TOO MUCH LOVE
When the universe-destroying black hole came to swallow their planet, Xyris and Elara fled through the stampede of panicked cityfolk, hand-in-hand.
Taking shelter in an underground carpark, the two tearfully embraced as the world shook around them - everything they once knew, sucked into the cold vacuum of the dark star.
Xyris could not accept this cruel fate. Not for Elara, who had fought so hard to enjoy her short, painful life expectancy, only for it to be taken away from them by a cosmic force that knew nothing of what they had been through.
It was pointless, foolish; but Xyris took a stand as the deafening sounds of destruction drew nearer and nearer. He stood in front of her as a defiant protector, against the very laws of reality.
"NOT HER! PLEASE! TAKE ME INSTEAD!"
She embraced him from behind, sobbing. The two hugged, said their goodbyes -
His pleas were consumed by the black hole.
Xyris awoke in the void, his new form entirely alien. Everything the black hole had ever consumed had fused with his flesh, creating a black amalgamation of material that took shape as crystal.
Following that revelation were the voices - All of humanity pouring into his thoughts, like an infinite number of radio channels broadcasting directly into his brain at once.
It was too much.
He screamed, cried, stumbled through the dark as he held onto his corroding sense of self.
"I'm Xyris... I'm going to find Elara... Keep going..."
But try as he might, the voices were relentless, and they began to drown out his own thoughts. He refused to give in, refused to be subsumed into the void of thoughts.
But he wandered for so long. With so many questions and no answers.
This had to be some kind of cosmic joke.
He was slowly losing his sanity, but he found himself unable to stop laughing. The laughter echoed through the void, an insane symphony of mirth, and he couldn't stop. It was a comfort in this mad nightmare of a void, the only thing that made him feel like he wasn't completely alone.
There was a twisted sense of clarity as he gave into his insanity. The nature of his current state became clear to him; his will to protect Elara, the sheer power of his pleas had fused him to the black hole, overriding its actions; but at the cost of his... everything.
He loved her too much.
And as he fell to his knees, wracked with manic laughter, Xyris made sense of his existence by reinventing a new self:
"I am the black hole," he muses, cackling. "I am Xyris, the shattered psyche."
With a sense of childish glee, Xyris shattered the void around him, and it broke under his will. As glass shards rained down upon him, he reeled his head back and laughed. "I am a sovereign, a god!"
Through his multiversal tyranny as Voidshard Sovereign, one question remained...
Where was she?
Did he even save her?