Noah’s eyes opened- eyes that were now wide and gloriously ancient.
And within them, a tide of visions bloomed like an ever-unfolding lotus of paradox.
Lines of golden light flickered in his gaze as flashes from outside the sealed Dyson Singularity passed through his Absolute Fictional Transcendence.
Not mere veiled words. Not mere meanings. But the full weight of Fable with very little left behind!
Aetheron, with his sharp tongue and hollow eyes.
Oryzarakh, with his scolding thoughtcast that stung like a whip.
The White Paradox- older than many of the wheels scattered across the Folds- speaking of birds that sang too freely and Lineages poised to fight for...him?
Noah absorbed it all like a breath. Like inevitability. Well, inevitability was a poor choice of words since they posed the biggest problem currently!
And he thought of the Living Paradox they mentioned.
Still pressing against his chest like a malleable wheel of existence and pouring light and heat into him, for him, as around them...
Nine massive Towers were jutting out.
Nine Early Living Towers of Origin!
Nine solid, resplendent spires born from his weavings alone. Each buzzing with hymns and raised high by Mythic Signatures who sang in languages older than verbs, whose harmonies hummed with raw Authority.
Each tower had taken root in the core of his Living Wheel of Existence.
Each one lived.
Each one sang.
And his body responded in kind.
|Your True Absolute Existential Origin Resistance has reached 100%!|
|Your True Absolute Existential Spiritual Resistance has reached 100%!|
|Your True Absolute Existential Emotive Resistance has reached 100%!|
|Your True Absolute Existential Temporal Resistance has reached 100%...!|
...!
Every part of his being had begun to transcend.
His Resistances were beginning to spiral- reaching toward the impossible number of 1,000% collectively. And in such a state...
He wondered, as his fingers gently stroked through Moiraine’s hair.
When he was done... will the likes of Hannibal still look down on him with their thin smiles or cold gazes? Or will they kneel alongside the rest?
He did not smile at the thought.
He merely knew.
HUUM!
Another swirl of paradoxical plasma surged around him, lemniscate loops of blinding white gold forming fractal rings in the air. He welcomed them without moving. Welcomed them into his Towers. Into his Mythic Signatures. Into himself.
Everything continued... smoothly.
And with that surety, Noah shifted his gaze outward- calm, unhurried, and glorious.
Toward another domain!
---
In the Living Origin Labyrinth.
The air here thrummed with a gentler rhythm, the chaotic buzz of the Dyson Singularity replaced with layered pulses of Living Origin Authority.
Here, Noah’s other self sat- still, whole, present. A containment field of his aura was drawn tightly in, focused on one person alone.
Sigrid.
Her fair skin glowed softly, as if she had been carved from the earliest mists of the Folds.
The symmetrical runic tattoos that traced her body now pulsed with white-gold light. Her eyes shimmered, half-lidded with confusion. Her lips moved faintly, breath catching with effort. And her brow...
It furrowed.
As if she were trying, quite desperately, to remember something that had been buried beneath lifetimes of silence.
Noah watched and said nothing.
He gazed upward, to a high arcing dome of light that shimmered with golden-white tension far above the domain they were contained in.
He knew it. That was where the Living Origin who dared attack him had his authority thrown back to. Rejected. Severed. Silenced!
Somewhere in this Living Origin Labyrinth, the one who sought to end his Beginning lay!
And yet his eyes did not linger long on the distant sight of the enemy.
For before him, something far more pressing stirred.
Sigrid.
Her eyes fluttered open with a tremble. They were moist. Golden tears, like drops of liquid time, spilled down her cheeks. They caught the glint of Origin authority and shimmered as they fell.
Noah’s expression shifted.
For a moment, his tyrannical stillness softened just slightly as he reached forward, brushing a tear away from her face with two fingers. His other hand cupped her cheek, steadying her as her lips parted.
She laughed.
A quiet, self-mocking sound that echoed with sorrow deeper than language.
"My memory is scattered," she whispered. "But I... I destroyed my own Living Origin. I destroyed my beginning!"
Her voice cracked, and her body trembled as she pressed a hand against her heart.
"I did it myself. I don’t remember why. Only pain. Endless, unfathomable pain. I don’t remember anything else but that. And yet..."
She looked up at him through tear-glazed eyes, the gold in her gaze flickering like dying stars.
"Why do I still feel it? Even when I remember nothing else?"
...!
Noah’s eyes darkened. Not with pity. But with purpose.
She had destroyed her own beginning- her own Living Origin!
That meant this woman, this seemingly fractured and dazed being standing before him, had once been a Living Origin.
A being of authority that existed on the very edge of what could be comprehended... and she had cast it all away. Covered her existence with runes that sealed and suppressed- Runes that led back to weavings of the Living Origins.
For pain.
For something she had once believed... even if she no longer remembered.
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