Chapter Text
A white void surrounds everything—it seems infinite. No walls, no floor, no ceiling. Only an endless, warm darkness that smells of old books and, for some reason, strawberry milkshake. And in the center of this whiteness: a chair. An ordinary wooden one, slightly creaky. Sitting on it is a young-looking man with long chestnut hair tied back in a careless ponytail. His tired green eyes are fixed on the pages of a diary, his hand casually writing new lines on the paper.
Beside him floats a mug of steaming coffee. The coffee floats by itself. The mug too.
Curled up in a ball directly under the chair, resting on absolute nothingness, lies an enormous black cat. Its eyes are closed, but its ears twitch slightly—it's not asleep. It's listening.
Continuing to write in his diary, the young man began to read aloud what he had written:
"Diary of a Multiverse Traveler. Day… I don't know which one. Time has no meaning in the void. Neither does anything else, really.
My name is Daniel Scarlet. You can call me Danny. You can call me 'Hey, you.' You can call me 'That guy with the cat.' I'll answer to anything except 'Creator of the End'—that sounds way too pompous for a man who tripped over his own backpack yesterday."
Finally, he lifts his gaze from the diary and stares straight ahead into the void—to where his sixth sense clearly detected the presence of an unfamiliar entity.
"Yes, I'm talking to you. Don't look around. You're alone in the room. I hope."
Danny takes a sip of coffee. Judging by his face, the coffee has already gone cold. He drinks it anyway and gestures at the emptiness around him.
"Don't mind… all this. This is the In-Between. The Interval. The space between universes where I stop to make notes. It's quiet here, no one is screaming, and Chthon isn't trying to eat anyone yet. The perfect place for a diary."
The cat at his feet opens one eye—a glowing, crimson one—and makes a sound that could be interpreted as "yet."
"That's him," Danny nods toward the cat without looking up from his diary. "Chthon. My demon. My god of chaos. My fluffy roommate. He's around several billion years old, capable of destroying reality with a snap of his claws, but right now he's pretending to be a normal cat because I promised him salmon if he behaves quietly."
The cat opens its eye again and lets out a low, rumbling purr that sounds suspiciously like laughter.
"You didn't say there'd be an audience. I would have worn a tie."
"You don't own a tie."
"I would have created a tie. Out of darkness. It would have been magnificent."
Danny sighs—a long sigh, the kind of sigh a man has been sighing for a thousand years and plans to keep sighing. He turns the page of his diary.
"If you're reading this, it means you're either very curious, very lost, or Hton has once again broken the fourth wall and thrown my diary into a foreign reality. Typical situation."
Chthon, without opening his eyes, retorts indignantly:
"One time. It was one time."
"It was five times. Just last week."
"Five times is a statistical margin of error."
Danny closes his eyes for a second. He takes a deep breath. Exhales. Then he scratches Chthon behind the ear—mechanically, a habit honed over centuries. The cat lets out a satisfied purr that sounds like a miniature earthquake.
"You know, dear reader," Danny continues, returning to the diary, "people often ask: 'What is it like to be the Creator of the End?' Well, imagine you're a walking nuclear reactor that could explode at any moment and rewrite reality. Now imagine that this reactor comes with a cat. A cat older than the universe, who considers the apocalypse a 'cute hobby' and constantly suggests you 'stir up some chaos, it'll be fun.'"
"It will be," replies Chthon, purring.
"It won't."
"You're boring."
"You say that more often than you yawn."
Danny turns the page and starts writing. The pen glides across the paper, and a quiet, soothing scratching sound fills the void.
"I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask to become a vessel for an ancient demon. I didn't ask to be the last of my kind. I didn't ask for my soul to be bound to a god of destruction for all eternity."
A pause.
"I wanted to be a librarian. Quiet. Inconspicuous. With a work schedule and health insurance."
Another pause.
"I don't have health insurance. Hton ate my insurance agent."
Chthon lifts his head and looks at Danny with an expression that, on a cat, might pass for tenderness—if his eyes weren't glowing with hellfire.
"He was rude."
Danny, without looking up from his diary, replies wearily:
"He just offered me a discount."
"5%! That's not enough. We deserve the full 100%!"
Danny sighs again. The coffee mug disappears—he's finished it. He closes the diary for a moment, staring into the void, which seems to stare back at him.
"Anyway, this diary is my attempt to keep my sanity. Or what's left of it. Here you'll find notes about the worlds we've visited, the people—and non-people—we've met, and how Chthon has proven time and time again that 'vacation' and 'chaos' are synonyms for him."
He raises his eyes to the reader, and something between exhaustion and warmth flickers in them.
"Thank you for reading. Seriously. It's nice to know that someone else knows I exist. Even if that someone is a random person from a parallel universe who found my diary in an interdimensional library. Or in a toilet. Chthon loves hiding things in toilets."
"It was a strategic relocation," Chthon replies with pride.
"It was a toilet bowl."
"A strategic toilet bowl."
Danny snaps the diary shut, stands up from the chair. The chair dissolves. The rug rolls up and vanishes. All that remains is him, in the void, with the diary tucked under his arm and an enormous black cat that gracefully leaps onto his shoulder, settling there like a living fur collar. Chthon weighs about as much as a small galaxy, but Danny got used to it long ago.
"Well then. Welcome to "Meow". I hope you have a spare canon. Because we're probably going to break ours."
Chthon leans close to Danny's ear and, loudly and with distinct pleasure, utters:
"Meow."
Danny closes his eyes.
"He's already plotting something. Okay. I'll go before he gets hungry and decides to eat someone along the way. See you."
He takes a step into the darkness—and disappears. The void closes in behind them.
Somewhere very far away, at the edge of hearing, a whisper echoes:
"Danny, the next universe is the one where everything is made of salmon. Maybe we could…"
"No."
"You're boring."
"And you're repeating yourself."
Silence. And then laughter. Low, rumbling, satisfied. And a quiet, almost unintelligible:
"I know."