Creation Of All Things

Aurora's Hidden Workshop – The Days That Followed

The machine stood like a question mark in metal and light. Half-formed. Half-understood. A skeleton of wires and hope, cradled in silence beneath Aurora's hidden workshop.

They worked in shifts. Hours passed like minutes. Meals forgotten. Sleep reduced to flickers behind blinking eyes.

Joshua had sectioned the walls with formulas. Each one stacked, folded, twisted like origami made of thought. Aurora had created containment layers—dimensional skins that would prevent the machine from collapsing the pocket space they worked in.

Still, they failed. A lot.

The first time they powered the core, it hummed, then screamed. One of the stabilizers cracked and turned to ash.

Aurora raised her hand. Froze the spatial collapse just before it reached the walls.

"Okay," Joshua muttered, coughing through the smoke, "maybe I overshot the frequency bias."

"You think?" Aurora said, dry as always.

But she didn't stop.

She never stopped.

She would float midair for hours, eyes closed, syncing the harmonic plates. When she needed rest, she did it standing. Like a sentinel. A ghost on watch.

Joshua adjusted designs on the fly. Rewrote equations mid-solder. He called it chaos-guided engineering.

She called it dumb luck.

But it worked—just barely.

Day 10 – Breakthrough One

The ring sparked to life.

A pulse.

Then another.

Joshua gasped. "It's holding! The harmonic frame's not rejecting the energy field!"

He ran around the console, throwing levers, adjusting dials. Aurora stood nearby, hands raised, maintaining the balance of layered time within the activation core.

Then—

A flicker.

In the center of the ring—something blinked. Not light. Not reflection.

A window.

A glimpse.

A skyline that wasn't theirs. Towers of crystal. A moon split into thirds. A flash of something winged.

Then it vanished.

The entire ring shut down.

Silence returned.

They both stood there, breathing hard.

Aurora lowered her hand. "That wasn't a projection."

Joshua nodded slowly. "That was real."

She stepped forward. Her fingers grazed the frame.

They felt warmth. And pressure. Like the echo of another place had left fingerprints.

"Mark it," she said.

Joshua pulled out his notebook and jotted down everything. Every variable. Every shift. Every pulse timing. Even the static hum it made before blinking out.

They didn't celebrate.

There was still too much to fix.

Day 17 – The Collapse

The third test almost killed them.

The portal opened too fast. The field didn't hold. Reality inside the ring folded inward.

Joshua screamed as gravity turned sideways. Aurora grabbed him, anchored him with a spatial tether, and stabilized the frame with raw force.

The machine exploded outward in a dome of golden light. Everything froze. Mid-collapse.

Joshua floated, upside-down, staring at her.

"How… are you… doing that?"

Aurora's skin glowed. Her hair floated. Her eyes were blank—white like glass.

She exhaled.

And then—

The room snapped back into place.

Gravity returned.

So did the silence.

Joshua collapsed, panting.

Aurora dropped to her knees.

"Okay," he coughed. "So maybe we don't use the Tier-Four converter again."

She didn't answer.

Just laid back, eyes on the ceiling.

"Think I tore something inside time," she muttered.

Joshua chuckled weakly.

"Add that to the list."

Day 23 – The Surprise

It was late.

Rain hit the outside barrier in soft taps.

Joshua was asleep, slumped over his notebook. Aurora was awake, as always, recalibrating the phase dial.

Then—

She heard it.

A pulse.

Not from the ring.

From Joshua's notes.

She walked over.

The notebook was glowing faintly.

Pages turning on their own.

Equations rearranging.

No magic. No tech.

Just… intention.

A whisper from another Joshua, somewhere else.

Her eyes narrowed.

"Joshua," she said, nudging him.

"Huh—wha—" He blinked. "Did I fall asleep?"

She pointed at the notebook.

They both stared.

New formulas had appeared. Not written by his hand.

But they were right.

Joshua paled.

"…It's me," he whispered. "But not me here."

"Another version," Aurora said. "One ahead of us."

"Helping."

They looked at each other.

For the first time, they felt something.

Like the veil had thinned.

Like the multiverse wasn't just theory anymore.

It was reaching back.

Day 28 – Final Build

The workshop had changed.

The walls now held cables like veins. The floor hummed softly. In the center—stood the ring. Completed. Anchored by eight pylons. Each engraved with faint symbols.

Joshua stood before the console. Hands shaking.

Aurora beside him, arms folded, silent.

"Ready?" he asked.

She didn't answer.

Instead, she stepped forward and touched the side of the ring.

The glyphs lit up.

Blue. White. Violet.

The ring shivered.

Then—

VRRRMMMMMMMM—

A tone filled the air. Low. Steady. Like a choir made from gravity.

Light sparked within the ring's core. Then expanded.

It wasn't a portal.

Not yet.

But it was a membrane.

A veil thinned to a thread.

Joshua adjusted the controls. Fingers steady now. "Frequency stable. Interdimensional field locked."

Aurora nodded. "Prepare for window."

He pressed the last key.

FLASH—

And there it was.

A full gateway.

Inside: a world bathed in red light. Dark towers. Floating islands. A figure—faint, distant—turning toward them.

It didn't feel hostile.

It felt curious.

Joshua stepped closer, tears in his eyes.

"I… did it."

Aurora placed a hand on his shoulder.

"No," she said quietly. "We did."

The machine pulsed once more.

Then stabilized.

Their door was real now.

Built from theory, memory, instinct—and something deeper.

Hope.

They stood there.

On the edge of infinite versions of themselves.

And smiled.

Temple of Order and Disorder – Celestial Plane

The wind inside the temple didn't blow. It echoed.

Carved from living stone and astral metal, Joshua's temple rose like a memory born from belief—his new believers had built it across worlds, and somehow, their prayers stitched it into existence here, in the Celestial Plane. A place between realms. Between truths.

He stood at the center of it all.

Eyes closed.

Breathing slow.

His hand rested on the edge of the altar—etched with shifting runes that never stayed the same for more than a second.

The energy here was calm. Balanced. Like time itself listened when he spoke.

Then—

A ripple.

No sound. No light. Just feeling.

A pulse that came from everywhere at once.

Joshua's brows tightened.

His fingers curled.

He opened his eyes slowly—amber irises glowing faintly with ordered chaos.

"…That wasn't natural."

He turned toward the open archway of the temple. The sky beyond shifted color like oil on water. Stars flickered. Some went out for a moment—just a moment. But it was enough.

He stepped forward, gaze narrowing.

Then he felt it.

The fluctuation—massive, raw, undeniable.

Something had just moved.

Not in space.

Not in time.

But across realities.

Joshua raised a hand, and the air split slightly—like glass cracking under pressure. He stared into the distortion, eyes gleaming with code and storm.

"…Who the hell just did something that massive it made the entire multiverse flinch?"

His voice wasn't loud.

But it carried.

Carried into the realm.

Carried into the stars.

Because whatever had just happened…

it wasn't small.

It wasn't random.

And it sure as hell wasn't done.

Joshua stepped back.

And the temple lit up around him.

A thousand runes spinning to life.

Something was coming.

And he was going to find out what.