The night air was thick with tension.
Ardyn moved silently through the dense southern forest of Konoha, the trees parting before him as shadows curled away from his presence. The System pulsed urgent updates into his thoughts.
[Entity Located: 342 Meters Southwest]
[Vital Signs: Fading]
[Void Signature: Muted, Not Hostile]
His fingers twitched, void threads whispering beneath his skin. Whatever this girl was, she hadn't just stumbled into this world—she'd been sent.
And something had followed her.
He found her collapsed beneath the roots of a massive tree—blood smeared across her lip, a crack running diagonally through the green-and-black device fused to her wrist.
The Omnitrix. But distorted. Evolved. Customized far beyond anything this timeline's tech should support.
Her eyes fluttered open.
Golden irises met void black.
"…not… Ben…" she whispered, voice raw.
"I'm not," Ardyn replied simply.
She winced, struggling to rise.
"…Timeline 99003-F… fell… They're coming."
He raised a brow.
"Who?"
She shuddered violently as sparks danced across her wrist. The Omnitrix screeched in binary pulses before powering down. Her skin flickered—for a heartbeat, she turned transparent. Like she was phasing out of reality.
"The Paradox Engine," she said, coughing blood. "It activated. Every failed timeline… collapsed into one."
Ardyn stilled.
A pulse of memory—not his own—struck him.
Visions.
A thousand worlds burning.
Ben 10 fighting a monstrous fusion of Alien X and Eon.
Goku Black battling a twisted Luffy wielding All For One.
Doctor Strange turned into a dimensional Warden, lost in endless rewrites.
A multiverse collapsing under the weight of too many "What Ifs."
The girl's hand clutched his arm.
"They're rewriting realities… hunting anomalies. You're not safe."
Ardyn smirked.
"I never was."
[SYSTEM ALERT: MULTIVERSE BLEED TRIGGERED]
[NEW QUEST UNLOCKED: "Defy The Collapse"]
[Reward: Dimensional Core Fragment – Tier: ???]
Elsewhere – ROOT's Deep Archives
Danzo examined the latest ripple in the village's energy grid. He saw the spike. Felt the shift.
A being had entered outside the barriers.
"Open Channel Zeta," he ordered coldly.
A hologram shimmered into existence, revealing a cloaked figure with glowing red lines etched into their skin.
"Deploy the Chimera Protocol. I want whatever fell from the sky contained. If we can't control it…"
He clenched his fist.
"…we'll dissect it."
In the Hospital – Konoha Medical Wing
Tsunade stared at the girl lying unconscious in the quarantine ward. Her skin was stabilizing. Her vitals… not human.
"Her blood isn't even one element," Shizune whispered. "It's seven."
Tsunade looked toward the hallway.
"She's not from here. And I have a sinking feeling… the boy with void eyes knows exactly who sent her."
That Night – Ardyn's Hideout
The girl—now bandaged and stable—sat across from him, sipping warm tea shakily. Her name was Lyra, a multiversal traveler born in a failed Ben 10 timeline where the Omnitrix was corrupted by a dimensional virus.
"I wasn't supposed to survive," she muttered.
He tilted his head. "Yet here you are."
"Only because you exist," she whispered.
He went still.
"The Paradox Engine scans timelines for anomalies. When it found you—someone who broke the fate of your original world and began rewriting others—it sent a hunter."
"What kind of hunter?"
She met his eyes.
"A Variant of You. One that surrendered to the Void completely."
[MULTIVERSE WARNING: "VOID KING PROTOCOL" – ENEMY IDENTIFIED]
Codename: Obsidian Ardyn
Status: Rogue God-Level Entity
Mission: Consume All Void Carriers to Stabilize the Multiverse Collapse
Ardyn leaned back, a rare flicker of true intrigue behind his calm gaze.
"So I'm being hunted by… myself?"
"No," Lyra said. "You're being hunted by what you could become."
A silence stretched between them.
Then, Ardyn stood and walked toward the window, eyes glowing faintly.
"I've always wanted to meet a version of me who made worse choices."
Meanwhile – Rift Between Dimensions
A storm churned in a void of stars.
And through it walked a man draped in layered, living shadows. A crown of broken timelines pulsed above his head, and in his hand, he carried a sword made of collapsed fates.
Obsidian Ardyn.
His eyes locked onto a flickering beacon in the Naruto timeline.
"I have found you," he said.
His voice echoed across fractured realities.
"And I will reclaim what you stole."
[CHAPTER END | NEXT: Obsidian Ardyn Descends – The First Rift Break]