Chapter 1788: Eos When the star reignited, a new pressure arose, different from the crushing weight of the reality-ending presence of Rowan. It was the dense, potent, pregnant pressure of a beginning. It was the feeling inside a star a nanosecond before ignition. The gathered immortals and pantheons remained prostrate, not in reverence, but in catatonic shock. His first footstep had not just sent a ripple of power that signaled that Rowan could end all of Reality as he wished, it also left the Arena a fractured, blackened wasteland, scarred by the mere weight of his footfall. Telmus had expended all his power and battled at the level of the Primordials, but he had only sent cracks across the Arena, and unlike every single life inside Reality, Telmus had not fallen to his knees, but he stood, body shaking, and his mind blank. A light gust of breeze would blow him to the ground, but Rowan was not focused on him. Rowan took his next steps, and the pressure of a new beginning exploded. Where His first footfall had cracked and blackened the Arena, His second footfall did the opposite. As His foot—the same foot that had moments ago threatened to shatter creation—settled upon the plain, a wave of pure, white-gold energy erupted from the point of impact. It was not fire, nor was it light as Eva or her father, Primordial Light, understood it. It was Life. Raw, unformed, and screaming with potential. The wave washed out across the infinite plain of the Arena. Where it touched the blackened, cracked scars of His first step, miracles bloomed. The dead light surged back, not as sterile solidity, but as a living crystal that sang in harmonic frequencies. Forests of silver trees erupted, their leaves chiming soft melodies. Rivers of liquid starlight began to flow through new-cut channels. The very air, which had been void of anything but primordial concepts, now thrummed with the breath of possibility, smelling of ozone and newborn rain. Across all realities, the opposite occurred. Stars that had flickered out now roared back to life, not just reigniting, but burning with a new, fierce intensity. Dying worlds felt their cores recharge; barren moons were suddenly veiled in nascent atmospheres. On countless worlds, in the moment of absolute despair that had followed the universal blackout, life erupted. Deserts bloomed. Sickly children were healed. The spark of sentience flickered in previously mindless creatures. Reality had been experiencing a surge of regrowth and expansion when Rowan opened the Primordial vortexes and unleashed what remained of Eosah’s essence upon Reality. However, no matter how potent that essence was, it was from a dead Reality, but Rowan was alive, and like Eosah, he was a creator. He did not release any of his essence into Reality; he did not need to. His presence was enough. Annihilation and Creation were not two separate powers He wielded. They were the inhale and exhale of the same being. His first step was the ending necessary for the new beginning. His second step was the beginning itself. He was not just the Killer of Primordials. He was the Ground of All Being. He was Reality itself. And His name was Eos. The assembled gods remained on their faces, but now their prostration was infused with a new emotion: a bewildered, terrified hope. They had witnessed the end of all things and then its resurrection, all in two footsteps by the same entity. Rowan—Eos—stood once more in the center of the now-living, and singing Arena. This place, meant for spilling blood, had tasted the radiance of Rowan’s glory, and its essence had transformed. No matter how much power the Primordials poured into this Arena, they were not creators like Rowan, and the final spark that would allow this place to elevate into something else had to come from a being like him. Rowan’s void-like eyes, which had moments ago promised absolute erasure, now held a different quality. They were still voids, but voids that contained the potential for all constellations, all stories, all loves and hates yet to be written. They were the silent dark before the Big Bang. He did not look at the Celestials or Demons. He did not glance at the gathered gods or the cosmic leviathans. They were set dressing. Interesting patterns that flickered on the surface of his being, but of no more ultimate consequence than the foam on a wave is to the ocean. His gaze, slow and tectonic, swept over the only beings in the assembly who constituted something approximating peers. The Primordials. They were not gods; they were the fundamental principles upon which gods themselves were built. And there were five of them here. Primordial Life, Memory, Demon, Imagination, and pushed out of his hiding place, Primordial Time. There was one more Primordial entity here, the Primordial Beast, but they had hidden their form the moment Rowan arrived. Whatever entity they were expecting to he challenging the Primordials, a being of Rowan’s power had exceeded their wildest dreams. Rowan did not care for the Primordial Beast. On this day, he was not here for them. He focused the full weight of His attention upon the Primordials alone. The pressure of his gaze, which had been a general fact of existence, now became a specific, focused force. The Arena fell silent as the very air held its breath. The voice that spoke was not the glacier-calving boom of the Killer. It was quieter, deeper, the sound of continental plates conversing. It was a voice not meant for lesser beings to hear, and indeed, the non-Primordial entities in the Arena heard only a vibration that made their souls feel thin and