Mei

The being currently known as Mei, the Singularity is a being from a distant alternate reality. Fascinated with the arcane in various stories and faction, Mei selfishly begins accumulating magic from foreign timelines. Eventually leads to the death of their entire timeline, coming to a head through the Arklight's shattering: creating one singular Mei throughout the entirety of the grand design.

## Lore

### Backstory

Daydreaming is the sign of creativity in many people, and Mei was no such exception. Or at least, that is the name that Mei remembers last having. Born into a rather mundane existence, Mei spent many of their hours ruminating on the idea of the fantastic and magical. Ruminating on magic and its endless possibilities in the world, they would often lose themselves in drawing and writing about far off fantasy lands, dreaming about the freedom and power absolutely enthralled them.

Unbeknownst to them, the timeline they existed on was one lucky enough to have allowed for the production of magic. Potentia plentiful in the air, those who could wield magic, kept to themselves in the shadows as the world around them developed. But Mei was none the wiser. As they kept daydreaming, and thinking about their own various stories, characters, creatures and entirely worlds: they became consumed by it. Sharing their stories, and worlds with others: the encouragement they received spurred the child on. As this praise continued, so did the obsession with making more and more.

This obsessive nature caught the attention of a fiendish being, whose name has been lost to time itself. An erratic and cruel being that tormented the dreams of his victims, cultivating their potentia threshold to higher and higher levels before consuming them. The child's fanatical nature was too temping for the fiend, and thus he began to sow seeds of grandeur into the child's head to begin his plans. Drawing on their otherworldly powers, Mei's dreams became infested with small glimpses into other realities where citizens had ready access to magic, and where fiction and non-fiction melded as one. Mei fell for this bait like a moth to a flame, and revelled in every second of this that they could. Through this, Mei established links with alternate reality versions of themselves, absorbing their knowledge. As their consciousness became more and more synced, the more potentia Mei began to draw to themselves, their potential rising higher and higher. But once they woke up, they thought that they had thought of those things by themselves, with no recollection of their dimension and timeline hoping conversations. These thoughts continued as they slumbered, the child's mind flooding with ideas and knowledge, becoming a nexus for potentia.

However, the fiend was not prepared for the obsession to take such a strong hold on Mei. They became deranged and addicted to these dreams. Their interactions with the various other worlds became less and less peaceful, about absorbing knowledge: and extremely erratic. Mei began to demand information, with this lust for power twisting themselves down a dark path. Mei eventually caught onto his dreams being partially due to the fiend's influence and would chase and hunt the fiend for more as they felt they had to have it, their obsessive desire for more clouding their judgement. Eventually, the fiend had had enough, and decided to punish the child's insolence to save his own skin.

And just like that: it all stopped.

The glimpses and falsely planted ideas were all stopped.

Nothing.

Nothing, but a pitch black void filled Mei's head when they slept.

And it was maddening.

It drove them insane.

Nights became sleepless as they tried desperately to envision.

To see again.

But alas.

Nothing.

The fiend had saved themselves from the child's torment, but unfortunately: Mei's obsession was still ever present. Addicted to the creative madness, they hungered for more. No longer did they have ideas to share, no longer did they have the validation of new knowledge they yearned for. But now, whenever they attempted to sleep they were simply greeted by a pitch black void. Floating there in the endless abyss yet restrained. Unable to move, speak or call out for help. Trapped as themselves, by themselves until they woke up from their umbral prison. Their visualization of the alternate realities and worlds had become so strong, it had become parasitic. They tried tirelessly to reinvigorate that creative spark, putting their pen to paper. But without the additional power of the fiend, they were gatekept from attaining that forbidden fruit. As this continued, their mental state deteriorated, and they became desperate. The brain rot had begun affecting them physically, as their skin flared, and their eyes strained. As much as they tried to sleep and visualize again, they couldn't.

Until the lack of sleep had an unforeseen consequence. After a certain point, the visualizations came back to Mei. Almost as if the sleeplessness had looped back around like an integer overflow, Mei had hit a certain point where they were able to visualise the various magic systems of the alternate realities again.

And they weren't just back.

They were strong.

Stronger than ever.

