Chapter 2078: The Silence Has Weight The Ten Thousand Origin Realms hung suspended in the center of Limbo like fragile lanterns in an endless night. With the changes sweeping Existence, the power of Limbo had begun to contract, and at the center of it was the Origin Realms. Except for Primordials at the fourth layer of their Origin, who could barely sense this force, no others could. And this was because Eos had been deliberately hiding the heavens from even the Primordials, because the power of End was so total and corrupting that if they came in contact with it, they would be corrupted, and chaos and destruction would spread all across his realms. There would be no need for armies or Primordials to attack the Origin Realms, the knowledge that a sentient force of Extinction was enough to destroy all of his children, because Eos knew that End offered more than the end of all things; it gave power, but that power had a great price that could not be understood until it was too late. Enoch, a Luminious, arguably the most powerful Luminious to be born, had fallen to the power of End. What could mere mortals do? So with the intervention of Eos, the defiant light of the Origin Realms still burned steadily, and even the overwhelming power of extinction that surrounded it could not dim its light; it was almost as if it was feeding the light of Origin. However, on this day Eos sensed something different... something had arrived over his Origin Realms. It did not descend. Descent implies direction, mass, and intent. This presence simply was. Eos’s eyes tightened when he sensed the power of End for the first time, and he closed his eyes so that he could capture all of its flavors. To his senses, it was like the thickening of absence that settled like an oil slick on still water. No sound accompanied its arrival, no ripple in the void, no shadow cast by absent light. In a fraction of a moment, Eos’s eyes flew open when he confirmed that his senses had not deceived him. He pressed his hands over his beating heart, and he caught the sound of his heartbeat in his palm, and he released it. This sound instantly travelled all throughout the Origin Realms, and the beautiful aurora that framed the boundary between the Origin Realms and the outer desolation of Limbo simply stopped moving. Colors froze mid-shimmer, then bled slowly toward gray. Everything took the shade of black and white, leaving only Eos in colors. He had not just frozen the entire Origin Realms in time and space, but in all nine dimensions. This unique application of Origin was only possible because at the moment, Eos controlled nearly a thousand new concepts of Origin, and he could make miracles, still, he hoped that this miracles would be enough, because... End had come. With this awareness that this force had descended into Existence, knowledge began to pour into Eos’s mind, and even though he knew that this was corruption, he had to accept this knowledge, else he would not be able to comprehend what was happening. End did not have a form, nor a voice; he could not even sense any pressure. That was the wrong way to think of the force of End, because it was the cessation of continuation itself. This force was the moment before a heartbeat that never follows, the silence after the last word of every story ever told. The Ten Thousand Origin Realms felt it simultaneously, a single, shared instant of perfect stillness, as though existence itself had forgotten how to breathe. And then the stillness lifted, just enough to allow awareness. Eos felt it deepest because he was bearing the weight of End Existence that had spread all over the Origin Realms on himself. This weight was supposed to be felt by every single atom all across the Origin Realm when a force like End arrived, but Eos refused this to happen, and for this reason alone, it felt as if he was being crushed to death. If he held his own against End, then he would not feel such pains, but with all the load he carried, he was forced to his knees, his palms pressed to the lattice’s core that linked all Origin Realms as he channeled his radiance to keep the touch of End from infecting his children. Yet, it did not seem to be enough, even as he pushed more of his radiance, more of End continued to arrive until it finally fully settled over his realms. Eos’s hands stilled. The core of the realms beneath his fingers grew cold with the sudden absence of momentum, and he knew that even though this force did not have eyes, it was now looking at him. He did not look up at first; he was too busy ensuring that all the life in his Origin Realms was safe. The absence of momentum was enough to kill everything inside his Realm except for the Primordials, and so Eos worked in silence as minutes passed or perhaps eons; time had grown meaningless. Then he felt a soft pulse of potential that had not yet become form, and his widely racing heart still, and Eos placed one hand over that pulse, protective, possessive. He had nearly made a mistake and underestimated the power of End, which would have led to the extinction of all life beneath the ninth-dimensional level. Satisfied that his seal was strong, only then did he rise. He thought of summoning his Destroyer, but he dismissed that thought as it formed. This power could not be killed by any strength of arm, it was something... different. He stepped out of the Origin Realms onto a platform of solidified possibility that materialized beneath his feet. The platform drifted upward, slow and deliberate, carrying him through layers of protective weave until he emerged just beneath the hovering absence, and below him was the Ten Thousand Origin Realms spread below. Eos stood alone, unarmed, unarmored, only the faint corona of his remaining radiance flickering around his shoulders like dying embers. His powerful figure suddenly felt incredibly lonely, because in the end, he was the only one standing alone before the end of all things and the life remaining inside his realms. For others, such a responsibility would crush them to paste, but Eos only drew power from this weight, and his back straightened. ’This was the reason I was born,’ he told himself. Then, opening his mouth, Eos spoke into the nothing. "You are not the Beast," he said. His voice carried no echo; the void swallowed it whole. "You are not Enoch or his children. You are what waits after both have finished their work." Silence answered. But the silence had weight.