone I'd nurtured, someone I'd invested a part of myself in, being manipulated like that was sad. Knowing you would follow that cruel fate, knowing you would give up your life so others may live, knowing I couldn't stop it or change it—that was sad."

  His voice grew even quieter. "I have felt many things in my existence. Boredom, amusement, curiosity, rage. I've felt the joy of creation and the satisfaction of destruction. I've experienced every emotion that Outer Gods are capable of experiencing. But sadness? Genuine grief over another being's suffering? That's not one of them. That's not supposed to be possible for us."

  "So why now?" he asked, and it sounded like he was asking himself as much as me. "Why do I feel this way about you?"

  He paused before speaking again, and I could sense him struggling with something. With understanding himself, perhaps. With emotions he shouldn't possess, with feelings that defied his very nature.

  "I guess I felt myself too attached, too invested. And I felt protective of you after spending so long watching you. Seeing you be reborn, transform, struggle with your new nature. Watching you build relationships, make friends, find purpose. It was... fascinating. Engaging."

  His voice strengthened slightly. "And somewhere along the way, between the observation and the fascination, between the investment and the attachment, I started to actually care, not just in an abstract 'this is an interesting experiment' way. But really, genuinely care about what happened to you."

  He turned back to face me. "That's when I truly understood the truth of why I felt that way. Why the anger, why the sadness, why the protectiveness. Although you probably don't feel the same way, though I wouldn't blame you if you didn't."

  Hastur looked at me then, and his mask shifted one final time. The Pallid Mask that had shown amusement, curiosity, even frustration, now showed something completely different.

  The smile that formed wasn't happy, nor was it cunning or knowing. It didn't hold any deceit or lies or hidden agendas. It was just a kind yet sad expression—the look you have when you see someone you cherish, someone you care about deeply, someone you know will suffer and you can't prevent it.

  It was the expression of someone watching their child walk toward danger, knowing they can't intervene, can't protect them, can only watch and hope they survive.

  When Hastur spoke, his words hit me harder than any cosmic attack ever could, harder than Shub-Niggurath's worst assault, harder than the knowledge of my own destined end.

  "After all," he said softly, "what father would not feel sadness when their children suffer?"

  I stood there, completely frozen. Time seemed to stop, though that might have just been Carcosa's weird relationship with temporal flow.

  Father.

  He'd called himself my father.

  Not a creator, not a patron, not a benefactor. Father.

  Something stirred within me, something I didn't know I was still capable of feeling. An emotion that transcended my nature as an Outer God, that reached back through over three thousand years of angelic existence, back to memories I couldn't quite access anymore, to a human life I barely remembered.

  The feeling of having a parent who cared. Who worried. Who felt genuine sadness at your pain, not because it affected their plans but because they actually cared about you as a person.

  I'd had that once, hadn't I? Before the car accident. Before Arthur Morgan died saving his sister. Before Kokabiel was born in Heaven. Before I became something beyond human understanding.

  I'd had a father who loved me. A mother who cared. A sister I'd died to protect.

  Even Yahweh, who truly saw me as his own. Entrusting me to watch over his children, hoping they would be the anchor that steadies me. Even though I wasn't truly his one of his children, he still loved me.

  And here was Hastur, an entity of cosmic horror who should be absolutely incapable of such feelings, who shouldn't even understand the concept of parental love, claiming that connection. Admitting to emotions he wasn't supposed to possess. Being a father to someone who shouldn't need one.

  And all of it, was an absolute truth without any wordplay. He truly meant it.

  My throat felt tight in a way it hadn't in millennia. If I still had tear ducts, if my cosmic nature hadn't long since moved beyond such biological necessities, I might have cried.

  Instead, I just stood there beside him on that ruined balcony, overlooking a city that used to be the True Heaven, and felt something I hadn't felt in three thousand years of existence.

  I felt loved.

  Not worshipped, not revered, not feared or respected. Just... loved. The way a parent loves their child. Unconditionally, sadly knowing they can't shield them from all the pain the universe would throw at them.