Mei began to be plagued by these alternate reality consciousness and visions so much, it would freeze them in place. It extended beyond their sleep, and every waking second, they began plagued with more and more thoughts and ideas, that it would send them to their knees. Their new level of visualization caused them to cough up blood, sharp pains pierced them constantly, random episodes of mania, and migraines that would cause Mei to scream out in agony at seemingly random points: their body was being put on the edge. The sleep deprivation had hit so hard, they were beginning to visualize all across the Grand Design once again, but it was all worth it: Mei had begun to tap into their latent reservoir of potential. As they rapidly increased in ability, they also came upon a realisation: that those previously thought dreams weren't just abstract thoughts. But they were in fact glimpses into alternate realities.

Mei then set off to gain all the knowledge of the alternate versions of themselves, to become fluent in magic to a point of nigh omnipotence. Finally putting themselves again to sleep, they began forcefully siphoning off their knowledge and essence: willing, or otherwise. The alternate versions would cry out to Mei to warn them of the dangers of this all, that this tampering with the Grand Design would lead to ruin. However, Mei thought nothing of this: simply believing that they were taking knowledge that was rightfully theirs. Their ego had grown and so had their power: for they had earned this, and no one would take what was theirs. The journey had mentally torn the child and warped their sense of morality and self. But despite the mountain of corpses behind them, Mei had begun to achieve what they had wanted. Mei looked down at their hands. Ghostly visages of themselves began to fade in and out, as the potentia concentration in the air around them became paletteable. Mei closed their eyes, and a voice in their head whispered. And then another. And another. And another. These voices were the very same ones, showing Mei magic this whole time. The connection was faint, but it was there. Mei began twisting and wriggling their fingers around, siphoning the surrounding potentia into a graceful hurricane. For once, the very concept magic they had been visualized for their entire lives was no longer a fantasy, but a reality.

However, this pure elation was short lived, as eventually one day, when out and about. Mei was confronted by their world's very own mages in the form of the Routers. A special underground task force built by the magic users of this world: they were brought out of hiding by the fiend who had initially manipulated Mei. The fiend had gone to them for help, on how Mei was to be the end of all of existence, let alone the Routers, if Mei wasn't stopped. The Routers tried to reason with the child: they knew that the fiend hadn't been entirely truthful in their words. But regardless, Mei had gone too far. They were being unreasonable and had to stop what they were doing before any real disaster occurred. They explained that their timeline was still one relatively new to the phenomenon known as magic, and that Mei had to slow down their own progress for the sake of the timeline to stay stable. This reasonable approach struck a nerve with the already on edge power hungry child. Consumed by their obsessive desire, Mei became irritated. Why should they have to wait for others to catch up, they were the one who earnt all of this. Mei had to go through all that pain for their spot at the top, now all these other people strolled in and were just trying to tell them what to do?

In a moment of pure ego and selfish paranoia: Mei opened their palms and immediately, tried to blast away the opposition with winds the force of a hurricane. The blast of wind was nullified, chains erupted out and ensnared Mei. Summoning a pocket dimension around all of them, the Routers isolated Mei away from the rest of the material plane to contain the issue. As Mei panicked to the sudden shift in environment, the Routers tried once again to argue with reason, but Mei no longer was thinking straight. Their activation of their powers has caused the voices in Mei's head to grow louder, a thundering cacophony of sound filled their head. Muddled, and unintelligible: Mei simply took this as an advance to attack and continue. Mei began to throw aggressive spells over and over. A wave of umbral flames, dissipated into a cloud of butterflies. As Mei focused on the offence, the Routers took on the defensive position: rendering Mei's spells ineffective.

This defensive position had Mei overthinking more: how maybe they thought Mei wasn't really powerful, and simply using defensive spells to make a sheer mockery of the situation. Mei frustratedly frantically weaved in offensive spells left, right, and centre with the voices increasingly more deafening. The Routers' words were no longer being rejected by the fanatical youngster; they were being completely drowned out by their own psychosis. The more magic Mei used, the louder the voices became. The voices grew more erratic, spurring Mei on to go further. Mei's magics began to grow intense and aggressive, raining pillars of swords down from the cracking sky above.

