The Dead Wheel trembled.
Living Origin Authority stread into its ancient spokes, flooding through fractured channels like a river reclaiming the veins of a long-dead creature. Bob knelt before it, his body bowed, his eyes unwavering. Each breath was heavy. Each heartbeat carried strain.
He was giving Living Origin Authority to what had known only death!
But the cost bled through him.
His Authority was vast, newly blood, still unfamiliar in its scope. But it wasn’t infinite. It burned hot, radiant with intent, but he could feel the edges fraying. It was not enough- not when what he aid to awaken had slept for what felt like eons!
So he gave more.
HUUM!
More than Authority. More than essence.
He even gave so of the seed of himself- the bloom that had started it all, that singular beginning that marked him as sothing more than he had ever dread.
He gave it to her.
The Inevitability roared behind him.
A sound of wrath. A sound of hunger betrayed.
It knew.
The price Bob had promised... was slipping from its reach.
The mass of multicolored tentacles writhed violently, slamming into the walls around Bob as it sought what had been denied. But Bob stood firm, his ragged figure shining dimly, barely a silhouette before the towering Wheel.
Half of his weavings as a newly born Living Origin were gone.
He could feel it. As if his own soul had been torn in two, one part beating gently in his chest, the other pulsing within the obsidian wheel that now shook violently.
Then...
BOOM!
Existence trembled.
Light spilled out in an incandescent bloom, weaving through every fracture in the Wheel of Existence. The spokes scread, then sang.
And from the center, she ca.
Waves of light shimred into form, and out stepped a figure with tan, caral skin that glistened as if freshly forged. Her hair, dark and long, rippled with strands of starlight.
Three broken white gold halos floated solemnly above her head, and six torn wings, tattered and translucent, fluttered behind her.
Her eyes opened.
Bright. Piercing. White-gold like dawn breaking after endless night.
She looked at Bob, and in that instant, an ever present ache in her chest gave way to a flood of tears.
"Daddy...!"
The word fell like a whisper, then shattered the silence of the Paradoxical Prison as she rushed forward.
Bob caught her.
He staggered but stayed upright, wrapping his arms around her. His trembling hands buried into her hair as she clung to him tightly, her body light but real. Her presence undeniable.
A few tis, his chest heaved up and down as he squeezed to confirm all of this was real!
It was real, right?!
His daughter. His light!
"I’m...here," he whispered hoarsely. "I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my light. For being weak. For taking so long..."
Bob felt countless years of pain and death flash before him.
And her...
Her voice broke as she shook her head, her cheek pressed into his chest. "No. I saw it all. I heard everything. You never gave up. You... you did everything."
His fingers trembled over her back, clutching the pieces of her like a Father who feared she’d vanish again. The warmth of her soul settled against him, anchoring him for the first ti in countless ages.
This was it. Everything.
Everything!
But the mont of stillness broke with a hiss.
BZZZT!
They pulled apart in instinct as Bob’s eyes snapped down. Writhing tendrils had slithered silently, nearly touching Liora’s fra and wrapping around her.
The Inevitability had found her.
Its hunger was absolute, its need insatiable. The strands curled hungrily toward the Living Origin power within her.
Bob snarled.
His foot slamd down and his hand flared with raw Authority as he pushed the tendrils back. "No! Not her."
The tentacles recoiled, then struck again, but he stood firm.
Bound. That was the deal.
He’d given his power to the Inevitability in exchange for its help. It wanted more now. It wanted what lived within her.
But how could he allow for that?
"I made this deal," Bob whispered bitterly. "And now, I pay it. To have you alive again, to have you Living is more than I could ask for..."
WAA!
Liora looked up at him, confusion and fear trembling in her golden eyes.
"You... you can’t an to stay-"
"I’m already tainted," he said softly. "Bound to a poison I can’t let touch you. You’re pure now. You’re born again."
He looked into her eyes, morizing every line of her face. "You can’t stay here. You must go."
Tears slipped down her cheeks again. "But... I just...I just ca back..."
He smiled, a shadowed thing filled with pain and pride. Tired. Weary. But happy.
"And that’s why I can finally let go."
BZZT!
More tendrils snapped, and Bob’s hands glowed as he forced them back. His words ca quickly now. "There’s soone. The one responsible for all this. The one who made this possible. He can control this madness... and he can protect you."
The Inevitability shrieked.
Bob’s knees buckled, but he did not fall.
"I will reach out to him. Find him, and he will find you!" he breathed. "When I gains control over this creature, I will know how to find you, and I will see you again!"
Liora hesitated.
"Go!" he shouted.
...!
With unfathomable hesitation...
WAP!
She vanished in golden light.
And Bob turned, the last remnants of his strength surging forward, dragging the Inevitability’s focus entirely back onto him.
—
In the heart of the Early Veiled Shore, Noah knelt beneath the twilight mist of living existence.
Tens of millions of Lattices were surging through his body, their shapes folding and unfolding into intricate geotries above his brow. A storm of complexity spun slowly around his form, coalescing into a singularity upon his forehead.
His breathing was asured.
Fifty percent of all the Lattices he possessed- drawn from dozens of True Sources- were now burning toward a single purpose.
A Glyph.
A singular Early Living Existential Glyph.
And it was nearly impossible.
Others would have chosen simplicity. A Glyph of Fla. A Glyph of Wind. He had dozens of True Sources interwoven, many still wild, unaligned.
The swirling forces bucked and clashed. So refused to bend, others resisted fusion entirely. The more he compressed, the more they threatened to unravel.
So he did the most natural thing in the world.
He raised his hand toward the Wok.
The sizzle of seared flesh welcod him.
Primal.
Glorious.
He grabbed a chunk of the Crownscale Glimr’s at- golden and steaming-and bit into it with sharpened hunger. His teeth tore through it, and the mont it hit his tongue, a jolt of power surged down his spine.
It was clarity.
A flow of coherent, seamless energy began to surge across his forehead, the chaotic dance of Lattices settling under a single guiding pressure.
The Glyph of Water.
From the depths of the Crownscale Glimr, from its condensed glyph... the understanding blood in him.
Water was not weakness.
Water held. Water moved. Water bound.
And now, it bound his madness.
The chaotic authorities of the Singed and Ti, Paradox and Origin, all began to flow as a blue sheen surrounded the spiraling glyph above his brow.
The waters steadied the tides of his impossible complexity.
And the Glyph began to solidify!
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