Long before stars, before gods, before even the concept of before and after, there was a question.
The Powers That Be asked it aloud into the empty expanse:
“What comes first?”
The answer was laughter.
And from that laughter came Chaos, the first “child” — not born but happened. They were contradiction given form, paradox incarnate, a being who could not be bound because the very idea of binding collapses in their presence. They existed as the joke and the punchline at once.
They wandered existence in those earliest eons, weaving loopholes into the newborn laws of creation, teasing Order, dancing hand-in-hand with Death, planting beginnings where there should be none. Their life was play — cosmic mischief and strange artistry, never cruel but never safe.
But one day, while drifting across the thin veil between mortal and divine planes, Chaos stumbled upon something peculiar.
A mortal soul.
Not special by divinity’s measure. Not blessed, not prophesied, not chosen. Just a human girl.
She was broken, jagged — her spirit dripping with blood from a spree of violence, her body lying in the rubble of her older sister’s night club. The story was pitiful: a disgusting man had dared to touch her, dared to breathe unwanted words into her ear. She answered with fire and knives, laughter and screams, painting the walls with retribution until the world caught up and killed her.
When Chaos looked at her flickering soul, they laughed — not mockery, but recognition.
“Ah,” they whispered, golden eyes glinting, “you don’t fit, do you? You don’t bend to rules — mortal, divine, or social. You are contradiction wrapped in silk and blood.”
To Chaos, she was beautiful. Not because of her crimes, but because of her paradox: a mortal so fragile she could die in a gutter, and yet so relentless she rejected fate itself even in death.
They cradled her spirit and offered her something no god, no devil, no angel could.
A mark.
Not salvation, not redemption, not punishment.
A loophole. And from that loophole was born Hespera Eveningstar, the Silence who would one day silence gods.
Now, eons later, standing in the Dimensional Gap, Chaos remembered that mortal girl’s laughter in the flames of her sister’s night club. Remembered the way she spat at death itself before dying. Remembered the spark that made them call her my star.
The battlefield was collapsing into silence and storm. Pandora’s black sun pulsed once, and entire fragments of ruined temples unmade themselves, falling into lines of ash that blew nowhere.
The four Origin Primordials stood against her, wings and mantles blazing like pillars across eternity.
“Remind me,” Chaos said, weaving sideways just as a beam of annihilation burned across where they had been standing, “why do we always get invited to these family reunions?”
“You never were invited,” Death replied calmly, her voice low as her scythe split another impossible strike in half. Her cloak billowed with every swing, each motion quieting fragments of the battlefield. “You just followed me.”
Chaos grinned, fangs glinting, one serpentine head already sprouting from their back to snap up a stray pulse of erased flame. “Of course I did. You’re fun at parties.”
Rebirth didn’t look amused. His feathers flared in golden-violet arcs as he intercepted a rain of inverted prayers falling like knives. “This isn’t a party, Chaos. She’s unraveling faster than even I can mend.”
Order’s gaze locked on the storm ahead, her voice sharp as a blade. “Focus. She is targeting the lattice. If the weave breaks here, the Underworld and mortal planes will collapse into the Gap.”
“Blah, blah,” Chaos drawled, leaping casually onto one of Death’s shoulders as another blast of voidfire whistled past them. “You really do sound like a fiancée, Order. Always nagging, never dancing.”
Order’s eyes narrowed, just a hint of color flashing at her temples. “One day, I will silence you.”
“You’ll try,” Chaos sang back.
Then the black sun pulsed again.
This time it wasn’t a glancing strike. A lance of annihilation cracked the fabric of space wide open and speared straight into Order’s chest. She froze, golden lines fracturing across her form, her authority shattering with the sound of glass.
“Order!” Rebirth screamed.
Without thought, he dove forward, his wings blazing into a storm of cycles — death, life, rebirth, death, life, rebirth — so fast the void itself reeled. He hurled the tide against Pandora, feathers burning like meteors, screaming with raw fury.
But Pandora met him with a single raised hand.
The black sun rotated once, and Rebirth’s cycles inverted. He fell, his body collapsing into smoke and fire as his consciousness was smothered into stasis. His feathers rained down, dimming into ash.
“Rebirth is down,” Death intoned, her voice quieter than usual but steady. She adjusted her grip on her scythe and tilted her head toward Chaos. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see that coming.”
“I did,” Chaos admitted, golden eyes flicking. “But the temper tantrum was entertaining.”
Pandora’s gaze shifted.
To the side.
To the path where the Gremory family huddled.
Sirzechs’ aura flared crimson, but even he paled as Pandora’s trinary eyes burned brighter, considering threads to pluck and unravel.
“No,” Death said simply. She moved instantly, her cloak spreading like a shield over the devils. The scythe sang, intercepting Pandora’s pulse before it reached them — but the cost was instant.
Her arm went with it.