Their ego then grew, as their outlook on the mages' defensive tactics became condescending as their emotions grew wilder and wilder. "They simply are defending now because they know there is nothing else, they can do against me, they're afraid of me. Afraid of the fruits of my labour", reasoned the now utterly deranged child as they continued to rain fury upon the people sent to contain them. However, all these increased abilities, while working effectively, also began to damage the very structure of the pocket dimension that surrounded them. The Routers noticed this and became desperate, their desire to end this battle and contain the problem hastened. Mei drawing upon the many alternate versions of themselves had begun to flood this timeline with so much foreign potentia, and if this continued any further: its territory would begin to expand exponentially and indiscriminately, encroaching upon the structure of entire timeline along with it. If this continued, not just both of their life would become forfeit: their entire timeline would be removed from the Grand Design.

With a final act of desperation, the Routers began channelling their most powerful spells. Their divine arts, to be focused on this one singular being should surely be enough. Seals upon charms, interlaced with runes and various modifiers subdued Mei in a heap of shackles, chains, and restraints. There was silence for a moment. But none of the Routers dared take their eyes off of the target for a single second. Then a cracking shriek echoed throughout the pocket dimension.

Until it shattered.

The atmosphere deteriorated around them as the entire pocket dimension began to collapse, and they returned to the material plane. Mei stood up, their head reeling from the immense pain that the voices in their head had let out. But they were still as loud as ever, clouding their thoughts more and more. Mei saw the Routers on the floor and fled, with notion of not wanting to be contained still fresh in their mind. Soon a chase ensued, with Mei fleeing as the Routers chased on in hot pursuit. As they ran through the streets, onlookers looked in shock and awe as the dazzling lights of magic and the arcane revealed themselves in front of their very eyes. Now in the middle of the busy cityscape, Mei and the Routers were now surrounded by crowds of onlookers. Ego still fully at play, Mei subdued the Routers in obscene amounts of foreign magics they drew upon. Mei looked to the onlookers and saw admiration and awe in the crowd's faces. Their ego was being satiated as they bathed in the onlookers, but their faces of joy and reverence didn't last long. Soon their emotion began to fade and flee, as all the colours began to drain from their bodies. Mei turned towards Routers panicked, looking for signs. But they simply looked up in despair.

The colour of the environment began to run as pieces of the sky began to peel away. Even the material plane had begun to fail. The sounds of suburbia were now drowned out by screams of the material plan as the timeline began to disintegrate before their very eyes. It was in that moment the voices in Mei's head that had been endlessly adding to the cacophony began to clarify. And they were all echoing one sentiment: "Turn back, what you're doing is wrong".

Mei knelt down in pain and anguish, as the voices began to materialise themselves more and more. As shards of their once blue sky began falling down, one of the Routers cried out: "We warned you, you didn't listen. Congratulations on being alone, with nothing but the voices in your head to keep you company as we're both sent to the grave by your childish and selfish actions". Mei's high and mighty god complex suddenly flipped and did a 180, as they began to overflow with an immense sense of shame and distress at their mistake. As the Routers too began to fade out of existence, Mei looked around themselves feverishly.

Channelling all the voices inside, they began to focus all of the scattered potentia around themselves into fixing their surroundings. As they desperately tried to fix the sky, more and more voices of theirs across the grand design began to fill up their head. Unified, they all decided to put aside their childish actions to try and fix the utter mess around themselves. Things looked better for just a second, but as fate would have it: in that moment, the Arklight shattered. Mei, being so connected with his other selves in the moment, then took the full force of the Arklight's collateral damage on themselves. Across every timeline, across every reality. Reverberating from the absolute sheer force of the shattering, all of the alternate timeline Mei's consciousness was fragmented and fading fast. In a last-ditch effort, they decided that to save themselves, they would have to become one again. Using the remaining potentia around in this withered timeline, they channelled their potentia together into an entirely new form.

And then there was one.

Infinite realities.

And one Mei.

Opening a portal to the prime timeline, they existed and collapsed. As they laid on their hands and knees, the constant rushes of adrenaline that surged through Mei's body was too much to handle. Their new altered potentia in combination with the absolute abundance of potentia of the world both elated and hurt them. This was the perfect place for them to achieve the peak of magic that they had always dreamed of being able to witness. But as fabric of existence began to crumble around them, there was not much they could do in their current state to help the grand design. Hell, they weren't even sure if they should help, what if they were to accidentally make it worse? They had already destroyed one timeline, losing themselves in the process. And for a crime of that scale: they would have to atone. Having gone so far to play god with the fabric of existence themselves and tempting power, required penance. That much was clear.

