The Primordial Record novel Chapter 2201

Chapter 2201: Following The Dragon

Eos had thought it was a possibility, but the Great One did not show himself.

This was, Eos understood, a statement about the impermanence of everything when compared to the Great One.

The most powerful beings he had ever faced had always announced themselves: Enoch with his body made of End, the Ancient Primordials with their terrible hungers, even Nyxara, Luminious Veil, with her stolen faces and her games.

Power, at a certain level, became indistinguishable from theater.

But the Great One did not need theater, nor did it need to impress him.

"You have been watching me," Eos said, and he knew this to be the truth laid out between them like an opening gambit.

"Since the beginning," the voice agreed.

"You watched me in that dying body of a prince. You watched me in the Nexus. You watched every choice I made and every mistake, and you let it happen, because... You were testing something."

"I am always testing something."

"And?" Eos pressed. "What have you found?"

A pause. The kind of pause that had weight.

"That you are the forty-fourth," the voice said, "and you are different from the other forty-three."

"How?"

"They all fought to save what they loved," the voice said. "You fight to save what they dreamed of. You fight for the thing that has not yet been born. The possible. The potential. The choice." The light of the Great One pulsed, and for a moment, Eos saw something in it that he had not expected to see... and it was curiosity.

"I gave them enemies that would threaten everything they know, and they all responded in the same manner. They faced their monster with rage or love or righteousness. You faced him with truth. And truth..." the voice paused again, and this time, the pause was different, a calculation rather than a performance,

"...truth is the one thing I did not build into the equation. The one variable I have never been able to account for. For what is the worth of truth in a place where the rules can always change? You broke that rule, Eos."

Eos looked at the light, and he understood.

"You are afraid of me," he said.

Silence.

"Not of my power," he continued, and the ten thousand lights of his crown began to slowly rekindle, one by one, drawing from the Origin Tree behind him.

"You have seen power before. You have seen warriors and lovers and geniuses and monsters. You are afraid of me because I am the first one in forty-four Existences who genuinely does not need to win."

The light flickered.

"I am going to rebuild Origin," Eos said, and his voice carried the same quiet certainty it had carried when he told Enoch that he could grow. "I am going to plant this tree in soil you cannot poison, and I am going to grow something that you cannot harvest, because I am going to make it in the image of love and truth and not hunger. And every life that is born in the shadow of that tree will be a life you cannot predict, cannot control, cannot break and reform according to your design." He took one more step toward the Tower. "You know what that means."

Eos looked up, and he smiled. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

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