The Emperor of Unmade Time

1

The planet Veridion-6 was an impossible place. It floated in the Arcturan Drift, a storm of quantum anomalies where time had unraveled into knots, loops, and dead ends. Veridion-6 was its blackened heart, ruled by Emperor Xel-Ka, a sovereign who wielded time itself as his dominion.

His decrees were law not in the sense of governance, but in the sense of physics. If he ordered famine, it had already happened before anyone could feel hunger. If he outlawed death, the deceased rose as if they had never perished. He once decreed that his enemies had never been born, and history obediently revised itself. The archives of Veridion-6 were written in erasable stone, its people imprisoned in a reality sculpted by Xel-Ka’s ever-shifting will.

For the people of Veridion-6, time was not linear. It was a mosaic in the Emperor’s hands, shattered and reassembled each day.

And today, a traveler arrived to end him.

2

His name was Ren Hallow, an assassin from the Temporal Concordance, an interstellar order dedicated to preserving causality. Ren had been chosen for this mission not because of skill or loyalty, but because his own past had been erased by one of Xel-Ka’s pronouncements.

Veridion-6 had once been a prosperous colony world, a beacon of trade. But then Xel-Ka declared, “This world was never settled.” Overnight, millions of lives vanished — traders, settlers, families — simply never existing. Ren had been among them. He only survived because he had been off-world.

He remembered a home that never was.

And so, he had come here, armed with the only weapon capable of undoing a god — a paradox dagger, forged from the broken remains of collapsed timelines. If it struck its target, the victim would be unmade, removed from the time stream completely.

His plan was simple: infiltrate the Palace of Unreality, find Xel-Ka, and strike. The only problem? The Emperor had already foreseen his arrival.

3

Ren entered the palace unnoticed. He had already learned that cause and effect did not apply here. Sneaking in was pointless because the concept of discovery was fluid — he could be seen before he even arrived or remain invisible long after he was caught.

His solution? Walk in boldly, unafraid. The guards — if they had ever been guards — did not react. Some were ancient statues. Others had yet to be born. One looked at him and said, “You killed him next Thursday,” then resumed staring into nothing.

Ren hesitated.

“Next Thursday?”

The dagger in his belt felt heavier. He moved deeper into the palace, through corridors that rearranged behind him. Walls whispered yesterday’s secrets. He stepped over battlefields where wars had already been fought tomorrow. At last, he reached the throne room — a vast, shifting space where time itself twisted in upon itself.

And there, upon a throne of crystallized paradoxes, sat Xel-Ka.

4

The Emperor was ageless and ancient at once. His body flickered between possibilities — sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes something that had never existed. His eyes, when they settled into focus, recognized Ren immediately.

“You are late,” Xel-Ka said, their voice both gentle and commanding.

Ren tightened his grip on the paradox dagger. “I came to kill you.”

Xel-Ka sighed. “I know.” They gestured to the room, where shadows of the future played out like echoes.

Ren saw himself, standing over Xel-Ka’s throne. The dagger was already in the Emperor’s chest. Xel-Ka smiled as they faded from existence, a look of understanding in their eyes.

The moment was real. It had not yet happened, but it had already happened.

Ren stumbled backward. “That… that’s impossible.”

Xel-Ka laughed, their voice warm with amusement. “On Veridion-6, everything is impossible. And therefore, everything is true.”

Ren shook his head. “If I already killed you, why are you still here?”

“Because you haven’t done it yet,” Xel-Ka replied. They stood, descending the steps of the throne. “You must understand, Ren Hallow. Time is not a river here. It is an ocean. A storm. A sea without a shore. You will strike me down next Thursday. But that means you have always struck me down next Thursday. My death is both a certainty and an uncertainty.”

Ren’s mind raced. “I could kill you now.”

“You could,” Xel-Ka agreed. “But then, what would happen to Veridion-6? If I die on a Thursday, my rule ends. But if I die today, before that fate is written? What happens to a world built on paradox, when its creator is removed too soon?”

Ren hesitated.

And suddenly, he understood.

5

Veridion-6 did not exist naturally. Xel-Ka’s will sustained it. His reality-warping pronouncements shaped its history, its present, its future. If he was removed before his death had been fixed in the timeline, then time itself would unravel completely.

“You are beginning to see,” Xel-Ka said, watching him.

Ren clenched his fists. “You’re saying I have to wait?”

“I am saying that you already did.”

Ren exhaled sharply. “And if I don’t?”

“Then Veridion-6 will collapse into nonexistence. Its people, its history, every reality I have touched… will be undone. Perhaps even you.”

Ren gritted his teeth. He had trained for years for this mission, prepared himself to take the Emperor’s life. But he had never considered what would happen after.

And now, he had a choice.

6

The days passed like fractured memories. Ren wandered the city outside the palace, watching the people of Veridion-6 live in timeless confusion. Some aged forward, some backward. Some were born in reverse, growing younger until they vanished. Memories reset daily. Wars began and ended in the same breath.

Ren realized that Xel-Ka was not a tyrant in the way he had imagined. He did not rule with cruelty, but with desperation. The Emperor was simply trying to hold the world together — a world that should not exist.

By Wednesday, Ren stood outside the palace once more, staring at the rising twin suns. He knew what came next.

7

Thursday.

Ren entered the throne room. The moment felt eerily familiar — because it had already happened.

Xel-Ka sat upon the throne, waiting. They smiled softly. “It is time.”

Ren drew the paradox dagger.

“I could choose not to do this,” he said.

“You could,” Xel-Ka agreed. “But you won’t.”

Ren’s hands trembled. “What happens to Veridion-6 after you die?”

“That,” Xel-Ka said, closing their eyes, “is not for me to decide.”

Ren stepped forward. The dagger in his hands shimmered with the weight of unmaking.

And then, as if guided by something beyond himself, he plunged the blade into the Emperor’s chest.

Xel-Ka smiled.

And vanished.

8

The world did not collapse.

Not immediately.

But Ren felt it, the unraveling. History twisted, writhed, and reassembled itself. Veridion-6 trembled, its people caught in the storm of rewriting reality. Cities flickered in and out of existence. Rivers changed course.

Ren watched as his own past returned — his home, his family, the life Xel-Ka had erased.

And then —

The throne room vanished.

Ren found himself standing on a quiet hilltop, the twin suns rising over a city that should not have existed.

Veridion-6 was still here. But different. The laws of time had stabilized.

And at last, the rule of Xel-Ka the Timeless was over.

But somewhere, deep in the fabric of time, Ren thought he heard a whisper.

“See you yesterday.”