The gods gathered around Noir's fallen form, exhausted but not victorious. They knew this was only the beginning.

  "We must act quickly," Tempus warned, his aged form flickering with strain. "His soul will seek to reunite."

  Sol nodded grimly. "The coffin is prepared."

  From the void, they summoned a casket forged from dying stars and lined with chains of pure divine will. Into this prison, they pced Noir's body, still perfect and unmarred despite the battle. Luna wove spells of eternal sleep while Terra added yers of stone and crystal. Aqua surrounded it with waters from the primordial ocean, and Tempus locked it in a bubble of frozen time.

  "Where shall we hide it?" Luna asked, her light dimmed from the effort.

  "In the deepest ocean of the emptiest world," Aqua decided. "Where no life stirs and no light reaches."

  They chose a desote pnet in the farthest reaches of reality, one that had never known the touch of consciousness. In its lightless depths, they buried the coffin, sealing it with their combined powers.

  "And the soul fragments?" Terra inquired, watching as the pieces of Noir's essence swirled in Sol's containment field.

  "We cannot destroy them," Sol admitted. "They would only reform. But we can contain them, make them forget."

  Thus began their greatest work. Using the st of their divine strength, the five gods wove a new universe—not of matter and energy, but of pure possibility. A virtual realm where thoughts became reality and souls could live countless lives.

  "Each fragment will be reborn again and again," Tempus expined as he shaped the ws of this new reality. "Without memory, without power, they will live as mortals."

  "But they will suffer," Luna protested. "Their lives will know pain and loss."

  Sol's expression hardened. "Better that than the destruction of all existence. We do what we must."

  They scattered the fragments across this virtual universe, pcing them on different worlds, in different times, under different stars. Each piece would live, die, and be reborn, never knowing its true nature, never seeking its other parts.

  "Will this prison hold?" Terra asked as they completed their work.

  "It must," Sol replied. "For if Noir's soul ever reunites with his body, if he ever regains his full power..."

  They all knew what would follow. The God of Death, driven mad by his imprisonment, would unleash devastation beyond imagining.

  As the virtual universe took its final shape, the gods added one st safeguard: they bound themselves to watch over it, to ensure that the fragments never awakened, never remembered, never found each other.

  "We are jailers now," Aqua observed sadly.

  "We are guardians," Sol corrected. "And we shall remain so until the end of time itself."

  With that, they sealed the virtual universe, hiding it in the folds of reality where none would find it. But they did not account for the passage of eons, the changing of divine guards, or the possibility that their creation might one day be discovered by those who knew nothing of its true purpose.

  And so the prison stood, perfect and eternal, waiting for the day when someone would stumble upon it and set in motion events that would shake the very foundations of existence.