Unknown dangers and wonders. They always went hand in hand.
The Dead Wheel was quiet.
Not truly dead, no, death had long abandoned this place. But sothing heavier filled the air.
An execution had just taken place.
Velmior Thal-Veyr, Grand Conductor of the Whenfolds, was gone.
What remained was simple.
| Paradoxical Primarch Loot Cache: Constructed. |
| Acquired: Undefined Existential Dinsional Lattices (x12) | | True Source Sigil: Interval |
But there was sothing else.
| Warning: mory Extraction Failed. |
| Cause: Temporal Record Shrouded beyond Localized Chronology. |
…!
Even in defeat, the Chronosect’s Sentinels had held onto sothing. Their final dignity. Their final spite.
Their mories were inaccessible.
Not shattered, hidden.
Locked behind weavings of ti spun too far from the imdiate threads we fought in.
Perhaps woven into the true powerhouses of the Chronosect, sealed from others like .
I smiled faintly.
Not disappointed.
rely… interested.
It made sense. Entities built on ti would have defenses for the one thing truly worth protecting, their past.
I absorbed the rest of the Cache. The Undefined Existential Dinsional Lattices spiraled into the burning weavings of my existence and only further beca fuel for my elevation.
I now had forty-nine Lattices fully ford as more and more were being.
Nine of them from my Origin Pri Osmontian Infinitum Lineage, which led to the wondrous resistance of Paradox.
| Paradoxical Resistance: 3%. |
Steady.
I looked over at Romulus. He stood quietly, head tilted slightly as he watched the fading echoes of Velmior’s final monts.
A silence passed.
I broke it first.
"You realize," I said calmly, "we’ve just made ourselves targets."
Romulus didn’t turn imdiately.
When he did, his entropy softened, a rare thing.
"I said it before," he murmured. "I’ll bear the consequences of my choices. This was sothing I had to do."
His dark skin pulsed with brilliance.
His gaze shifted behind , to the Witness.
To the Record he had resurrected from the decaying shell of Eluriah Veilnox.
Romulus approached slowly.
The Witness stood waiting, golden blindfold glinting faintly even beneath the dim echoes of a broken sky.
Romulus halted a few feet away.
"You," he said, voice low, "and yet… not you."
The Witness smiled, a small, serene thing.
"I am but a record," the Witness said. "A mory stitched into a body of yesterday."
Romulus’ hands tightened slightly, his entropy simring.
"But," the Witness continued, "with the True Source of Continuity, I may yet beco whole again."
Romulus breathed out, not relief, but sothing adjacent to hope.
Continuity. The reknitting of broken lines. A way, perhaps, to reclaim what the Chronosect tried to erase.
Romulus turned toward .
I nodded, already anticipating his next words.
"There’s only one party left," he said softly. "The Mawbearers of the Hollow Concord of Nullity."
Mmm.
Them.
I tilted my head, gazing upward through the fractured layers of the Dead Wheel.
"The Mawbearers aren’t going anywhere," I said.
Romulus silently looked at before he replied.
"You wish to pause."
The Witness said nothing, only adjusting the golden cords of his blindfold, as if reacquainting himself with existing.
Romulus’ entropy folded close around him, contained, sharpened.
He asked the inevitable.
"Okay. Shall we move in the shelter of the Folds? Or go elsewhere?"
Elsewhere?
I smiled faintly.
Oh, I had an elsewhere.
And unlike the Gravewake Folds, it was a dominion of my own making.
Without waiting for further question, I raised my hand.
The Folds around us quivered not from fear, not from resistance, but recognition.
Threads of paradox bent to .
They knew my song.
I weaved.
A gate opened.
A simple thing, a tear in the veil of the Gravewake Folds, stitched into the seams of the paradox and collapse.
Sothing I could do now due to the True Absolute Existential Dinsional Resistance.
Through the tear in the veil of the Folds pulsed the impossible hues of the Infiniverse.
I gestured as if welcoming them.
Romulus stepped through first, silent and ready.
The Witness followed, a flicker of golden restraint and hidden majesty.
I stepped through last.
The Fold-sewn gate collapsed behind without a whisper, sealing away the broken threads of the Dead Wheel and the chaos we left behind in a storm of paradox and collapse.
Ahead… the Crucible waited.
The Infiniverse Crucible, deep within the Infiniverse itself.
Not rely a battleground, but sothing far more refined.
A True Frequency.
No, the True Frequency, a combination, a fusion of threads that should never have coexisted. Manadynamics, Genesis, Continuity, Entropy, and others, all compressed into a singular, self-sustaining cradle.
A chaotic yet ordered pulse of impossible existence.
