Chapter 1982: I Am Pure REALM OF DEATH. Time no longer had any meaning in this battle; eternity became a day, and day became an eternity. The seven Primordials – Nyxara, Primordial Soul, Asteroath, Primordial Light, Xylos, Primordial Demons, Eldrithor, Primordial Chaos, Xyris, Primordial Time, Elgorath, Primordial Memory, and Vorthas, Primordial Life – had carved a path through the heart of Death’s infinite empire. What began as a spearhead charge in the beginning, where the Primordials had been filled with endless resolve, had evolved into a grinding, soul-eroding siege. The outer layers of the Realm of Death, those vast, shadowy expanses where the lesser dead roamed in silent legions, had long since been consumed. Now, the Primordials delved into the fractal depths, where the Beast of Final Rest hoarded its most ancient and potent harvests. And they were facing the most powerful beings who had ever lived, and they no longer had their endless hunger and strength that was given to them by End; now they fought as their original full potential had always been before they began to devour Realities. The battlefield no longer resembled the open voids of Limbo’s fringes. It had become a labyrinthine horror, a multidimensional maze woven from the compressed essences of extinct realities. Walls of bone, veined with the glowing runes of forgotten languages, twisted into impossible geometries. Floors were carpets of petrified souls, each one a nexus point from which infinite legions could unfold. Even the foul heavens above dripped with the ichor of slain gods, forming rivers that flowed upward, defying gravity to drown the unwary in liquid regret. The air itself was thick with the whispers of the harvested, psychic echoes that clawed at the mind, planting seeds of doubt and madness. If they were not so bogged down by the opposition against them, they would have been amazed at the variety of life they had slaughtered over sixty-five million Cosmic Eras. The Primordials moved as a single, battered entity. Their wings, once radiant symbols of their Origins, were now scarred relics. Asteroath’s white wings, the purest among them, had dimmed to a pallid gray, streaked with black veins where Death’s necrosis had taken hold. He flew at the vanguard, his light no longer a piercing lance but a flickering torch, illuminating only fragments of the horrors ahead. Behind him, Nyxara orchestrated the advance, her black soul-wings spread wide like a net, capturing stray Origin Force from the fallen dead and weaving it into temporary shields for her siblings. Xylos flanked the left, his demonic black wings shedding feathers that burrowed into the ground like parasitic seeds, sprouting abyssal traps for pursuing legions. Eldrithor danced on the right, his chaotic storm-wings whipping up vortices of improbability that turned enemy charges into self-destructing farces. They were getting tired, but their cooperation was growing increasingly more perfect, and they could only dig deeper to find newer ways to experiment with their powers. The truth was that with the interference of Enoch and End, the Primordials never truly had a chance to understand the full breadth of their abilities, and only now could they know what they were capable of. This battle was necessary, for without it, they could not fully digest all of the Origins they held in their bodies. Even without other foreign Origins within them, each Primordial held millions of the same Origin Power in their bodies, and this battle, although painful, was a necessary crucible for them to become stronger. Xyris, Time’s embodiment, lagged slightly, his purple wings beating erratically as he manipulated temporal eddies to age enemy formations into dust before they could fully manifest. Elgorath, the golden-winged Memory, walked in the center, his eyes distant, forcing waves of recollection upon the dead to make them falter. Vorthas brought up the rear, his green wings a tangled mass of vines and tumors, pouring life into the barren ground only to corrupt it into carnivorous thickets that devoured stragglers. They had not rested in billions of years, as time stretched and stayed still in large bursts. Rest was a luxury for lesser beings; for Primordials, it was a vulnerability the Beast would exploit. Yet fatigue gnawed at them, not physical but existential. The madness that had driven them to betray Enoch and ravage Limbo now turned inward, amplified by the Realm’s oppressive Will. Nyxara’s plan – the grand design she had whispered into existence eons ago – held them together like a fraying thread. "We consume Death to become Death," she reminded them daily, her voice a soothing venom. But in the quiet moments between battles, doubts crept in... something was wrong. Yet they continued to push on. Billions of years of battle passed by, and they breached a new layer, the Nexus of Nascent Realities. Here, the Beast had interred the corpses of unborn realities slaughtered in their infancy by the Primordials’ own rampages or by the natural cruelties of Limbo. These were not mere souls but fractal infinities; each of these realities was a mandala of collapsed possibilities. The air hummed with unborn potential, a vibration that set the Primordials’ wings trembling. The first sign of the impending cataclysm was a subtle dimming. Asteroath’s light flickered from an external force. "Something approaches," he warned, his voice a hollow echo. The others formed a defensive circle, wings interlaced in the Spear formation they had perfected over the Eras. Then the voice of the Beast entered their ears, and it was soft and silky... different from the brash voice of Death they had all been hearing from the moment they set foot in his realm. "I would have to thank you, Primordials, for showing me the path to a truth that had been hidden from me... from everyone inside Existence. You may not understand what is about to happen, but I doubt that, the knowledge after all should be in your blood, all of you wretched spawns of Enoch." The Primordials remained silent, their faces set in grim lines as they focused on the impending sense of doom they were all feeling. "You all slaughtered so much and fed me so much death that I evolved past any limitations that Death should have, and then I saw the truth... this Existence was not the first... There had been many Deaths before me, and I would reach past the fold of nothingness and draw them into my Realm... You all seek power in other Origins, while I am pure. Taste the first fruit of my success, and if you survive, I will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." Something began to emerge from the depths of the Realm of Death. It unfolded, layer by layer, like a flower blooming in reverse – from infinity to singularity, then back again. At first, it appeared as a distant speck, then it expanded, fractals branching into fractals, each iteration revealing more complexity, and it revealed itself as an ancient entity, a nascent Reality itself, harvested at the moment of its birth by the Beast. It had been a budding reality, pregnant with universes, gods, and infinite lives. In death, the Beast had twisted it into a weapon: a mandala of absolute darkness, a living black hole woven from the threads of unfulfilled existence. The Beast should not have been capable of wielding such a power, but everything touched by the corrupted hands of End tends towards destruction. It made this work easy for the Beast. Its form defied description, but to the Primordials’ higher-dimensional senses, it resembled a vast, rotating wheel of shadows. At its center was a core of pure void pulsing like a heart, drawing in light, time, memory, and life. Radiating outward were spokes of fractal arms, each one a nexus from which legions of sub-entities could spawn shadowy doppelgangers of the Primordials themselves! The edges of the wheel bled into the surrounding space, warping reality so that distance became meaningless – one moment it was a horizon away, the next it loomed overhead, blotting out the artificial dead stars that dotted the Realm of Death.