Fashioning themselves a pocket dimension, they formed a little room. Surrounded by transparent walls so they could see through, they sent themselves back in time to when magic first began developing. Now, with plenty of time to reflect upon their selfish actions, far away from others: they began watching. As time passed, watching turned into writing. And writing into drawing. They began recording all of the events that occurred. All the gods, both true and false. The various characters, their rise and fall. Who knows when they'll be finished recording all of the marvels and wonders of this untitled fantasy story.

### Recent Events

Now in self-imposed exile in their pocket dimension on the prime timeline, Mei sat and watched time flow. Sending out visages of themselves to view and study the material plane: they witnessed the rise and fall of the Blessed Children, the arrival of the new gods onto the world, mortalkind's ascension and fall. And most recently, the shattering of the Arklight. The event that had caused them to ultimately become who they were. But as time passed, the isolation of their existence, simply recording these stories got boring. While they still felt that they hadn't atoned properly for their sins, they couldn't bring themselves to leave their desired prison. These visages of theirs would bring back samples of plants, and materials for them to record but the lack of interaction pulled at the lonely dreamer's heart.

Until one day, when studying New Risto, Mei noticed a unique being. Whose iridescent emerald flames shone with energies never before seen. Their curiosity of magic had never subsided despite the eons of quarantine, so like a moth to a flame, they sent a visage of theirs out to investigate. The visage hovered by closely, observing the caster burn down a street of houses, laughing and screaming with such a jovial and carefree attitude. Then she was gone. Mei was confused, his visage turning around to see where their newest interest had disappeared to.

"HI THERE!!!" a voice shrieked out, as Mei's visage was violently shaken from behind. The being, adorned with her light mint blue hair, three glowing eyes, and grinning smile stared at the visage. "What are you? I've never seen you around before?" Mei was startled, no one was supposed to be able to see the visages. If someone were to take notice of his existence, that would defeat the whole point of his atonement. Mei wasn't to interact with other people, he wasn't supposed to. Yet . . . how were they able to notice the visage? There was no time for that, in Mei's panic: they withdrew their visage into the little pocket dimension.

But now, where there was ever only supposed to be one: there were now two. Mei stared in horror as the anomaly walked closer to him. She looked at the terrified being, all three of her eyes gleaming in devious delight. Pacing around the glass prison that Mei fashioned for themselves, she began to notice the obscene number of notes and drawings that were littered around the room. Stacks upon stacks of papers detailing the phenomenon of magic, and the various applications of it. "Damn, you live like this?" Mizrii remarked as she grabbed a stack of notes, took a glimpse. She paused; Mei stared at the mint blue haired girl as she held a portion of his life's work in her hands.

And then she ate it.

Mei frozen in disbelief, as Mizrii continued to chew the notes. Then Mei began screaming, as the voices in their head started to grow volatile: this stranger had just entered into their room and desecrated their work. Mizrii simply stared back and sneered: "Tastes like nerd".

## Personality

Mei's personality is shown to shift constantly, displaying bipolar tendencies. On the positive side of things, their curiosity and inquisitive nature has them always wanting to learn something new. Their conviction in the pursuit of magic showcases their passion and self motivated nature.

While they are self motivated, they are also still desperate for approval: the prospect of them learning more and gaining mastery over their own craft is set parallel to their desire to get more power for other people to admire them. They are riddled with self esteem and doubt issues, often spiralling down into emotional episodes. Often when left to their own devices, they do overthink and cripple themselves in the process.

## Trivia

* Thanks to all the different versions of themselves they have assimilated, Mei is able to change their attributes in a fairly varied manner.
	+ This shape shifting and transformation does come at the caveat of possibly swapping personalities and names to an alternate version of themselves.
* Mei utilizes they / them pronouns throughout the story, not simply because of a non-binary gender role: but due to the fact they are now comprised of millions upon millions versions of themselves. By refering to themselves this way, it provides some stability to the different versions of Mei.

## Development Notes

* This character is the self insert of the creator of the Untitled Fantasy Project, B.srz.
* The different versions of Mei are meant to act as analogies to both the made up characters in their artworks and daydreams, as well as the various online persona and names they often use.
* The power set can be chalked up to some form of inter-reality schizophrenia.
* The black void they see in their dreams was a common reoccuring nightmare that they would encounter as a child, especially when they had a fever or some form of illness preventing proper sleep, yet still demanding sleep to rest.
* The block of visualization relates to that of constant artblocks that b.srz would encounter.