Chapter 2048: Step Forward For My Mercy There was a difference between knowing that there was a possibility of death for a Primordial and seeing this happen in front of them. They all sensed Noctis’ final cries; his voice at the end had reached beyond Existence, into a place that none of the Primordials could sense, and yet, it did not seem to help him; he still fell, and his remains became stars. Primordials were never meant to die, at least not in such an abrupt manner that the possibility of resisting was useless. There were levels to power, and it was a fascinating process to see when Eos finally revealed some of the distinctions. A fascinating process... but it did not make it any less scary. A ripple passed through the ranks of the Primordials as Eos looked down from the sky and said, "I will ask only once. Step forward. Name yourself Architect. Return the privilege of my Origin that you stole, and I will let you fall into the kind darkness you crave. There will be no unmaking of your souls inside the Temple, only a permanent exile from my light that you once swore to tend. This is the greatest mercy I can afford any of my enemies. I shall kill you again, but you won’t die as a Primordial of my Origin Realms." The silence stretched with the weight of Eos’s words and from the gathering of Primordials whose radiances shone like suns, one of the suns drifted downward, drawing an uncomfortable ripple among the Primordials. A member of the third generation of New Primordials, the Primordial of Dawn’s Whispered Oath was the one who descended, wings folding tight against her back as though ashamed of their own glow. Her aura, once seamless rose-gold, now showed thin cracks of ink running through it like veins of oil in water. She was revealing the power of the Architect that ran through her body without holding back. What gave the Architects power in the Origin Realms was their belief that Eos could not kill them when they became one of his Primordials, and so with their superior talent, they quickly rushed to reach the ninth-dimensional level and be seeded inside his Origin Land. They had been smart about the methods they used, ensuring that they paced their advancements so it did not look too suspicious, but what they did not know was that Eos had the method to kill the Architects more than fifty million years ago, after he killed Noctis multiple times. It was a mistake for the Architects to believe that Eos would not be able to figure out a way to break the hold of a Primordial’s Origin on his essence when he had reached the fifth layer of one of the Ancient Origins and his understanding of space had exceeded any being to ever be born. Like a patient hunter, Eos waited. He endured the attacks from the Temple in silence and watched as some of the Primordials that he was already suspecting rooted themselves in his Origin Lands, and he would have been patient enough to wait for hundreds of millions of years more, but a new project was emerging that may decide the course of this war, Nyxara was becoming impatient and wanted to kill of her sibling, and there were finally signs that Enoch was stirring. He did not have billions of years to prepare for the final battle; it may happen in less than half a billion years with the way things were going, and Eos wanted to begin cleaning house so he could be prepared. "I..." the Primordial of Dawn’s Whispered Oath, voice cracked, "I believed that this path you are about to take is the wrong one, Eos. I am an Architect, but I do not necessarily share the same belief as Noctis. We believe you have grown too bright to see the shadows, and the Temple is needed to balance the light." She turned to face the Primordials, "All of you know the truths behind my words. Eos here is now known as a Grand Creator, but once he was a Destroyer and the Ender of Epochs; he has fallen too deeply into the hands of creation that he has forgotten what it is like to know how important destruction is to our victory. There can be no light without darkness, no good without evil, and Eos would destroy the other end of the scale without caring about the balance. His victory would be as bad as our defeat... Look into your hearts and tell me that I do not speak the truth." Ilaria, the Primordial of Dawn’s Whispered Oath, was part of the third generation of Primordials. She was one of the most talented and beautiful Primordials to ever be born, and she was loved by almost the entirety of the Origin Realms. As she was one of the youngest of the Primordials to be born, she was well known by everyone here, and if anyone was to be listed as a suspect, she would not be one of them; her history was clean... born from a noble house and blessed with great talent from the moment of her birth, she had exhibited no signs that she was not a native born from the Origin Realms. Eos regarded her without anger, only sorrow so vast it made the nearest stars dim for a heartbeat. "You were never asked to balance me," he said. "You were meant to be my children, but you have lived outside of Existence for so long that the thing you called darkness and light are just ephemeral concepts to you. The darkness is not just darkness, it is the screams of mothers whose babies were ripped from their wombs, the cries of entire realities being put to the torch... I write the names of every one of the fallen, and yet they are so many that even I don’t think I will be able to complete this task. Now be quiet, and I will repeat my words again, step forward any Architect among my ranks or face true death." The silence did not last for long before another Primordial stepped forward to stand beside the Primordial of Unspoken Oaths, and it was Saul, the Primordial of Nameless Hunger, who walked forward with opened empty palms in surrender. Before long, another two more Primordials stepped forward, bringing the total to four.