In the Nullvein Gravewake Folds.
Where once stood a Paradoxical Prison, there now churned a battlefield!
The ancient structure shattered like glass under the weight of too many truths contorted into lies. Now, the broken remnants of that prison frad a war of extremities as Living Paradoxes clashed with Living Origins.
And the Paradoxes were winning as they had sheer numbers- led by Oryzarakh!
Booming layers of twisted brilliance erupted from over a few dozen Paradoxes, each hurling imnse Authority- Living Paradoxical weavings ford from hundreds of millions of Lattices. These strands undid everything in their path. They folded existence backward into the shape of confusion and doubt.
Amid this surreal deluge, a solitary light pushed against the tide. Vast. Glacial. Imnse.
Vorellion.
The Ancient Living Turtle of Twelve Epochs braced its omniverse-spanning shell as nine of its heads drew in toward the center. Each of the nine bore their own radiant halos, every one layered with Purpose and Origin. As the deadly waves of Paradox neared, Vorellion’s voices murmured in unison!
HUUM!
"Begin No Purpose."
A wave pulsed outward.
From the convergence of its nine heads, an impossible paradox was unknit by refusal of premise.
The very concept of the Paradoxical attack was nullified, its purpose made retroactively void!
The Authority crashed... and vanished, as if it had never intended harm, as if it had never been born.
Its origin...was ended!
The pressure lifted. The Living Origins found breathing room again.
And Vorellion’s gaze, those nine deep orbs of ancient wisdom, settled upon the young Living Origin beside them. Once jailed in this forsaken Fold, now trembling and radiant with strength.
The thought burned through its minds.
How dare they? How dare these cruel, vile beings try to cage sothing so new?!
HUUM!
As Vorellion was thinking this.
An oppressive tide fell upon the battlefield.
A voice followed- low and simring.
"I am thoroughly enraged. And in the past eon, I have not been enraged."
Vorellion froze. Its shell pulser. Every head recognized the pressure. The pressure of an Honored Living Paradox!
The Ancient Turtle’s power neared the threshold of Honored, but it was not there yet.
They had sent word for reinforcents of more Living Origins to this location. So younger Living Origins had arrived already. But none strong enough.
Not yet!
Honored Gold’s arrival needed no fanfare.
The Fold itself grew silent.
He descended like a thought too heavy to hold, like light bent around him in apology. Wings and halos pulsed around him- countless, changing, contradicting. They were there and not there, infinite in number, yet none remained visible for more than a breath.
The Honored Living Golden Paradox floated forward. Calm. Cold.
His gaze swept over the battlefield. And then, settled.
"When," he asked, his tone clipped with condescension, "did the Living Origins grow balls?"
He looked faintly, with genuine malice.
"Do you seek more massacres in the Battlefront Folds?"
The Origins stirred.
Altheon flared! Shaynara surged! But none stepped forward.
"Distractions," Gold continued, flicking his wrist. "You are all distractions."
He tilted his head.
"And I detest distractions."
His voice dropped.
"Liar’s Paradox."
The Fold trembled.
The Liar’s Paradox!
It was a self-referential wound in logic. An example to better understand it...was the statent- "This sentence is false."
This sentance...is false.
If true, then it is false. If false, then it is true. A loop. A contradiction. A poison.
Gold shaped his own version of such a wonder!
"The Living Origins are only alive because they are already dead."
...!
HUUM!
A terrifying statent was made.
Contradicting! Unfathomable!
And behind him, a golden Tower of Origin flickered- built to protect and to unravel. To enforce contradiction!
The Living Origins roared with a shocked sense of despair.
White towers erupted from behind the Living Origins in response!
But...a heartbeat later, they began to crumble.
Altheon watched comrades unravel. Shaynara scread as she sought to hold on!
The faces of Origin turned to terror and disbelief as their essence cracked from within.
One Origin after another fell, their light snuffed by the unbearable contradiction of their own existence.
From the single statent filled with the complexity of Honored Gold!
An Honored Living Existence...was simply that powerful.
Only three remained.
Altheon. Shaynara. Vorellion.
And one more.
Bob.
The young one had not fallen in all this as one had to wonder...how?
Vorellion reeled from the massacre. Its heads shook. Each one dripping with sorrow!
It saw the perished Origins as it wanted to roar, but did not!
Then, with profound stillness, all nine heads turned to the sky.
"For my kin."
It did not roar.
It simply... gave.
And it gave everything with all its heart!
Origin surged. The echoes of its purpose, the very reason for its birth, flared one last ti. And then...
"End!"
A pulse of Origin erupted as Vorellion unmade itself- from duty. As a sacrifice.
In its unraveling, a flare was released.
A Call!
A summons for an Honored Living Origin.
Gold watched the act with distaste.
"Pathetic," he said. His tone was dripping with disdain. "So things are best left to end. There is peace in it. A clean fade. But you cling. You flail."
He raised a hand.
"Let clean it up."
He reached for Altheon, who braced himself!
But then...
Gold paused.
His hand froze in midair.
His eyes narrowed.
His Authority recoiled as his expression beca heavy!
"Form the Transcendent Paradoxical Tower of Inevitability!" he bellowed.
...!
The Fold fractured as what he sensed ca down, a terrifying musing of Origin manifesting!
White light descended like thunder on silk. An unmistakable brilliance.
A woman walked through the light.
Her legs erged first, fair and radiant. Then her dress, a flowing garnt of sparkling white, stitched with stellar jewels. Her hair, long and white, shimred like the threads of destiny.
Her voice rang, clear and amused.
"Whatever could have pulled an Honored Living Paradox here?"
Gold’s expression soured as he sensed...
Royalty.
"Do the Living Origins have so many forces now that they send a Royal Living Origin to lesser Folds?"
The woman smiled.
"Royal Origin Calypso, at your service." she said sweetly, giving a curtsy no less regal for being unnecessary. "And yes. I ca because soone here gave good news about a little girl I thought dead"
Her gaze fell on Altheon.
"One of their bodies," she said, her voice soft as falling snow, "cannot perish."
And she smiled.
The Fold pulsed once more.
And the war reached a terrifying precipice!
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