From the shoulder down, her left side dissolved into starlit dust, cloak torn, the scythe clattering faintly as she gripped it one-handed.
The Gremorys screamed. Rias staggered forward, clutching Koneko, but Sirzechs pulled her back with iron force.
Pandora tilted her head, trinary eyes flickering in curiosity.
Chaos laughed once. Not bright. Not mischievous. But dark. Hungry.
“You’ve had your fun, little paradox,” Chaos said, their voice fracturing into a dozen tones at once. “Now it’s my turn.”
Their body rippled. Paradox peeled back its mask.
And the trickster transformed.
The air shook as Chaos’s form expanded, splitting into contradictions that clawed themselves into flesh and fire. Horns spiraled upward and bent inward, crowned in paradox. From their back unfurled not wings but serpents, each head roaring with impossible beginnings, their scales a storm of twilight and voidfire. Their body was plated in armor made of broken laws, each sigil a scar from when they’d laughed at Order and gotten away with it.
The Dimensional Gap buckled. The Gremorys could not stand.
Death’s remaining hand steadied her scythe, and for the first time in eons, she allowed herself the faintest smile.
Chaos’s laughter boomed across the Gap, no longer playful but thunderous.
“I was the first laugh, the first loophole, the first mistake the Powers ever made,” they declared, serpents writhing in frenzy. “And you hurt my family.”
Their thousand heads roared in unison.
“Pandora… now you face Chaos Unbound.”
The Gap darkened.
Each of Chaos’s serpentine heads opened its jaws, and within each throat burned not flame, not light, but contradictions. One roared with fire that froze, another breathed shadows that illuminated, a third spat void that created stars as it devoured them.
Pandora raised her twenty-four wings, her black sun whirling as she bent annihilation into focus. Threads of undone gods flared around her, weaving into spears of impossible judgment.
The two forces collided.
Chaos struck first.
A serpent head lunged and bit straight through Pandora’s shoulder.
But the paradox unfolded: the wound both bled and healed at once. Flesh unraveled and re-knit simultaneously, leaving Pandora’s body flickering like a broken projection.
Her trinary eyes narrowed. She reached up with one hand and tried to choose which state to enforce — wound or whole. Chaos laughed.
“Both are true,” they sang. “Neither will serve you.”
Pandora retaliated, her wings sharpening into twenty-four blades of obliteration. She hurled them forward in a storm that should have erased even Primordial flesh.
Chaos’s form split in two.
One body was cut apart, shredded into ribbons of paradox, dissolving under her onslaught.
The other stood untouched, serpents still writhing.
Both laughed together before collapsing into one again, the destroyed version sliding back into existence as though it had always survived.
Chaos snapped their claws, and threads of paradox spun outward, forming a net of broken laws.
You must strike me.
You cannot strike me.
You will strike yourself.
Pandora’s black sun flared, burning away the threads. Yet one caught her wrist, binding it for the briefest instant. In that moment, her annihilation turned backward, slicing through her own collapsing ruins instead of Chaos.
Chaos laughed again. Their mirth wasn’t sound—it was contagion. The battlefield itself began to “laugh.” Fragments of divine ruin cracked and folded, gods’ remnants giggled into dust, even Pandora’s storm pulsed in jagged bursts of unstable rhythm.
She wavered. Not in power, but in certainty.
For the first time, Pandora’s smile faltered. The black sun rotated faster, its edges biting at reality until even the Primordials stepped back.
“Contradiction…” she whispered, voice like shattering glass. “Then I will revoke contradiction itself.”
Her trinary eyes burned. She aimed them directly at Chaos, and the black sun pulsed — a wave of singularity. One outcome only. One truth only. She tried to force Chaos into consistency.
For a heartbeat, it almost worked. The serpents faltered. The armor of broken laws shivered. Even Chaos’s laughter cracked.
But then golden eyes gleamed brighter than ever.
“Ohhh, clever!” Chaos howled, their voices splintering into a chorus. “But consistency only matters if the story agrees.”
They bent forward, serpents coiling, and their claws plunged straight into Pandora’s chest.
The paradox rippled outward:
The blow both landed and missed.
Pandora both fell back and stood tall.
The black sun both cracked and held whole.
Reality stuttered. The Dimensional Gap screamed.
The Gremorys collapsed as the shockwave hit them, their souls nearly splitting from the contradiction. Sirzechs’ aura cracked, Grayfia bit blood into her lip just to stay anchored, Venelana clutched Millicas so tightly he wailed.
Death watched in silence, one hand pressed against her missing arm. Rebirth’s body flickered in stasis. Order’s broken lattice trembled.
And still, Chaos pressed forward.
Their laughter grew louder, deeper, darker.
“Pandora, my little paradox, you are strong. But you are only one contradiction. I am all of them.”
The serpents roared. The black sun quaked.
The fight was no longer even.
"Come to Daddy~."