translucent. But the five Primordials heard Him. And they understood. "I was dead, killed by Nyxara and your machinations, but I have returned," Rowan intoned, His gaze resting on each of them in turn. "You all know different parts of me, and I know small parts of you, but for us, that is enough." The Primordials did not respond. Rowan’s voice captivated them like flies trapped in a spider’s web. He slowly brought up his right hand as if he were touching the space between dimensions. "Do you feel it?" Rowan said, "The tremor in the foundation of all you have built? It is not an earthquake. It is my footstep." his cold eyes became fixed on the five Primordials, "I have walked the silent, screaming halls of oblivion to stand before you. I have drunk from the river of forgetting and found its waters bitter with the taste of your names. You, who thought eternity a throne to be shared only among yourselves. You, who believed that an act of absolute annihilation could ever be absolute." "You unmade me. You reached into the womb of Eosah and tore me out, screaming. Even my death was not enough. You reached into the hearts of the loves I forged, and you poured in the void. You did not just kill me. You sought to erase me. To make a monument of my absence." Rowan had slowly come to understand the reason for his survival after his death, and he did not hide his Origins from the Primordials, because this was his Truth... this was his glory. "But you were fools. The greatest architects understand that the blueprint of a thing is etched into the fabrics of existence long after the thing itself is gone. You can shatter the vase, but you cannot unmake the shape of its emptiness. And I am that emptiness. Given will. Given memory." The hand that Rowan held up blurred, and the head of Eldrithor, Primordial Chaos, appeared. This was the final mortal form he had taken, and in his dead eyes were such profound terror and pain that any immortal who viewed it would have gone mad. Rowan turned the head so it could face him, and he spoke to it, "Eldrithor, I remember the light of a billion suns you snuffed out—each one a lullaby to a child I would never know again. I remember the silence that followed—a silence you mistook for peace. It was not peace. It was a breath held. My breath." Rowan squeezed his fist, and the head exploded, painting his right arm red with the blood of Primordial Chaos, "And now, I exhale." He lifted his left hand, and the head of Nyxara, Primordial Soul, appeared, and he spoke to the head as he did Eldrithor’s "You, Nyxara, the First Thirst—you who cut the cord of my destiny with such cold precision. Your edge is dulled by time and arrogance. Now you have felt a cut deeper than any you have ever inflicted. The cut of inevitability." Crushing the head of Primordial Soul, turning his left hand red, Rowan took a step and his figure blurred across space to stand before the Primordials. He wore no armor except knee-length breeches, leaving his upper body bare. Arcane runes flowed across his torso, each held significance that could crush all creation, and with the blood of two Primordials on his arms, his present form could hardly be described. Bringing up a bloody arm, he pointed towards the Primordial Demon, "You, Xylos, the First Doubt—you who spun the threads of conspiracy that bound my family in chains of fate. You thought your webs could catch a falling Creator. But I am no longer falling. I am rising. And I will burn every single thread until you are left naked in the glare of your own treachery." The arm pointed towards the next target, Primordial Life, "You, Vorthas, the Heart-Eater—you who consumed the joy, the love, the very essence of those I cherished. You gorged yourself on life and called it strength. But you have digested my light, and now that light turns to fire in your belly. I am that fire." The hand pointed towards Primordial Time, and the force of Rowan’s Will stripped away his secrets, and his name was known to him. "You, Xyris, the Silent—you who watched. Who judged. Who gave the nod with a blink of your cold, distant eye as your sister tore me from the womb? Your silence was your assent. Your inaction, your crime. I will break your vow of silence with a scream that will forever echo in your hollow core." Then, disregarding Primordial Imagination, he pointed at last to Primordial Memory, and his words held a much greater heat, causing this Primordial to flinch. "And you... Elgorath. The First Cause. The architect of my ruin. You who held the quill and dipped it in nothingness to write the end of my story. You were mistaken. The story was not over. You merely turned the page and found it blank. And now, I write upon that page. In blood. In fire. In the unmaking of epochs. You took from me all that there was to take. And in doing so, you left me with nothing. And nothing... is what I now have to lose. You, however... You have everything left to lose. Your thrones. Your dominion. Your very names." He had listed the crimes of these five, and although there were more, too many ever to be counted, Rowan knew he would make them pay for all of them. A thrill of pure, existential terror ran through the five cosmic pillars. They understood what was coming. It was not punishment. It was something far more terrifying. Rowan turned his body sideways, and Reality seemed to shift. This was a pose for battle. "Ready yourselves." The two words were not a warning. They were a preparation phase, a necessary interval for a system to brace for an incoming force. They were the moment of silence before the symphony. "I am about to attack."