Chapter 4034: Give Everything! V
She threw it to one of the awakened Inevitabilities with the casual gesture of soone tossing a ball to a pet.
The creatures imdiately began fighting for it with playful competition, massive forms of contradiction wrestling over who would have the honor of delivery.
Finally, one caught it in jaws that existed in multiple states, bringing it to Noah with the pride of a hunting dog delivering quarry.
The Inevitability deposited the seed in his palm with surprising gentleness.
“This,” Khor said, “is a Seed. It should help you, but I will tell you that it is not without its strings. After all, nothing is free in existence. You may take it, you may not. It may help you, or it may bring catastrophe. Who knows?”
As Noah grasped the seed, feeling its impossible weight that had nothing to do with mass, prompts erupted across his vision.
|Early Item Obtained: Seed of Inevitability. Origin: Extracted from Khor, The First Hunger. A seed containing the compressed potential for a new type of Inevitability. When Nurtured, it will give rise to an Inevitability under the control of the nurturer. Control is relative- Inevitabilities follow their nature above all else.
|Nurturing thods:|
-Planting: Requires soil that has never known growth
-Feeding: Requires willing sacrifice of Everythings from multiple beings
-Temporal Aging: Requires exposure to 1,000 years of compressed ti
-Conceptual Saturation: Requires imrsion in pure paradox for 100 days
|Note: This Seed recognizes you as one who has given Everything willingly. This recognition may affect the nature of what grows.|
Noah looked at the seed with sharp eyes, lost in its obsidian brilliance as his mind calculated possibilities and probabilities. When he looked up again…
…!
Shock froze him.
All the Inevitabilities that had just surrounded them, Khor included, had vanished!
Not departed, not faded, simply ceased to be present.
He hadn’t sensed movent, hadn’t detected any shift in reality. One mont they were there, the next they weren’t.
He stood alone in an expanse of nothing, the absence of their presence making the space feel larger and smaller simultaneously.
“What if I wish to find you again?” he called out to the emptiness, his voice steady despite the vast solitude. “Why leave just like this?”
Imnse silence greeted his question.
For several seconds, nothing responded. Then, teasingly, impossibly, Khor’s voice resonated from everywhere and nowhere.
“Did you truly beco attached to an Inevitability like already?” The amusent in her tone transcended distance. “If we are to et again, Outsider, we will et again. After all, you now carry my Seed. That creates… connection.”
Her voice grew more serious, carrying warning wrapped in wisdom.
“These Folds are dangerous. You are lucky to have t and had enough common sense to listen, but others… these Folds… they are unforgiving. As I told you, many lifeforms are arrogant. Prideful. They see their Way of Existence as supre, and so are simply very cruel.”
A pause, then she continued.
“You might find Inevitabilities to be infinitely kinder than even Early Creatures… or even THE Creature himself.”
With those terrifying words, Khor’s presence truly and completely vanished.
Noah stood alone in the blankness of the Earliest Folds, the weight of her implications pressing against his consciousness.
“…”
He carefully stored the Seed of Inevitability, then began to explore his surroundings with caution that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with wisdom.
The environnt stretched endlessly in all directions…blank as if existence itself hadn’t decided what should be here.
He moved through this expanse with careful purpose, enhanced perception searching for anything of significance.
A landmark. Another being. Even a variation in the blankness.
Nothing.
Just endless expanse that might have been the sa spot repeating or might have been infinite unique emptiness.
Even THE Creature, he rembered from stories, had road the Earliest Folds for eons to find things here and there. Discovery required either profound luck or endless patience.
He had been here less than an hour and had already encountered Fold Dwellers, witnessed the First Farr, survived a Mad Early Creature, and held discourse with Original Inevitabilities.
His luck had been extraordinary, perhaps impossibly so.
Now, as ti trickled toward his departure, he found only solitude.
|Tir: 00:47 remaining|
The numbers pulsed with increasing urgency.
Noah made one final sweep of his surroundings, perception stretched to its absolute limits, but confird what he already knew. This part of the Earliest Folds had given him all it would give.
“Return,” he commanded his existence, specifically addressing the Early Atlas of the Folds that pulsed within him like a second heart.
The Atlas blazed to life with brilliance that existed in dinsions beyond the physical.
His Towers of Osmont, those impossible structures that grew within his being, suddenly burned like lighthouses…each one a beacon calling him ho across impossible distances of ti and possibility.
|Return Protocol Initiated. Temporal Anchor Points Located. Towers of Osmont serving as dinsional lighthouses. Path illuminated through causality…|
HUUM!
Reality folded in on itself, then unfolded, then folded again in patterns that would have driven observers mad if any had existed to observe.
Noah felt himself being pulled through ti itself, following the path lit by his own Towers back to where and when he belonged.
The sensation was like being born in reverse, existence compressing and expanding simultaneously until…
WAP!
He stood on the golden sands of the Early Veiled Shore.
The familiar warmth of his domain washed over him. The impossible trees swayed in their eternal breeze. The Aquarium humd with contained power. His people moved about their tasks, only…seconds having passed for them.
But Noah had returned an unfathomably different person.
A single hour.
What had transpired in that hour defied simple description.
He had gained complexity. He had lost fundantal aspects of his being and gained strength from their absence. He had learned truths about existence that most beings would live and die without ever suspecting.
He had given his Fear to an Inevitability and gained freedom.
He had given his Doubt to an Inevitability and gained certainty.
He had received a Seed that could birth wonders!
He had witnessed the death of heroes and the tears of legends.
Most importantly, he had learned that everything he thought he knew about the nature of existence might be nothing more than stories told by those with reason to shape the narrative.
“Haa…”
He sighed.
As he stood on his Shore, feeling the weight of three Seeds in his possession…the Failed Seed of the Principle of Perpetual Harvest, the Seed of the Tender’s Tree, the Seed of the Singular Prosperity Grass, and now the Seed of Inevitability…Noah felt impossibly complex weavings.
He had one day until he could return. One day to process what he had learned. One day to prepare for whatever impossibility he would encounter next. This one day…would likely also be after thr Kleos Concordat where all 10 Living Existences were eting.
Noah looked at the Goad in his hand, then at the Early Veiled Shore around him, then at the space within himself where Fear and Doubt used to reside.
A single hour had transford him more than years of conventional advancent could have achieved.
What would the next hour bring? The next day?
5/5 Keep the Magic Castles and Golden Tickets coming!
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