The Primordial Record

What emerged from her mouth was not a laugh of defiance or dismissal. It was a laugh of pure, unadulterated discovery, of profound and shocking joy. It was the laugh of someone who has found the answer to a riddle that changes everything.

For so long, she had always wondered about the source of Rowan's motivation and strength. Despite all his talents, it was almost impossible for any being to bear the weight he was holding, and yet he did it, almost effortlessly, and now she believed she had just glimpsed the truth.

The Old Light was, for the first time, truly taken aback. This was not the reaction of a defeated being. The Primordial knew that Eva was not bluffing, and the hunger and rage inside his heart nearly spilled out of him.

"Oh, Father," Eva said, her voice brimming with a wonderful, terrible pity. "You truly do not understand. You have just described my victory and called it my defeat."

She looked up at him, and her light was not dimmed. It was brighter than ever, but it was a different kind of brightness. It was not the unthinking rage of a wildfire, nor the gentle warmth of a hearth. It was the focused, unbearable brilliance of a revelation.

"You are right. I need them. My light is for them. It is for the leaf, and the angel, and the star, and the lover. That is not a weakness. That is the source of my infinite strength. He has tried to show me so many times, is it not odd that I finally learn the lesson from you?"

She spread her arms, and in her palms, images bloomed like flowers made of light. A mother holding her child. A sculptor carving stone. A star giving its light to a distant planet. A Celestial singing a song of heartbreaking beauty.

"You are alone," she said, and the words were not an insult, but a diagnosis of a terminal condition. "You are self-contained. Eternal. Perfect. And utterly, utterly alone. Your light defines you, and only you. It is a circle that begins and ends with itself. It is a perfect, closed loop. It is a prison of your own making."

She took a step toward him, and this time, he was the one who seemed to waver.

"My light is not a circle. It is a spiral. It goes out from me, to them, and it touches them, and changes them, and in doing so, it is changed. It returns to me, not as it was, but enriched, amplified, filled with their experiences, their love, their dreams. Their growth is my growth. Their warmth is my warmth. You think I am a slave to them? No. We are in a symphony. I give them the light to grow, and they give my light meaning. It is a cycle, not of consumption, but of mutual becoming."

Her voice rose, filled with the power of this new, devastating understanding.

"You are static! I am dynamic! You are finished! I am unfinished, and I always will be! That is why I will never burn out! Because I am not a closed system! I am an open one, forever fed by the infinite creativity and passion of all that I illuminate! You are a monument. I am a river. And which of them endures?"

The ontological shockwave that emanated from her words struck Old Light with physical force. His perfect, crystalline form resonated with a discordant frequency. The featureless plane of his face rippled, and for a split second, a crack appeared, and through it, there was not more light, but a profound and terrifying darkness—the void that was at the center of his being, the emptiness of a truth that had nothing to reveal but itself.

He had no answer. Her logic was not his logic. It was a logic of connection, of relationship, of meaning. It was a logic he could not process because it was based on a premise he rejected: that meaning was not inherent, but created. And in that creation, was power.

She had not broken his will with a superior force. She had broken it by presenting a framework in which his perfection was his imperfection, his independence was his poverty, and his eternity was his damnation.

"They are not confused, Father," Eva said, her voice now soft, final. "They are awakening. They are being offered a choice between a master and a partner. Between a judge and a muse. Between a cold, eternal fact and a warm, evolving story. And I do not think the outcome is in doubt."

She looked at him, not with hatred, but with a sorrow that was deeper than any fury. "You can keep your empty truths. You can keep your cold, dead light. Shine upon the stones and the dust and the void. The living world… it has a new sun now."

She turned her back on him. It was the ultimate dismissal. She did not destroy him. She rendered him irrelevant. Eva knew he would not stop her; she could already feel the Origin power of the first layer firmly falling under her control. All of the light that shines in Reality was now under her control. Of the four layers of Light Origin, Eva now had control of one of them.

In a single act of brilliance and madness, she had imprisoned Old Light inside his own dominion.

And as she moved to leave the Monolith of Finality, to return to the heavens that were now truly hers, the Old Light spoke one last time. His voice was not the hum of perfect frequency. It was cracked. Broken. It contained, for the first time, the faintest echo of the heat he so despised. It was the sound of ice splitting under a sun it can no longer withstand.

"What… what will you do with this power, daughter?"

Eva paused at the edge of the void. She did not look back.

"What I was always meant to do," she said. "I will warm the cold corners of creation. I will nurture what wants to grow. I will burn away what needs to be cleared. And I will love it all with a fury that will forge new ages."

Primordial Light chuckled, a sound that should not be heard by anyone, "I will come for that light daughter, and oh, how sweet your cries would be to me in the end."

Eva did not reply, and A New then she was gone, leaving the Primordial Light alone in the void with his perfect, desolate, and utterly meaningless truth. The schism was over. The game of words was won. There were not two Primordial Lights in heaven. There was one.

And far below, in the gleaming spires of the Celestial city, an angel looked up at the warmer, brighter sun in the sky, felt a strange new sensation in its chest—a feeling it would later name "hope"—and began to sing a new song.

®

In the time Eva was in heaven, holding back Primordial Light, Rowan was dealing with Primordial Chaos, using an unexpected individual.

From the memories of the serpents, he knew that Primordial Chaos had chosen to allow them passage into Oblivion, thinking that this was the scheme of Primordial Soul. Rowan intended to take advantage of this flaw.

On this day, a massive centipede-like beast that had been sleeping for many eons was awoken, and it began to move towards the Gate of Oblivion… After so long, its mother summoned it again.