Khor paused, her expression hardening.
"I will display one which may be of importance for all of us to observe. It should be a mory of my existence...during or after my collapse."
...!
She waved her hands, and a radiant, extrely solid illusory screen materialized in the air before them... a concentrated construct of her recovered Hunger given visual form.
After manifesting the screen, Khor closed her eyes, and on the illusory surface, obsidian darkness gave way to brilliance as a glorious...and horrifying scene began to play out.
Noah and the others watched as devastation blood across the screen.
The scene showed a fractured and decimated landscape of obsidian crystals stretching for impossible distances.
Billions upon billions of corpses...tentacled Inevitabilities in their natural forms, sprawled across the shattered crystalline terrain in poses suggesting violent, sudden death.
No signs of battle. Just... termination. As if sothing had simply decided they should cease existing and reality had complied.
In the center of all this devastation, the corpse of an adult Khor could be seen.
Her figure of subli beauty seed utterly defiled...an imnse, massive gash perated from her forehead vertically all the way down across her body, as if sothing had attempted to split her in half and had succeeded.
She was clearly dead. Unmistakably collapsed. Her existence terminated!
And standing over her corpse was a shadowy humanoid figure shrouded in darkness that made perception struggle to focus properly.
The entity was whistling nonchalantly...actually whistling, as if surveying the scene of genocide was a pleasant afternoon activity.
He reached out into Khor's corpse with familiarity and pulled, extracting a radiant obsidian-crimson Heart that pulsed with terrifying luminosity even in death.
The entity humd while throwing the Heart up and down, feeling its weight with assessnt.
"Another piece of the puzzle obtained..." he murmured with satisfaction, and he turned towards the corpse of Khor as he used his other hand to shut her absent crimson eyes tenderly, as if he was soothing her to sleep!
Noah's gaze hardened as he watched, his enhanced perception through The Lens of Civilization trying to pierce the shadows shrouding the figure.
Beside him in the present, Khor's eyes remained closed, but her hands were clenched so tightly her knuckles had gone white.
Her expression showed barely controlled rising lividity.
In the scene, three figures appeared behind the humanoid shadowy entity holding the Heart of Hunger.
They spoke in perfect unison, their voices overlapping.
"With this action, we must move even more quickly."
The humanoid entity shrouded in darkness nodded while continuing his humming.
"Yes, yes, My Little Weavers," he said.
"The Death of THE First Hunger will be felt by THE Creature. That guy has always looked after her from afar with sentintality ever since he butchered her Master in a haze, and has wanted to make ands since. Ah... sentintality of fools. Well, no matter."
He tossed the Heart casually.
"It is ti to activate Anaximander against THE Creature. Do you have everything ready on your end?"
...!
Noah's eyes flashed with chilling light as he processed those words.
THE Living Paradox and those three should be...THE Weavers. They're discussing using Anaximander as a weapon against THE Creature?!
His mind raced through possibilities while the scene continued!
THE Weavers replied in their unified voice: "It took considerable work, but Anaximander is prepared to be unleashed against THE Creature. He does not even comprehend what exactly he is doing, and he will not understand until the very last mont."
At such words, the shadowy figure grasping Khor's Heart of Hunger nodded as he turned.
And his face beca clear in the scene.
"Let's get started!" he declared with enthusiasm that bordered on mania.
BOOM!
The mont his face beca fully visible, Noah's eyes opened with shock.
In front of him in the present, Khor's eyes snapped open simultaneously, shock and lividity warring across her features as she howled!
That face!
They knew that face intimately!
She had recognized it before, and she had stated so!
BOOM!
An eruption of Hunger exploded where Khor stood, obsidian-crimson flas consuming the surrounding space as her eyes blazed with rage!
Noah stared at the face with a heavy gaze.
It was unfathomable. Impossible. And yet undeniable.
The face that THE Living Paradox was wearing in that mory...
Was the face of Schrodinger.
How? How could this be?
Noah's eyes flashed sharply as he looked at countless possibilities as...it did not make too much sense!
The beggar paradox, the Elderborn...he's THE Living Paradox? Or connected to him? A fragnt? A Will? A disguise?
Khor's figure trembled with palpable rage, her voice shaking with barely restrained violence.
"I recognized him," she said, "I should have known! All this ti...right under my nose!"
HUUM!
Her aura exploded outward.
"He collapsed billions of Inevitabilities! He collapsed MY existence and took my Heart of Hunger, my Primacy of Hunger! He enslaved all Inevitabilities and mutated them to work for his Loom! He..."
Her voice cracked with emotion!
"He must collapse! He must pay!"
BOOM!
Hunger began raging uncontrollably around her, obsidian-crimson flas consuming atmosphere itself.
Noah stepped forward, his voice holsing authority ant to penetrate her fury.
"Wait. Let us plan first. We cannot simply-"
But in the next mont...
WAP!
Khor disappeared.
Simply gone, as if she'd decided to exist sowhere else right away.
Noah's face beca heavier with profound concern.
There were still too many unknowns!
If THE Living Paradox is truly Schrodinger, or potentially his Remnant Will, or so fragnt, or sothing others can't even conceptualize...how powerful is he truly?
Going to face a being with THE distinction currently will have catastrophic consequences!
...!
But Khor had already set off, and Noah felt what she felt through their brief connection during the mory viewing.
When it ca to Hunger, the one quality he now understood intimately was this...whatever Hunger craved with sufficient potency, it would find.
Even if Khor didn't know precisely where Schrodinger was...though she did, because they'd been keeping tabs, with Schrodinger and Leonore currently hidden while observing a Justiciar complete its massacre in the Transcendent Quantum Folds with Noah's false illusions.
Even if she didn't know, her Hunger would track him and all his other bodies with inexorable certainty.
And she had already departed in her rage without questioning whether what they saw was truth, without wondering if they could actually face an existence with THE distinction at this mont.
Hunger was filled with fury!
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