Chapter 1907: Bringing Forth Change Enoch touched the space in front of him, as if he was reaching across the nothingness to touch the remnants of that past... a past that no longer existed, because by his hands, he had erased everything, and he was the only remnant from a civilization and history that no longer existed. "The reason I could erase existence was due to its limits; it appeared infinite, but it was not. How else could there ever be a place like the Edge of All Things? The explosion of all there is tore existence apart at its seams, and it was no longer limited. Limbo was born, and it would expand forever... reaching across all there was and was not, without limits... There would be endless change. My paradise was here." Enoch stopped talking, and Rowan did not ask for what was next. He knew that there was still more to this story, and he respected the silence, even when it went on for several decades. The eyes of Enoch before him were clouded, and Rowan could wait. His patience was rewarded as Enoch started talking without any indication, "I was alone... I floated in a whiteness so complete it had weight. No up, no down, no time, no sound. Only myself and the echo of my own heartbeat, which now sounded, for the first time, afraid. This was a new sensation, fear, and it birthed new inspiration inside of me... I wanted to create, to crush this unknown sensation in my heart, and from that fear, the seed of ambition was born." The hand that Enoch stretched forth in front of him began to pull, as if tugging on the fabrics of reality, and Rowan, who was in a unique position, saw something... sad. Enoch was sitting on an invisible throne, and when he reached towards the space around him and tugged at it, nothing changed, but in the memory... what a sight it was to witness existence where there was nothing but light, so bright and yet so complex, it almost made Rowan weep. "I reached for my Lumina to make something—anything—a single photon, a grain of dust, a memory. My power answered, vast and obedient, but there was nothing left to shape it with. No darkness to push against. No law to break. No one else to witness." Rowan saw Enoch sitting on a throne of nothing, reaching for a power that once shattered all of existence, but now there was no light dancing among his fingers, where, in his memories, there was at least his Lumina. Only a Creator could understand the profundity of this loss. "I was the canvas, the paint, the painter, and the ruin all at once." In the memory that Rowan was witnessing, he saw Enoch scream, and the scream went nowhere because there was no longer a where. In the perfect, featureless forever he had created, the smartest and most powerful being who had ever lived finally understood the thing he had killed the universe to find that Change requires something to change from, and something to change into. Enoch pulled back his hand, and he sighed, "Now there was only me. Eternal. Unchanging. Alone. Rowan, I should have been sad or broken, and for a long time, I was, but the answer came to me in a flash, and I knew the truth that I was running from for so long... I wanted change, yet I was unwilling to let go of the last constant that symbolized stagnation... My Lumina, the last remnants of the Luminious, remained, and how could there be change when the most powerful symbol of the previous reality was still inside me? So, I cut it out of me... my light." Rowan could see it, behind Enoch, his Lumina took shape, taking the form of massive wings of light. Seeing this wings of light seemed to trigger more of the flames from his chest to merge with his consciousness and he was able to see the past forms of the Luminous more clearly. This lost ancient race, eliminated by the greatest among them, and they all had wings. Glowing and beautiful with patterns that mesmerized the mind, and it finally showed Rowan the origin of his and the celestial’s winged forms. In the memory, Enoch was screaming to the heavens as he grasped his wings and began to pull it from its roots. The wings were connected to his body, more deeply than the roots of a massive tree hugging the earth, and when he pulled, massive veins of light that were connected to every particle in his body became agitated and shone through his skin. His cries of pain rang out for an eternity, until it was done and his wings were no longer connected to his body. Battered and broken, Enoch knelt before his wings and he wept before breaking down into a crazed laughter that echoed across eternity. However, the same Creator in Rowan that allowed him to feel sadness at the loss of the Lumina of Enoch, also felt deep and profound horror. Enoch here had just briefly described ending all of existence as if it were inconsequential. There was no remorse or pity in his tone; there was no regret at all for the lives he had extinguished by his simple and selfish desire for change... he wanted something, and he went for it, and there was no time when he had any regret for those who paid the price for his vision to come to fruition. Rowan had not heard the whole story, but he thought that Enoch would not find any positive ears to back his vision from him. No matter the stagnancy that plagued existence in the time of the Luminious, did that mean they deserve to be killed off like that? Perhaps, the birth of Enoch signified the inevitable change that would occur in a system where nothing was new, and even the birth of any new Luminous was predicted and understood. Rowan did not think it was impossible for him to hate Enoch more than he did, but the quiet disregard for the ending of all existence finalized his resolve that Enoch was his enemy. "My regret did not last for long, because the change that I sought from the moment of my birth appeared before me. My Lumina, the part of me that should be unchanging, began to vanish. Finally, this was change, this was the thing I craved for so long... I don’t know how long I remained on my knees watching my wings disappear, so lost was I in the state of things, but what I know was that after it was all over, there was darkness, and the ever-present scream of the void as it continuously expanded." Enoch finally relaxed back on his throne, a heavy sigh emerging from him, as if the journey of peering into his memory carried a weight that he had been eager to let go of. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦 There should be more to this story, perhaps the Luminious did not allow existence to vanish without a fight, maybe there was something more that occurred that should reshape the entire narrative in a manner that would change how Enoch presented himself in this story, but Rowan was acknowledging the fact that of the many truths in life, that this might just be that one truth he would never be able to know.