The rain greeted us first.
It always did.
It wasn’t rain, not really.
The downpour was composed of multicolored tears, True Source Tears of Existence still falling in grand rivulets from the Forge that lood high above. A volcano of brilliance, gloriously gushing existence like molten purpose after two days of death and battle.
Romulus stepped through.
And for a mont, just a mont, his steps faltered.
His eyes, cold and heavy from untold weavings of existence, widened by a fraction.
He looked up.
The rain of True Sources fell across the Crucible like weeping tyrannical rivers. Brilliant, endless, defiant.
Romulus tilted his head, his entropy simring lower. He breathed, slow and cautious, feeling the rain brush against his skin.
It did nothing for him.
He had already crossed the 50,000 SU mark long ago.
But the Witness?
The rain caressed his form.
The True Source Tears of Existence, drawn by threads of Continuity woven into him, soaked into his Record.
Quietly.
I saw it.
I’m sure Romulus saw it too.
The Witness stood still, serene, his golden blindfold gleaming as his being was gently nded by the downpour.
"This is your humble abode?" Romulus murmured, voice low.
I smiled, just a breath of amusent.
"Close enough to it," I said, folding my hands behind my back. "This is the battleground. A crucible for those seeking to get stronger."
Romulus nodded and said nothing more. He was observant enough to understand as he spread out his will.
Ahead, the Crucible spread wide, an infinite Frequency of wonders and arcing rivers of light. And amidst the rain…
Eyes turned.
Beings moved as they saw the new entrants.
Legends.
The Great Beyonder, Arthur, The Omnifather, and others, legends of the Native Dead Wheel of Existence.
Each one was wrapped in weavings that scread of transcendent might, many Sourcebound Icons elevated now to Resplendent Monads.
The Great Beyonder was the first to step forward.
A woman who wore existence like a robe, her every step bending existence around her with Runes.
She paused as her eyes widened.
She was looking at the Witness.
Not at . Not at Romulus.
The Witness, golden-blindfolded and unassuming amidst the downpour.
Arthur followed. The Omnifather next. The Stellar Weaver and others too.
And soon, a gathering ford.
A silent, heavy congregation.
Recognition burned in their gazes.
Shock.
The Great Beyonder broke the silence, voice low.
"How," she said, "are you standing here?"
"We saw it," Arthur whispered. "We saw your existence torn apart. Rewritten. Nullified."
The Omnifather stepped closer, his form pulsing with quiet energy.
"How," he repeated, "did you survive?"
The Witness smiled.
It was not a grand smile, but a smile of knowing. He didn’t answer. He simply turned his head…to Romulus.
To the man who had pulled him back from oblivion.
Their gazes did not need words as they honed in on him.
"It was him," I said, voice carrying softly.
Their eyes turned to .
"Romulus. The Verdant Fla of Collapse. The most competent native of our Wheel I’ve t yet. He cos from a version of the Wheel before its First Breaking."
….!
Romulus inclined his head slightly before he shook it as if he did not need such words.
The Monads studied him now.
asured him.
Romulus remained impassive, his entropy calmly folding against the rain.
When I rembered him in the mories of the Witness before the First Breaking of the Wheel, he was vibrant, filled with life, and laughing as he would slap the back of the Witness to refine his True Source while talking with ease and laughing with other Resplendent Monads at the ti. Whether he would go back to such a state was unknown.
I continued, voice steady.
"Take this mont to breathe. Primarch Eluriah Veilnox is dead. Alongside eight other Ti Sentinels."
Gasps, stifled and swallowed, rippled nearby.
The expressions of those who had been in the Infinite Ravines were astonished as they were likely rembering just how terrifying the power of that Primarch was not too long ago.
"We’ve likely made ourselves targets of the Chronosect of Threadbound Folds."
I let that sink in.
Because truth always deserves a mont to fester.
"But," I said, smiling faintly, "enemies will always be there, as for now, no harm to just simply breathe."
The rain fell harder, if such a thing were possible.
Brilliant rivers were pouring across the Crucible, washing away despair.
The Monads, the legends of the Dead Wheel, slowly relaxed.
Arthur closed his eyes, raising his arms slightly, letting the rain coat him.
The Omnifather sat down, cross-legged, letting the Tears of Existence pour over him.
The Great Beyonder stood still, staring up at the Witness and Romulus.
All of them knew what ca next.
How this mont to breathe was also a mont to prepare.
For the Hollow Concord of Nullity.
For those exceeding the Living and the Dead beyond the Gravewake Folds.
I stood among everyone and watched, a quiet tyrant beneath the weeping Crucible as I had my own weavings of existence to ascertain!
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