Golden arcs of loot light erupted across Noah's body, wreathing him in radiance that suggested wealth about to be forcibly extracted from reality!
His eyes pulsed with glory that made several nearby beings step back instinctively.
He rose from his throne with movent that was both gradual and instantaneous, existing in the space between rest and violence.
His heart…the Heart of an Early Creature that beat within his chest, began pounding like a war drum announcing the beginning of harvest!
The sound resonated through dinsions, each beat a promise of violence transford into opportunity. He opened his mouth, and what erged wasn't quite a word but pure expression of desire!
"CO!"
HUUM!
The howl bood across the Transcendent Origin Folds like a glorious commandnt.
Every Duke in the vicinity turned toward him with expressions of incredulous horror. What did he an, co?!
Did this madman actually want whatever lurked behind those tears to erge?
This fucker!
As if responding to his invitation, change erupted from the largest tear directly above Concordia.
A massive mummified head erged first, wearing a golden crown that had tarnished with age that predated the proper invention of ti.
The skull was wrapped in bandages that might have once been white but had yellowed and blackened with accumulated death. Eye sockets that should have been empty blazed with unholy light that made existence itself want to look away!
Mummified hands followed, each finger the size of a building's foundation, moving with speed that large things shouldn't possess.
They grasped the edges of the tear and pulled, ripping reality wider with the casual strength of sothing that had been waiting too long to be gentle!
The full creature that erged made several Dukes actually pale…a physical response that beings of their level shouldn't have been capable of experiencing.
Noah's enhanced perception imdiately began calculating, asuring the waves of power that radiated from this first arrival.
Five hundred trillion. At minimum!
Fuck!
The first Dead Existence to fully erge already eclipsed many of the assembled Dukes in raw power.
Its presence pressed against reality with weight that made lesser beings simply cease, not from attack but from proximity to sothing that shouldn't exist.
Across the Transcendent Origin Folds, the tears continued disgorging their contents.
Eidolons erged…beings of pure death-force that had forgotten they once had bodies.
Wights crawled through, their forms constantly shifting between what they had been and what death had made them.
Each tear revealed new horrors, new impossibilities, new opportunities for those brave or foolish enough to seize them.
Then, from one particular tear that seed deeper than the others, sothing different erged.
A winged head poked through first…not attached to a body but floating independently, supported by wings that had too many joints and moved in directions that space didn't normally permit.
Tentacles surrounded it like a living crown, each one tipped with eyes that saw in spectrums existence hadn't nad.
Noah's gloriously burning figure was forced to focus on this particular ergence because from it, he felt sothing that made his blood sing with recognition and challenge!
The aura of an Early Creature!
Among The Dead, a Winged Head of an Early Creature had actually spilled across The Veil!
Not a Duke, not a re powerful existence, but sothing that had walked in the Earliest Folds before walking beca a concept that needed definition.
Oh!
The exclamation escaped him as pure expression of delighted recognition.
This wasn't catastrophe!
This was opportunity wearing catastrophe's mask!
This was Existence delivering exactly what he needed, wrapped in packaging that would terrify anyone sensible enough to refuse the gift.
The Dead had co in force, and among them, sothing worth devouring.
The overflowing aura of The Dead pressed against reality with weight that made existence reconsider its structural integrity!
Noah gazed at the unfolding catastrophe with eyes that shone with both gravity and possibility…the particular gleam of soone doing math that would horrify accountants.
Twenty trillion in complexity and purity. It was nice, certainly.
The kind of power that could reshape Folds, that made him a Duke among weaker Dukes.
But when faced with Dead Existences asuring in the hundreds of trillions, when an Early Creature's winged head was erging with power approaching a single quadrillion markers... it wasn't entirely up to the task.
But he wasn't alone. He had another body…Ozymandias, whose purity had been refined to impossible heights! And he had sothing else, sothing that most here couldn't imagine.
A Legion of The Dead himself.
The masses of Aeternitas Concordia had gone pale…an achievent for beings whose complexions ranged from crystalline to void-touched.
Many turned toward Noah with expressions of expectant anticipation in their fear.
He had bellowed "CO!" with such magnificent authority.
Surely now he would charge forward, leading the defense against these monstrosities?
Noah t their gazes without changing expression.
Then, with the casual certainty of soone who had just rembered he'd left sothing behind, he floated back down beside Sigrid.
…!
He settled into a comfortable hovering position with his arms crossed, wearing the particular expression of soone waiting for a show to begin!
"…"
The silence that followed was deafening.
"What in the collapsed Folds are you doing?!" a Duke of Living Origins actually shouted, dignity forgotten in confusion.
"You called them here!" accused another, pointing at the erging horrors. "You literally invited them!"
Noah continued watching with polite interest, as if the accusations were happening in a language he didn't speak.
Sigrid beside him had to suppress her expression as she was also somber…she knew that expression, had seen it before when he was about to do sothing that would make everyone reassess their understanding of possibility.
What they didn't know, couldn't know, was that Noah wasn't retreating. He was simply allowing another part of himself to shine.
In the next mont, as terrifying Dead Existences began fully erging from tears that shouldn't exist…
"Ka! Ka! Ka!"
The cackling cut through the chaos like a scythe through wheat.
From a blooming portal of obsidian light and bones that materialized with theatrical precision in the sa above Concordia, Arch Lich Ra'Zan made his entrance!
His skeletal form was magnificent in its terrible glory…bones of obsidian-gold that caught light in ways that suggested they existed in more dinsions than were strictly necessary.
His skull blazed with green-gold flas that danced with genuine amusent. Tattered robes that seed woven from the final breaths of dying Folds billowed around him despite the absence of wind!
He stood atop the erging Primordial Stone Ape, whose undead form had grown even more terrifying since its transformation.
And leading them both, moving with the inexorable certainty of hunger given purpose…
Ozymandias!
The Purest Hunger had arrived, and reality itself held its breath!
Adui
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