Chapter 2038: The Meaning of Love Fury passed through several galaxies in a row; they appeared and vanished faster than he could blink, and he could blink very fast. The universe truly began to unveil itself. Other galaxies swam into his view, from a distance; some resembled elliptical clouds, irregular splatters, majestic spirals like our own, each containing hundreds of billions of suns, each with its own trillion potential stories. They formed clusters, gossamer webs of gravity and dark matter, a cosmic architecture of unimaginable scale and grandeur. He was approaching the limit now, and this limit was not a physical boundary, for the universe, by definition, for lower-dimensional beings, had none. Fury was choosing to travel this way because he wanted to experience the growth of a mortal, but that growth had reached its limit, when the universe kept stretching for an eternity in front of him. Looking back for the last time, with a thought that was both a farewell and a blessing, he stepped sideways, and the universe seemed to shrink, condensing from infinity to a small glowing cube, smaller than a grain of rice. Fury glanced around him, and even though he was not looking deep into existence, he already saw trillions of universes, and they appeared like tiny fireflies. He knew that if he wanted, he could wave his hand and erase trillions of these universes, and all of the wonders and mysteries they contained would be gone in the blink of an eye. This was a higher-dimensional realm at the fourth-dimensional level. It was this dimensional realm that held all these trillions of universes, and if he wanted, he could spend countless trillions of years roaming through this dimensional realm alone. Fury began to move through the dimensional realm, and he saw countless universes, all with their own rules and specialities, and then he began to see higher-dimensional immortals at the fifth or sixth dimensional level serving as custodians. To lesser immortals, they were beings of immense power tending to cosmic balances, shepherding universal clusters, their forms vast and luminous. These custodians felt his passage and bent like reeds in profound, bewildered reverence. A Primordial was passing by, and although they all wished to reach the highest level of Existence one day, that dream was still far. He felt the countless universes he was passing through, in their limited way, reach out for him, knowing that a Primordial dwelling in them would be a great source of growth and blessing for their inhabitants, but Fury did not stop. This Dimensional Realm, for all its impossible vastness, was just a fourth-dimensional space, and he continued to move until he reached its "edge." n This edge was a metaphysical boundary in space/time, and Fury could see it as a trillion shimmering orbs that structured themselves in a hyper-geometric, multi-dimensional lattice. Each orb found its place in a structure of impossible beauty, like atoms in a crystal, but a crystal existing in multiple dimensions. This lattice was the Realm’s true form. And as he focused beyond it, he saw that this lattice, this single Dimensional Realm, was itself one jewel in a vaster setting, and he passed through it, and he stepped into a seventh-dimensional realm. The seventh-dimensional realm held laws and concepts, and dimensions that lower-dimensional immortals could not imagine, like Memories and Fate and Destiny could be found here, and a trillions fourth dimensional realms floated through it like bubbles on a beach. How long could he spend here if he wanted? An eternity, and yet, fury knew that even this was not enough to hold his true glory and purpose, and he looked beyond the seventh-dimensional realm to a place in the distance that called to him. The direction of that call was not up or out, but in and before. He closed his eyes for a moment, acknowledging that call, and then he followed it, moving past the glittering jewels of the dimensions, into a space of deepening quiet. The brilliance of all those dimensional realms faded into a space that was the anteroom to the Origin. Here, the concepts that were solid law in the dimensions below, causality, entropy, and duality, were soft, unformed things. Here, a sound could precede the idea of vibration. A color could exist without wavelength. He had arrived in his Origin Realm. Given to him by his brother Eos after he reached the Primordial Level, and of course, Fury called his realm the Origin Realm of Resurrection. In the center of a placid, infinite sea of fire was his throne, surrounded by trillions of phoenixes at the eight-dimensional level, and two massive phoenixes that had reached the Primordial level! As he approached his throne, the entirety of his Realm began to stir, and Fury smiled, but before he could take another step, he felt a warm hand on his shoulder. This warmth came from memory, and he could not help but allow the memory to hold him in its grasp once more. He could feel the weight of Althea’s head on his shoulder. The sound of Leo’s unselfconscious laughter. The sight of Callie’s focused frown as she buried a seed. The feeling of Theo’s small, trusting hand in his. These memories were not images or sounds, but singularities of experience, perfect and whole. He held them in his awareness, these impossibly small, impossibly dense jewels of lived truth. They were the reason. The point of the entire, vast, ludicrously complex exercise. He had not gone to that small planet to forget he was Fury. He had gone to learn what it meant to not be Fury. To be small. To be fragile. To love something you knew you would lose, and to love it because you would lose it, because its temporality was the source of its unbearable beauty. To live within the story, not as its author, but as a character subject to its twists. He had learned. The sorrow was not a flaw in the experience; it was its depth. The joy was not a distraction from his purpose; it was the purpose itself. "Damn it, Eos, you wily bastard, how do you expect me not to fight to my death to protect something that is so precious?" ® It took fifty million years before the ten thousand Supreme species that were rising all over the Origin Realms to master the bridge that linked one Origin Realm to another, which was a stupendous feat when it was taken into consideration that each Origin Realm could be considered infinite for lower dimensional beings below the Primordial level, and to reach this bridge, they would have to technically travel to beyond infinity. For a species to advance to the extent they could cross the higher-dimensional level while being at a lower dimension was incredibly rare, and for them to do it in such a short time was nothing short of a miracle. However, this miracle happened nearly simultaneously across all ten thousand Origin Realms. Of course, their quick development had to do with the New Primordials, who frequently brought the best and the brightest into the higher-dimensional realms for them to understand how it worked. These bridges were living conduits of fundamental laws that had evolved over the years due to their connection with all the Origin Realms. Each Origin Realm was unique, carrying special properties that would not be shared by another, and this bridge was able to gather power from all these different Origin Realms. Millions of years ago, it became aware of itself and began to cultivate, and it was among the third generations of New Primordials to be born. The first generation of Primordials was ten in number, and in the second generation, eight new Primordials were born, but this generation was seen as the transitional period where the old was fully transforming into the new. In the third generation, fifty-two new Primordials were born, and so there were sixty-four Primordials across all the Origin Realms, a ridiculous number that would continue to expand, as the fourth generation of Primordials that were expected to arrive in the next ten million years should number in the hundreds. There was a rush for every living being to reach the ranks of Primordials because there were just 10,008 Origin Realms in Existence, and there was a great chance for every new Primordial to be awarded an Origin Realm. The advantage of merging with an Origin Realm for a Primordial was so massive that a Primordial without an Origin Realm was not even considered a full Primordial, and there were talks to make a new level above the Primordial Level for those who had fused with an Origin Realm because of the sheer gap between them and the average Primordial.