As a silence hung in the air, my own weavings buzzed as a certain prophecy beca clearer.
My eyes glazed over it.
[…The Black Monarch will offer choice, but not freedom. The Sentinels of Reversal will ask for the Keys that should not exist.
One will walk away empty. One will walk away whole. One will not walk away.
Beware the day when Death sings in living tongues. On that day, the Foldless Ones shall stir, those neither bound by Life nor caged by Death.
Their nas will not be rembered, for they were never written. Their weavings cannot be unspun. Their will cannot be undone….]
Previously, the na Foldless Ones had been filled with incomprehensible symbols as Ozymandias was not able to utter or know their identity.
But now… it was clear.
And the Prophecy of the Black Monarch was also clear.
The Black Monarch will offer choice, but not freedom.
He offered a choice, and it was shockingly imprisonnt. Imprisonnt… in a place where the Foldless Ones sent those they deed to have crossed a certain line.
And Thauron stated that it was a Wonder even grander than the Null Cradle of Fold-Breaking Ascension.
So when it ca to this choice…
I smiled.
From the distance, Thauron's voice ca, steady and assured.
"This is a choice," he said. "To go where few dare. To a place older than mory, crueler than finality."
His clawed hand lifted, slow and deliberate.
Upon his palm, an obsidian stone floated, no chains, no weavings binding it. It hovered freely, a perfect tear of shadow polished to a gleam, impossibly dense, impossibly still. Impossibly final.
"If you wish it," Thauron continued, "you simply have to crush it."
The stone did not move, but the air around it trembled.
As if it was not ant to exist.
As if the Folds themselves recoiled from it.
Thauron smiled, a slow, weary thing.
He extended his hand slightly, leaving the stone to hover closer to .
"I will not force you," Thauron said. "Take it, or don't. Crush it, or don't."
His smile turned sharper, a whisper of inevitability.
"But if you do… if you choose to tread that path… your vision will be expanded beyond what you now know. Beyond even this Crucible of collapse."
He tilted his head, almost amused.
"And eventually, you will co find ."
He did not wait for my answer.
Did not press further.
He simply turned, descending the mountain with the slow, steady pace of inevitability, heading back toward where Bob still waited at the foot of the Votharion Mountain.
Leaving behind that obsidian stone, hovering, glowing faintly, ominously, as it floated a few feet away from .
I did not move toward it.
Did not lift my hand.
Did not decide.
I only watched.
Promising myself once more, no entanglents.
I had enough for now.
The Folds were vast. The Chronosect stirred. The Hollow Concord whispered of . The Foldless Ones, those Living Paradoxes who oversaw all, were out there.
If I achieved what I needed, soon…
I could always choose, then.
For now?
For now, I would finish what I started.
I turned, moving away from the floating stone, letting it linger in the corner of my vision like an unmade choice, a question not yet asked.
I focused inward.
Four more.
Four more Completed True Source Sigils.
Once I obtained them, nine total- a perfect threshold. And with nine completed Sigils restored, the Middle Wheel Platform would allow to unlock a deeper trial.
Withstanding the Weight of Compressed Epochs.
To step into the Cradle of Folded Ti and bear the burden of an entire Epoch.
The longer one endured it, the greater the evolution.
A crucible beyond re pressure and fragnts.
A place where True Sources were unmade and remade under the weight of ti itself.
My hands closed around another fragnt, my existence weaving it into my being.
Footsteps approached.
Kalysta.
Her steps were cautious and careful.
She moved closer, her Null Form shimring faintly as she glanced toward the floating obsidian stone, her voice a whisper.
"What did that… monstrous entity want from you?" she asked, wary, the words strained as if she feared they might summon attention.
I did not look at her.
I kept my gaze on the mountain, on the fragnts I sought.
"He ca," I said, voice calm, "to offer a choice."
Kalysta's eyes widened slightly.
"And… what did you decide?"
I smiled faintly, a slow, inscrutable thing.
"I did not."
Her expression faltered.
She looked toward the stone again, wary, reverent, disbelieving.
"But maybe," I murmured, more to myself than to her, "maybe the decision was already made."
Kalysta squinted lightly.
Not from cold.
From understanding.
Around us, the mountain rumbled quietly, the weavings of countless fragnts and death whispering in the air.
And the obsidian stone hovered still, silent, patient.
Waiting.
As if it had all the ti in all the broken expanse to wait for my hand.
For my choice.
I turned away.
And I moved again.
Four more Sigils to complete.
Four more pillars toward inevitability.
And then…
Then, maybe, I would see if I truly needed to choose.
Or if the choice, like all things, would co find .
I moved.
A fragnt slipped between my fingers, folding into my weavings as easily as breath.
But as I pressed forward, I let my senses drift wider and broader, observing everything around while looking for more fragnts.
The Middle Wheel Platform of the Null Cradle of Fold-Breaking Ascension was no simple battleground of ambition.
It was a wonder.
A paradox wrapped in collapse.
The Votharion Mountain, black and jagged, a paradox of stillness and motion, towered above the sprawling platform. Around it, dozens of other mountains stretched and spiraled, each a nesting ground of collapse where Sigil Fragnts drifted, weavings of forgotten epochs carved into the very ground.
The Primarchs here, the powerful beings who could bear the weight of the Middle Wheel,were varied and endless in their forms.
In one corner I was drawn to from another fragnt, a Primarch could be seen, a Living Thing clad in obsidian armor that flickered with golden veins. His Null Form was 450 inches wide, his Complexity and Purity Quotients hovering at 300,000 SU each, sharp and stable.
Further away, a Dead Thing whose body was a cascading swarm of butterflies could be seen glittering with ghostlight, her CQ and PQ similarly monuntal.
Variations of complex entities waded across all around, their True Sources also appetizing to observe as I moved to collect more Sigil Fragnts!
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