The forehead of this mysterious woman truly ignited into crimson gold brilliance, even though she herself did not seem to sense anything crazy as she was focused on the food before her!
Dazzling crimson-gold brilliance exploded from her forehead like a solar flare compressed into a needlepoint. The light wasn’t just bright.
It was absolute.
All around them, the Fold Dwellers- Primarchs, Monads, Masters of Existence...all stared in stunned silence as...
Runes blood.
Trillions of them.
Across the True Frequency of Fate, they unfolded in spiraling geotries of impossible complexity, dancing in perfect formation to weave a symbol.
A single, massive X.
Crimson-gold, radiant beyond reason. It pulsed with power ancient and impossible.
From the center of Sigrid’s forehead, the X began to twist and fragnt.
And then...click.
A piece detached and floated forward.
Noah’s breath didn’t falter.
But his eyes widened a fraction.
A crystalline, glowing X-shaped object now floated in front of him. Small, intricate, its edges filled with threads of reality folding inward and outward infinitely.
And what stunned him most...
Was its shape.
The structure.
He had seen sothing like it before.
Hell Terra Firma.
The gray rectangular object thst Hell Terra Firma beca!
It had looked different, yet the composition...
The architecture was the sa.
This was a Key.
But not just any Key.
A brilliant one.
A lit Key, pulsing with aning.
The gray rectangular key he held was lighting up slowly as he filled it with Existential Dinsional Lattices of Paradox.
But this one was entirely it up!
And it had co... from her.
From the girl who looked up at him now with sparkling eyes and sauce on her lips.
Still chewing.
Still unaware.
Still smiling!
...!
Noah looked down.
The key floated weightless above his palm, its radiant crimson-gold glow pulsing like a second heartbeat.
It felt warm.
It felt alive.
And despite the pressure of Masters of Existence and the crushing silence of entities who could rewrite entire Frequencies, what Noah felt most...
Was loss.
A rare thing.
A lit-up key of unknown origin and impossible purpose had revealed itself not in secret, not under the shroud of solitude... but in front of dozens of beings who held sway over the Wheels of Existence.
He had triggered it.
But now it was seen by many as they would look at it as theirs!
Or so they all thought.
’I wonder...if I just took this and ran, how far would I get?’
...!
That stray thought had barely finished forming before...
HUUM!
The entire Frequency of Fate vibrated.
No. Not just the Frequency.
The entire Wheel of Existence vibrated and began locking down.
The air around him shuddered as golden lattices blood. Destiny, Kist, Gongfu, and countless other True Sources of this realm roared into place, their Dinsional Lattices forming unbreakable walls across every layer and Fold.
Primarchs flared. Masters of Existence tightened their grip on authority.
Everything locked down.
Noah calmly watched.
Master Shen, no longer smiling, no longer drunk, was deathly still as his gourd lowered from his lips.
Sigrid, who sat beside him, looked up from her plate of half-eaten Phoenix at with mild surprise, then went back to licking her fingers, unbothered by the sudden containnt of an illusory X and the x shaped key in Noah’s hands.
"...That," Master Shen muttered.
Master Etheopa’s voice was sterner. "That is not possible..."
She floated forward, her eyes locked on the glowing X-shaped key that still spun above Noah’s hand.
It was unmistakable.
"Is that not..." Master Shen’s voice barely held together as he whispered from the side of his mouth, "...the sa shape as the entrance of our Origin Wonder?"
...!
A deafening beat of silence.
Noah’s eyes narrowed.
Origin Wonder?
A shuttled anomaly.
An untraceable arrival.
A lit-up Key with the exact shape as the sealed Wonder under the control of the Veiled Sunfolds...
And that key ca from her forehead.
From the girl beside him who was now burping softly behind her hand, as if the Phoenix at had been a little too oily.
All eyes in the realm turned to him and her.
Master Hannibal was glaring, his eyes burning with a truly heavy sense of greed and danger, and a light others would not be able to understand!
Kalysta drifted forward in astonishnt. And still...
Sigrid licked a speck of golden oil from her knuckle.
Then, Etheopa’s voice echoed out.
"Okay."
A word that sounded like a wall being built.
A breath drawn not to argue, but to organize.
"There seems to be sothing utterly unfathomable going on here, with a profound destiny at play. So we will take things slow and go a step at a ti, okay?"
She t Noah’s eyes as she said it. asured. Controlled. She was seemingly talking to him and all others here.
Then she continued.
"First, we have in our hands sothing extrely important that many Fold Dwellers would kill for. This entire space is already isolated. No outside eyes will see what’s unfolding here."
The other Masters nodded, their Lattices blinding even abstract possibilities.
Master Shen raised his gourd again as if he had to drink to get through this, and Etheopa continued.
"Second, the... preservation and understanding of the entity that just had that co out of her forehead is now top priority. As is understanding the only being who can interact with her... and unlock her."
All eyes swiveled back toward Noah and Sigrid.
She glanced up, blinking innocently, her lips shiny with Phoenix grease.
Noah didn’t respond.
He was focused.
He felt like countless invisible runes swirled around this key as he was learning about an unbelievable language in real ti. And this language was trying to tell him sothing!
His mind buzzed as a prompt blood in front of his eyes.
[Living Origin Key of Existence] (Activated)
Item Rank: ???
Description: Its appearance is not coincidence. Its aning is not for all. Those who dare to seek the beginning must first understand its end. It is a key that knows the cradle of truth. A shape that fits only where the soul was first forgotten. It does not unlock doors, it unlocks the wound of becoming. For a being to be born, sothing else must first die. To find the origin of self, you must break what defines you. For that is where truth lies- not in mory, but in the silence before it.
...!
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