Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5714

Chapter 5714: Sleepless! I

<THE SLEEPLESS FIEND>

In the quiet spaces of a closed room, lifeforms placed behind curved glass will always establish a routine.

They wake, they swim along the transparent perimeter, they consume whatever flakes of nourishment drift down from the ceiling, and they believe the curved boundary of their water is the edge of all reality.

They engage in tiny, frantic conflicts over an inch of sand. They breed their progeny to believe that the illumination above them is an eternal constant, never realizing that the hand turning the light on and off belongs to something standing outside their sky.

It is a predictable cycle, observed with detached curiosity by anyone standing tall enough to peer through the glass.

In this vast, silent chamber, there were hundreds of such vessels.

They did not hold minnows or aquatic insects. Each floating enclosure was a self-contained Dimension, carefully anchored against the surrounding dark, with more than half engineered as hidden Elsedimensions folded away from the standard patterns of the continuum.

And the creatures moving inside them were Descendants, entities standing at THE SEAM or towering even higher, lifeforms whose bloodlines carried uncounted eras of unbroken authority, pacing along the transparent boundaries of their artificial skies without ever perceiving the room they occupied.

They even thought they left their Dimension to cross endless darkness and enter other Dimensions...but they did not know they only ever remained in one enclosure.

At the center of these floating glass domains sat a hazy, colossal humanoid figure.

He did not possess a body of mortal clay or dense bone. The silhouette was composed of constantly pulsing strands of brilliance, undulating threads of the Weave that twisted with quiet, immense authority.

This was THE SLEEPLESS FIEND.

Before him rested a wide, shallow dish carved from crystallized void.

Within the dish, pinned down by needles of solid law, writhed a chimeric lifeform!

It was an unnatural synthesis, woven from the boundless currents of Infinity, the raw genesis of THE Primordial Source, and the rigid geometric threads of THE Argent Loom. The creature had no unified identity, only an agony of incompatible foundations, its Dimensionality surging outward in violent, miniature typhoons that broke uselessly against the lip of the petri dish.

THE SLEEPLESS FIEND held a slender needle between two fingers of woven brilliance. At the needle’s tip clung a single drop of pitch-black ink, dense with the weight of sovereign records.

With cold, surgical precision, he pressed the needle into the chimera’s heaving flank. Sentences of pure intent flowed from the ink into the creature’s marrow, carving order into the chaotic blend of authorities.

"This is merely the integration of measly small authorities," the Fiend murmured.

"A little Infinity to stretch the boundaries, a drop of the Source to fuel the combustion, and the Loom to ensure the structure remembers its place. With enough Narrative and a few Causes to bind the seams, you will be stabilized. Cease your noise. An existence that cannot endure a little editing has no right to step outside the glass."

The chimeric beast twisted, its conceptual shrieks rippling through the dish, but the Fiend did not press harder or withdraw. He simply held the needle steady until the ink settled into the flesh, watching the authorities cease their violent rejection of one another.

He did not hate the things he molded. Hatred was an unnecessary expenditure of kinetic energy, and an architect who had outlasted epochs had no use for pointless heat. Existence was an unfinished architecture, full of loose threads and unstable foundations, and someone had to sit in the dark and test which joints could bear the weight of what was to come.

He lifted the needle, letting the chimera rest in its newly stitched skin.

Then, the strands of brilliance that formed his visage shifted.

THE SLEEPLESS FIEND blinked!

His luminous eyes closed, the endless pulse of his form steadying for a fraction of an instant. Within the vast expanse of his awareness, a faint vibration ceased. It was not a physical sound, but the sudden absence of nine particular frequencies atop other 9 that had been tethered to his lineage!

"Curious," he said softly to the quiet room.

He opened his eyes, tilting his head slightly.

"Thpse sent out to gather weavings in the silk...their sentences have ended."

"Not crushed by superior mass, and not broken by another architect. Not a scrap of their Existential Narrative remains for the cloth to remember. Who did they encounter in the dark?"

"THE Chrysalis is a bit scary with those things left behind by that monster watching everything, so I cannot do too much. But... a little punishment across a tiny region where they died should be fine."

A mandate of pure, incurable insomnia.

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