Chapter 1952: Breaking The Cradle (3) CRADLE OF ENOCH No one knew how it began, not even the Beast of Inevitability, who guided the last bastion of creation with eyes that do not shut in sleep, was able to tell how it started, but the Watchers, Archais created by Eos to record all truths in Existence, they were in the right place at the right time to see how it all began. Even as they traveled through limbo, the Watchers left multiple shades in their hundreds to learn everything they could about the Cradle. This place was undoubtedly one of the most important locations in all of Existence, and the mysteries it contained were all crucial to all life. One of the first things the Watchers had noticed about the Cradle was that it was pristine. The Realities here all had personalities, and one of their hallmarks was innocence. It was as if the true state of Existence had been hidden from them, and they never had to see that they were the last island of innocence in a sea of blood. There were barely any immortals in all of these Realities, and the quest for power was highly discouraged as the Watchers saw that there were barely any supernatural elements allowed inside these Realities, and the few that found immortality were supreme geniuses or the ones that fought against fate and the heavens to carry their destinies. No Watcher here could soundly state that this was a bad thing for the inhabitants of the Cradle. On one hand, most of the lifeforms here were denied the chance to see all that Existence had to offer and know what it was like to be able to hold the sun in their palm, but on the other hand... The Cradle was the last place where a child can chase fireflies without knowing the fireflies are made of dying stars, where lovers can promise forever and almost mean it, where death is still a door and not a mouth. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖 Despite their astonishment and internal debate about the Cradle, one figure drew their attention above all, its guard. This was the first time for the Watchers and Eos to see this Beast, and its shape that was hidden from the sight of all was revealed to them. And in plain words, the Beast was a massive turtle. It is vast beyond vastness, almost a tenth of the size of the Cradle, and if Eos had not seen the form of the first Reality Hundun, the Beast would be the largest living organism he had ever seen. Its shell was a continent of black jade etched with every law that Eos could recognize and some that he could not. It had eyes like twin galaxies, which were surprisingly filled with warmth. From its shell rises a tail that was a serpent longer than the rivers of time; it had scales of living night with fangs dripping with the venom that the Watchers knew could end them nearly instantaneously. They watched the Beast closely and found that it does not sleep; instead, it circles the inner surface of the Cradle eternally, turtle legs paddling through the void as if it were water, serpent tail tasting the air for the scent of corruption. It was meant to be enough. It was not. The turtle was a near-perfect guardian, and it would have stopped even the Primordials from reaching the Cradle without putting up a good fight, or if necessary, it could tow the entire Cradle somewhere else. Eos could recognize some of the runes on its shell, and he knew that they represented supreme speed and adaptability, but it could not see the cancer inside the thing it was guarding, and that was its glaring flaw. The Watchers had been counting the number of Realities inside the Cradle of Enoch, and this task should have been near instantaneous, but Realities were ninth-dimensional entities, and this made it quite difficult to assign a number to them, because a single Reality could appear in a trillion forms at the same time, yet exist as a massive singular entity. It was always easy to forget that for any being lower than the ninth dimension, a Reality for them was truly infinite, and even if they were given infinite lifespans, they would never be able to see its end. However, the Watchers were on their way to enumerating almost ninety-five percent of their total number when they noticed the changes across certain Realities, and a rough calculation would peg these numbers to be around a third of all Realities inside the Cradle. The Watchers who saw the event happen could not even understand its triggers, but Eos, who was watching everything through their senses, heard a whisper that seemed to come from nowhere, and those Realties who could not hear that whisper allowed it to enter their consciousness. Across countless Realities, the first changes began at dawn. Eos had access to all the eyes of the Watchers, and he could process information many times better than they could at this point. In the future that might change, but for now, he was matchless, and so from the infinite number of data he had to sift through, he saw the first case. It was a child who woke up and saw as the sun rose in the sky, golden and perfect, and he grinned, but his eyes were drawn to one tree on the field that did not reflect it quite right. A bit confused with what he was witnessing, he stepped out of the house and walked to the tree, and he noticed that its leaves were darker and its branches were bent inward, as if listening to something inside its trunk. Fascinated by this unknown phenomenon, the curious child turned to call for his parents, but they were still asleep, and he walked up to the tree and touched its bark. He giggled when he noticed that the bark was warm, it almost felt like he was touching his mother’s stomach during the cold evenings, and then the smile slowly left his face when he could not pull back his arm away from the tree, and the bark was getting warmer quite quickly and he gasped in shock and pain when smoke and the smell of roasted meat began emerging from beneath his palm. The shock had passed, and the boy opened his mouth to scream, but the tree split open like the jaws of a shark, and white smoke poured out of it and wrapped around the boy as gently as a kiss. The cries of the boy died in his throat as his eyes turned milk-white. Then the child opened its mouth and spoke with a different voice that was soft, wondering, and hungry. Eos would recognize Enoch’s voice from anywhere. "I want more." Then the tree exploded into tendrils; what emerged were not vines but arms. A billion arms unfolding from a single trunk, each arm tipped with a mouth that remembered being a flower. They reached for the sky, for the glass ocean, for the crystal forests, for every living thing that had never known surprise. At the moment, the mother of the boy had stepped out of the house and saw an abomination so absurd that her mind broke at the sight and her spirit shattered into pieces. Her hands fell to the side as she died on her feet. And so, the slaughter began, and at first, it was almost gentle... almost.