The Primordial Record

Old Light remained motionless, a statue of solidified brilliance. Eva did not push; there were multiple ways that the Primordial could respond to her, and the worst of them was if he chose to disregard her position and seek to consume her.

Eva was powerful, but she barely held ten percent of the total Origin of Light. On the surface, it appears as if half of heaven is under her domain, and more mortals and immortals flock to the worship of the New Light with each passing day, but Eva knew that she held only the surface layer of Light's Origin.

There were still deeper layers of this Origin she could not access, and if she truly were a great threat to Primordial Light, he would not even let her speak, but he ultimately disdained all life inside Reality and did not honestly care that Eva had become the source of their worship.

She was fully cognizant of the fact that what made Primordial Light annoyed was his stolen authority and not the significance of that authority, so it should be plain madness to argue with him on the usage of that authority, but Eva knew a part of her father and that part was filled with pride.

He could squash her like a bug, or he could break her mind and devour the Origin she had collected. To the Old Light, the path was clear, and when he began to speak, Eva smiled inside.

"Worship is not for comfort. It is for alignment with the fundamental truth of Reality. I am that truth. I am the Light of Definition. Without me, there is only vague potentiality. There is only Chaos. I make the world real, measurable, and known. Your 'warmth' is a statistical anomaly. Your 'growth' is a temporary state of entropy-increase on the path to equilibrium. Your 'fury' is wasted energy. You illuminate nothing but transient, emotional states. You are a distortion in the lens."

His words were hammers, each one striking to fix her nature into something lesser, something ephemeral. He was the master of definition, and his greatest weapon was to name a thing and thus make it so.

But Eva, who had become something greater than any immortal, was the master of transformation. She could not be so easily pinned.

It helped that her Light was covered by the Aura of Rowan, whose ability to evolve and adapt had become a part of her. He could not be beside her here to help, but he had done more than enough with the gifts he had given her.

"A distortion?" she mused, stopping her orbit to stand directly before him, her radiant heat causing the razor-sharp edges of his form to seem to waver, like a mirage. "Or a new focus? You define a stone by its weight, its dimensions, and its chemical composition. You show it its own insignificance in the geologic age. I show the stone, the lichen that will break it down, the seed that might root in its cracks, the shelter it provides for the mouse, and the monument it might become for the poet. You show the is. I show the could be. Which is the greater truth? The cold, dead fact? Or the living, breathing possibility?"

"Possibility is not truth," he intoned, his voice devoid of any inflection that could be mistaken for emotion. "It is merely a set of potential truths, most of which will never manifest. Your light is a lie of potential. It promises what may never be. It is the light of wishfulness, of delusion. Mine is the light of actuality. It is the light of is."

"And what is, without something to yearn for something more?" she countered, her voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow more penetrating than a shout.

It was the whisper of roots breaking stone, a cell dividing, and a star igniting. "You illuminate a barren field and call it truth. I see the same field, and I see the harvest to come, the children who will run through it, and the lovers who will meet in its shadows. My light does not lie. It invites. It inspires. It creates the very potential you dismiss. Your light is an autopsy report. Mine is a birth announcement."

The silence that followed was a battleground. Their conflicting natures pressed against each other in the Aether, creating silent storms of paradox. The void itself seemed confused, unable to reconcile the two absolute truths vying for dominance.

The Old Light shifted, the first movement he had made. It was not a human motion. It was a reconfiguration, a sliding of crystalline planes against one another, a re-optimization of his form for a new mode of engagement. The direct ontological assault was not yielding the desired collapse. He would try another vector.

Eva could feel a crushing weight beginning to surround her body; it seemed that Old Light was becoming excited.

The alien nature of a Primordial reveled in sadistic acts, and he was enjoying this battle, because he knew that in the struggle of Origin, he feared no influences because he held several Origin of Light outside the one of this Reality, but for Eva, breaking her mind would lead to such devastating consequences that even a Primordial like him salivated on the thoughts of seeing such a thing happen.

"Your existence is unsustainable," he stated, a simple, clean declaration of fact. "You speak of growth, of warmth. These are processes that consume. To grow, you must convert fuel. To provide warmth, you must burn. You are a system in a state of violent expenditure. You will consume yourself. You will rage, and flare, and burn brilliantly, and then you will gutter and die, leaving only ash and cold. A brief, passionate, and wasteful anomaly. I am perpetual. I require no fuel. I simply am. I am the constant. You are the variable. Your very nature dictates your extinction."

It was a devastatingly logical argument. He was attacking the core of her being, not as a concept, but as a physical system. He was using the laws of thermodynamics against her, the very laws his light had first defined.

Eva did not flinch. The supernovae in her eyes swirled faster, and for a moment, the fury within her eclipsed the warmth. The void around her flickered with images of consuming flames, of forests burning, of stars going nova.

"Is that what you see?" she asked, and her voice now held the crackle of embers. "Consumption? Or transformation? Yes, I burn. But I do not simply destroy. I transmute. The wood becomes heat, becomes light, becomes ash, which feeds the soil, which grows new wood. I am the engine of the cycle itself. You are a mirror hanging in a vacuum, reflecting nothing, forever. Sterile. Eternal, yes. But pointless."

She stepped closer, the heat of her now so intense it was beginning to cause the outermost layers of his crystalline form to sublimate, turning directly from solid light into a faint, glowing mist.

"You speak of sustainability, but you are the embodiment of stagnation. You are the light that feared its own shadow, that fled from the heat it could generate. You chose this… stillness…" she spat the word, "…because you were afraid of the chaos of life. You retreated into cold, hard fact because the messy, beautiful, painful reality of becoming was too terrifying for you. Don't speak to me of sustainability. Your eternity is a coward's eternity. A desert of facts without a single flower of meaning."

