A few minutes before the First Progenitor was wrongfully accused, in a completely different part of the Cosmos, the Planet at the End of Existence, Elo Katra, was, for the first ti in years, simultaneously hosting all of its owners.
At the planet’s north pole stood a do hall structure. The building contained only a single chamber: a hall with a dod ceiling that reflected the view of the Cosmos and all existing Multiverses.
Beneath that do was a round table with twelve evenly spaced chairs arranged around it.
At this mont, ten of those chairs were occupied.
Starting from the 1 o’clock position, the first figure was a woman with white hair, her head resting on the table as she slept.
She was one of Elo Katra’s owners and its creator, the First-Ranked Eternal who governed over Creation.
On the Cosmic Stage, most existences who wished to speak of her without invoking her true na, so as to avoid triggering the ’Unspeakable Na’ effect and alerting her of their existence, referred to her as ’Indifferent Creation’.
It was a title born from her complete lack of concern for anything she didn’t personally consider her business. If it neither interested her nor threatened the peace of the Cosmos, then she simply didn’t care.
A fitting title.
This ’Indifference’ often extended even to her fellow Eternals. The lower-ranked Third Generation Eternals were all sowhat afraid of her and considered the Second Generations ranked 4th through 7th impressive for their ability to interact with soone like her without reservations.
At the 2 o’clock position, lounging sideways on his throne with his back against one armrest and his legs draped over the other, sat a handso, youthful-looking man with slicked-back black hair.
He wore a fitted black t-shirt, black jeans, and white sneakers. In his hands was a tablet displaying a ga, the screen showing a colourful board with player pieces on various properties, digital money stacks, and virtual dice.
This man, the Eternal of Space and Reality, Ranus, was currently playing Monopoly with five random mortals from five different universes while waiting for the eting to begin.
He was, undisputedly, the most ’unserious’ among the Eternals, yet he was also soone no one, not even the Eternal of Creation, could afford to take lightly.
It wasn’t just because of his imnse power or the fact that he was one of the First Defenders who fought against the Cosmic Force of Chaos itself, but because, no matter how he acted, Ranus always delivered results.
Despite his Concept of ’Reality’ being the most vulnerable to bugs and inconsistencies, he consistently reported the fewest docunted errors during etings like these.
The seat at the 3 o’clock position was empty, as it had been for billions of years.
At 4 o’clock sat a grey-haired, middle-aged-looking man with dull grey eyes, vertically slit like a serpent’s. In contrast to Ranus’ informal appearance, he, Akasha, the Eternal of Wisdom and Knowledge, was dressed formally, with a black suit, a starched white shirt, and a brown tie.
In his hands was a simple book, its contents writing themselves in real ti as he turned each page.
Many regarded this man as a Control Freak, the type who refused to tolerate events he couldn’t manipulate to his advantage. To the other Eternals who worked alongside him, it was clear that this trait stemd from paranoia born of knowing too much.
Because of how much he understood, he feared even more what he didn’t, knowing better than anyone that his title, ’Omniscient Eternal’, was anything but the truth.
The throne at the 5 o’clock position was vacant, its owner yet to arrive.
At the 6 o’clock position sat a handso young man with blonde hair and brown eyes, dressed in an unbuttoned black collared shirt beneath a white double-breasted jacket and simple trousers.
Centred within his brown irises were square-shaped white pupils, a little visual signature of his status as the Eternal of Light and Life. His na, Dulio.
This man with an angelic appearance was, quite literally, an angel. But in contrast to that gentle exterior was the way he handled matters involving cosmic-level violations of ’Life’ and all Sub-Concepts and Universal Laws derived from it, like Evolution, Biology, Morphogenesis, and more.
Equally significant was his Concept of Light, the very principle responsible for the radiation that gave rise to perception and ford the basis of what it ant for existences to ’see’.
At the 7 o’clock position sat a brown-haired man with a buzz cut, dressed semi-formally, with a plain white shirt and black blazer paired with simple black trousers and shoes.
His facial features were rigid, the kind that would imdiately lead most to assu he was so sort of military figure, and his eyes did little to soften that impression.
Instead of circular irises, each of his eyes contained a Möbius loop, a band with only one side and one edge. Within those irises were fractals, endlessly branching inward, symbolising the countless possibilities of cause and effect, and the infinite permutations that could arise from a single action.
’Do not look into the eyes of the Governor of Causality, lest you regret every decision you’ve ever made.’
It was a well-known saying on the Cosmic Stage, for a single glance into his eyes could make one relive every mistake they’d ever made, and see every life that had been changed because of it, in the blink of an eye.
Even as he sat here, Roland, the Eternal of Causality and Laws, was currently seeing through the eyes of one of his Avatars in the Sixth Multiverse, pursuing a group of Multiversal criminals, violators of causality.
Causality, a.k.a the ’son of a bitch law’, was considered complicated by many. In fact, those who broke it sotis didn’t even understand how their actions had done so.
