Noah listened to her words with the attention they deserved.
Her story was not what he had expected. Pride and foolishness and the desire to experience sothing beyond the role she had been assigned, these were motivations he could understand even if he could not entirely relate to them. She had made herself lesser because being greater felt unearned. She had suffered because she refused to admit that her experint had failed.
He could respect that, even as he refused to follow her advice.
"Where I grew up, there was a private school near the public school I attended."
His voice erged with calm that matched her earlier composure.
"Vastly different institutions. The private school had uniforms and gates and parents who drove expensive vehicles. The public school had tal detectors and overcrowded classrooms and teachers who had stopped caring years before I arrived."
He observed her expression shift into curiosity at his unexpected response.
"So days during lunch, I would walk to a park that sat between these two vastly different worlds. And in that park, I befriended a girl from the private school. She was beautiful, intelligent, and kind in ways that suggested she did not realize how different our circumstances actually were."
Noah’s illusory form shifted slightly, mories he had not accessed in what felt like eternities surfacing with clarity that surprised him.
"When her friends found out about our friendship, they cornered . They told the two of us were in different worlds. They said I needed to stop pushing myself around her, that she was just being nice to soone as little as . She was far above. I was below."
His eyes t Eon’s golden gaze with defiance that had not diminished since childhood.
"Tell , do you think I stopped seeing that girl?"
He did not wait for her to answer.
"She was a baddie. And I never stopped seeing her until she went abroad. She was supposed to be out of my league. Everyone told so. Her friends told so. Her parents eventually told so. I did not care."
His smile held the tyranny that had defined him since before he understood what tyranny ant.
"So tell , what do you think I will do in this situation?"
...!
His words were grand, declarations that refused to acknowledge the hierarchies being described to him!
Eon looked at him calmly again. She did not reply to his story, did not attempt to explain why his analogy was flawed, did not point out that the consequences of defying Existential Designations were sowhat different than the consequences of defying private school social hierarchies.
She simply observed him as one might observe a specin confirming expected behavior.
Noah looked at her as another question ford in his awareness.
"As a Gilded Lifeform, why is so much Observable force flowing into you? You seem to have so much that my weavings inside of you cannot help but transmit it over."
Eon’s expression shifted into sothing approaching patience.
"THE Gilded are blessed and nurtured by all that which is Observable."
Her voice held the tone of soone explaining fundantals to those who had never been permitted to learn them.
"Contextually not infinite, but all Gilded have access freely to an almost endless amount of Observable force. Traversing the lower Scales of Vakochev’s Existence is easier for us. All THE Bounded never gaze upon anything past Proterozoic."
She looked at him with directness that permitted no misunderstanding.
"You...will never gaze upon anything past Proterozoic."
|Advancent limitation confird for Bounded Lifeforms.|
|Maximum ceiling: THE Proterozoic Scale.|
"THE Gilded can progress past THE Second Scale with ti. It is simply how we were born. Access to Observable is rely one of the perks."
Her golden tattoos pulsed with light that seed to emphasize her words.
"We interact with the Scales differently. We have resistance to Infinity and much more unlike what any Bounded can imagine. I am telling you all of this, but it seems worthless as it does not seem like you will change your path."
Noah’s eyes remained firm with tyranny as he processed her words.
THE Bounded could never progress past THE Proterozoic Scale. That was the ceiling Existence had engineered for his kind. That was the limitation he was supposed to accept, the boundary he was never supposed to cross, the height beyond which he was never supposed to gaze.
He nodded slowly.
"If I have gotten my hooks on one of the perks of THE Gilded through you, why should I let go?"
His smile held conviction that refused to acknowledge impossibility.
"I want to enjoy what you are enjoying."
|Decision Registered: Quintessence Infiniforce connection will be maintained.|
Eon looked at him silently for a long mont.
"Had you not helped my foolish past self with that fungus, I may have forced you to do what I am saying."
Her voice erged asured and final.
"As a thank you, I will not. But my choice to thank you this way can also be considered your catastrophe, as I know what it will bring for you in the future."
She turned away from him, her form beginning to shimr with light that suggested imminent departure.
"You have made your choice. I will not go back and forth on it with you. Just be ready."
She paused, looking back over her shoulder.
"When they do inadvertently find out, you can find ease in the fact that they will only care about you. They will only extinguish you. Your family or any of those under you would be untouched."
Her golden eyes held his one final ti.
"So at least there is that. Your choice will only bring about your own ruin, and others will mourn you."
Noah’s eyes shone sharply at her words.
"What about you who allowed this to happen?"
Eon’s calm reply erged with the certainty of soone stating mathematical truth.
"I told you. I get a slap on the wrist. You get extinction."
HUUM!
With such words, her figure rose as she began to flicker out of Observable Existence.
Golden light gathered around her form. She was departing , returning to existences he had never known existed until monts ago.
Noah looked at her defiantly as she looked back at him.
The two held their gazes across the distance separating them, Gilded and Bounded, superior and inferior according to Designations he refused to acknowledge.
He would not remove his Quintessence Infiniforce from her existence. He would not surrender the Observable force flowing into him through those pathways. He would not accept the extinction she predicted with such casual certainty.
Ultimately, she sighed.
Then...she disappeared.
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