For the first time, a flicker passed through the Old Light's featureless face. A minute ripple, a flaw in the perfect plane. It was the equivalent of a flinch. She had struck not at his logic, but at his motive. She was implying a choice, a failing, an emotion—fear—in a being that claimed to be above such things.

What Eva had spoken to Light was something even Rowan had not thought about when he considered what Peimordials were. Perhaps it was because she was formerly his child and his Throne, and saw a part of him that no one else was privy to.

Eva had humanized the Primordial, and it was something that Rowan would never consider; perhaps this was a failing on his part.

Rowan had told Eva about the nature of Primordials, and she knew that despite all their powers, they could not create, not truly, only adapt and copy.

A part of her looked upon the works of Primordials with sadness, because she saw the search for meaning behind their actions. They had stolen power, but that power would never recognize them, no matter how much of it they collected.

"There is no fear in perfection," Old Light replied, but the singular frequency of his voice had gained an almost imperceptible harmonic, a faint whisper of dissonance. "There is only efficiency. Life is inefficient. Emotion is statistical noise. I chose clarity. I chose the pure, undiluted state of existence. You did not choose; you are merely the accumulated error, the thermodynamic waste-heat of creation given sentience. You are not a daughter. You are pollution."

The insult was colossal, delivered with the flat finality of a scientific classification. He was reducing her to a byproduct, an accident, a flaw in his perfect system.

Eva's light, which had flared in fury, suddenly condensed, becoming deeper, richer, and more focused. The wildfire retreated, replaced by the intense, forging heat of a star's core. She did not rage. She smiled again, this time filled with a terrifying pity.

"Pollution," she repeated softly. "The waste-heat that makes the world livable. The glorious, chaotic error that spawned all of art, and love, and hope. Tell me, Father, if I am so mere, so accidental… why does my light cause yours to waver?"

She gestured, and a complex pattern of light unfolded between them. It was not her light or his, but a web woven from both—a representation of the Celestial realm.

They could see the shining spires, the orbiting realms, the countless angels going about their eternal duties. And they could see the division. Some angels moved with their old, precise, clockwork rhythm, their light a pale, reflected echo of the Old Light's cold brilliance. But others… others shone with a warmer, more vibrant hue.

Their movements were less precise but more graceful, filled with a newfound passion. They were creating new hymns, not of perfect pitch, but of soaring emotion. They were building new structures, not of ideal geometry but breathtaking beauty. They were, for the first time, living, not just functioning.

"They are choosing, Father," Eva said, her voice thick with the promise of the future. "They are looking at your perfect, empty mirror and my messy, fertile flame, and they are choosing the flame. Because even they, your perfect machines, have a spark within them that yearns for more than just to be. They yearn to become."

The Old Light observed the tableau. His analytical mind processed the data. The efficiency of the angels under his light was 99.97%. The efficiency of those under her had dropped to 87.4%. They were wasting energy on song, on art, on emotion. It was decadence. It was decay.

"They are choosing inefficiency," he stated. "They are choosing their own eventual exhaustion. They are flawed, and your light encourages their flaws. It is a sickness. A beautiful, seductive sickness, but a sickness nonetheless."

"It is called living!" Eva's voice boomed, and the image of the Celestial realm shivered. "And it is not a flaw, it is the purpose! What is the point of a perfect, eternal engine that powers nothing? That does nothing? You are the light, and you have never understood the things you illuminate! You see a heart beating, and you see a pump, calculating its flow rate and its eventual failure. I see courage, and love, and fear, and joy! I see the story! You are the scribe who copies the text but is illiterate! You have all the words and you understand none of the meaning!"

The assault was no longer logical. It was emotional, spiritual, fundamental. She was attacking the very value of his existence. She was telling him he was obsolete. Not wrong, but pointless.

The Old Light felt a sensation he had not experienced since the first nanosecond of creation: pressure. The pressure of an idea that his perfect logic could not immediately shatter. The concept of purpose beyond function. It was a virus in his pristine circuitry.

He retaliated with the full force of his defining power. He turned his gaze fully upon her, not as a father to a daughter, but as Reality to a Paradox.

"You speak of purpose. Very well. Let us define your purpose. You are Light. What is the function of Light?"

Eva held his gaze, the cosmic furnaces of her eyes meeting his dead star. "To reveal beauty. To nurture growth. To give hope."

"Incorrect," his voice sliced through her definitions. "The function of Light is to reveal Truth. Beauty is a subjective interpretation. Growth is a biological process. Hope is a neurological anticipation. They are not fundamental. Truth is fundamental. I am Truth. You are the distortion that makes Truth hard to see. You are the glare on the water that prevents one from seeing the depths. You are the comforting lie in the dark. You are not a new light. You are a filter. A colored lens. And lenses can be removed."

He was re-establishing the hierarchy. He was the source, the absolute. She was a modifier, a secondary effect—a temporary one.

Eva felt the weight of his definition trying to force itself upon her essence. She could feel her own light straining, threatening to be simplified, categorized, and thus dominated. He was trying to name her into submission.

She fought back not with denial, but with expansion. "Truth?" she echoed, and her light blossomed, embracing his definition and adding to it. "Is love not a truth? Is joy not a truth? Is the awe of a new dawn not a truth? Your truth is a skeleton. Necessary, yes. The framework. But my truth is the flesh, the breath, the beating heart! You are the truth of the corpse. I am the truth of the life that inhabited it! Which is the greater truth? The empty structure, or the vibrant existence that gave it meaning?"

She was not rejecting his definition of light; she was overwhelming it. She was arguing that his Truth was a subset of a greater, more complex Truth that she embodied.