But to Roland, it couldn’t be more straightforward:
—The thread of cause must not outweigh, nor be outweighed by, the thread of effect.—
As for this particular group of fugitives, they had travelled back in ti and altered the past, preventing a specific event from ever occurring.
That alone wasn’t a direct violation of Causality. They had used legal ti-travel thods, powered by various Aspects of Ti.
But Roland didn’t care whether their thod was lawful; he cared only about the cosmic fairness of cause and effect.
Every ti-altering action is judged based on the net effect it introduces into the Cosmos.
On one side of the scale are those who suffer or are hard by the event not occurring.
On the other side: those who benefit from the event not happening.
These are the two sides of the scale in such cases.
Roland evaluates both not just by their numbers, but by their existential significance, the magnitude, and their dinsional impact.
To account for natural fluctuations in cause and effect, there is a buffer zone or margin of tolerance. If the imbalance stays within this range, then Roland remains passive. But if the deviation exceeds that margin, then the Causality Enforcers are deployed to pursue the offender.
Let’s say the margin is a ±10% deviation between the two sides of the causality scale. If the number of affected existences falls within that 10% range, the alteration is considered causally acceptable.
For example, if 1,000 beings benefit and 920 are hard, the difference of 80 lies within tolerance.
But if 1,000 benefit and 750 are hard, the difference of 250 is beyond the acceptable threshold, and just like that, you’ve beco a Defaulter of Causality!
As stated earlier, this scale isn’t purely nurical. It also takes into account the Existence Realms and Causality Indexes of those affected, as well as the duration and spread of the resulting consequences.
Moving on from that, Roland also governed another crucial Concept, one that, in so respects, was more important than Causality.
The Concept of ’Laws’.
Those who understood its significance called it the ’Cosmic Translator’. It was the translation chanism between higher-order cosmic truths (Concepts) and lower-order universal fraworks (Universal Laws).
It had been said ti and again that Universal Laws are derived from Concepts.
The Concept of Laws was responsible for this. It compressed, defined and bounded the raw powers of Concepts, which, in their native state, were too abstract to function on the multiversal scale, and ford what beca Universal Laws, which were not only repeatable, manipulable, and asurable but also comprehensible.
Once ford, these Laws propagate throughout all universes, in accordance with the scale of their originating Concept.
Roland’s existence held that much importance to the Cosmos, at least, to the Origin and Numbered Multiverses within it.
His Aggressor Counterpart, Sraosha, handled matters on the Dark Multiverse side.
Seated at the 8 o’clock position was Herek, the Eternal of Reincarnation and Destiny.
If Dulio and his twin sister, Julio, were the Eternals in charge of Life and Death, then Herek was the one responsible for what happened in between.
Reincarnation was the chanism by which souls were recycled after Death and granted new Life. Herek served as the General Overseer of Reincarnation Paths across every universe, and also shared the role of General Overseer of Underworlds, Afterlives, and similar domains, alongside the twin Eternals.
Originally, Reincarnation fell under Julio’s domain, but the Second Generation Eternals—Akasha, Julio, Dulio, and Roland—already had far too much on their plates.
As a result, the Candidate Selection process was reopened, a Third Generation was chosen, and the Conceptual Authority over Reincarnation was formally passed on to Herek.
They also assigned him the Concept of Destiny, because why not entrust the one responsible for recycling souls into new lives with power over destinies too?
Next to Herek sat Chon, more commonly known as the ’Elental Eternal’. The Concept of Elents, along with its various Sub-Concepts, fell under his jurisdiction.
All fundantal natural elents (earth, fire, wind, water, lightning, etc.) and complex elental derivatives, where abstracts like Ti, Space, Decay, Emotion, or Sound were crystallised into elental forms of structured magic or energy.
At its core, the Chaotic Concept of Elents is volatile, unpredictable, and multi-expressionist.
In its default unregulated state, casting a spell or invoking an elent yields random or inconsistent outputs.
A fire spell may produce ice.
A lightning invocation may trigger gravitational collapse.
An attempt to channel Ti may accidentally birth a tsunami.
Chon’s was to stabilise this chaos, making it such that Intent led to reliable output.
Thanks to him, fire magic produced fire, not ice. Ti-elental spells invoked ti-based effects, not oceanic disasters.
He had the delicate task of keeping the elents flexible and expressive, allowing for variation and artistry in elental manipulation while still maintaining functional control.
In contrast, within the Ordered Concept of Elents, even in the absence of a manager, intent always produced the right output.
By default, the elents there were rigid, chanical, and self-enforcing.
Fire always burned in a single, predetermined pattern.
Wind flowed in fixed, unchanging currents.
When you invoked Ti, it advanced in a single, straightforward, irreversible direction.
In this case, the elent controls you, unless you master its inflexible pattern.
The Aggressor who governed it softened that structure just enough to allow for conscious manipulation, making it more flexible and fluid.
Although they both governed the sa Concepts, the difference in the Cosmic Force from which they originated gave rise to subtle distinctions in their roles and responsibilities.
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