Chapter 1603: The Gilded Maw These words from Promordial Memory were like lightning in his mind, as the fear that struck Rowan heightened to the utmost limit, and the understanding of his one most significant flaw presented itself. Rowan’s eyes widened, and his soul began to move, but it was already too late. Massive golden spikes burst out of his body in their hundreds, shredding his internal organs to mush and breaking every bone in his body. Dozens of spikes burst out of his left eye, and only the grace and tenacity of his supreme body kept him on his feet. Primordial Memory had appeared beside him without him knowing, and touched Rowan on the shoulder as he whispered, "It is not the blade brandished openly that you need to fear; it is the small blade that slips in your back." Rowan’s Destroyer moved faster than thought, slicing through Primordial Memory, but it was only an afterimage, and the Primordial was a few feet away, smiling at Rowan, but that smile stiffened as he looked at his left arm that had just quietly fallen to the ground. A dry laughter emerged from Rowan as he coughed, 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦 "Hahaha, I have always thought the reason you hid in the shadows was because of some profound reason that I could not fathom, turns out you are a terrible warrior who only knows how to stab the back of his enemies. You cannot be the blade that cuts me down, Memory, you are not worthy." Primordial Memory looked at Rowan with a strange expression on his face. It should not have been possible for Rowan to move, and yet he had nearly been killed. He had not been careless. Rowan should have been incapacitated, but this did not seem to matter to this monster before him. Finally, he sighed, "You are about to die, and yet you remain proud. What does the manner in which it happens matter?" Rowan grinned, and the blood pouring from his body was slowly turning red. "You have not won yet. I still stand." "No, you have fallen; your stubborn body had not yet caught up to the truth, that is all." Rowan closed his eyes and looked inside himself, and it was a scene of pure carnage; hundreds of spikes had shot out of his body, but inside his dimensional flesh was a scene that was much worse. The heavens of his dimensional flesh had been shattered like rotten fabrics, and from them came countless golden spikes, each with the powers of Primordial Weapons. On Doom Star, he had acquired a single Primordial Level Spear from Thenos, and he knew how powerful that weapon had been. The battle he had just fought with the Celestial Creators had used weapons of similar might, and only a few of these weapons had hurt him terribly, but now he had similar level weapons in numbers beyond counting, tearing through all his flesh. Such power had shattered Rowan’s innate immortality; he was a broken mess and could barely wrap his mind around the degree to which he had been hurt. The voice of Primordial Memory entered his ears. "When you stole Eve from me, you also took something else alongside her. What did you call them? Ah, yes, Angels of Char. A rather apt name, but that is not their real name. I call them the Gilded Maw. A weapon that was made to kill a Primordial." Rowan fell to one knee as he observed the spikes that had filled his body and shattered his immortality. These spikes were not weapons in the ordinary sense, which was why Rowan had never suspected that the Angels of Char could be used against him. From the moment he became an Avatar of Eve and gained access to the Palace of Ice, he had been able to gain new Angels of Char anytime he killed or in a vicinity where a significant number of souls had perished. Rowan initially was a bit suspicious of this power, but he later came to accept it as part of the mysteries behind his abilities that he could not understand at the time. The Palace of Ice had given him extraordinary powers, and Rowan expected that any drawbacks they might have would be significant as well. A part of him had made peace with the fact that the nature of his powers might be his undoing. Because of the usual war between the Abyssals and the Celestials, Rowan had believed that this corruption in the bodies of the Angels of Char came from demons, and he was mostly correct. However, he had missed the last portion of the puzzle: the bodies of these Angels, their divine physique, was not made from flesh and bones but from the treasures of Primordial Memory. For so long, his body had not been safe. Rowan had thought the Primordials who mainly had interfered with his life were Time, Chaos, Soul, and Life, but as it turned out, Demon, Light, and Memory had also planted the seeds of their interference in his powers. Now they had unveiled their fangs the moment they realized that Rowan was about to escape. When he created his Angels, he was able to rid them of the property that had corrupted them, but in the end, he could barely cleanse a barest fraction of the Angels of Char inside his dimensional flesh. Their numbers kept increasing without end, and with the chaos taking over Reality, Rowan had been able to gain a vast number of souls, and in the same manner, also earned more Angels of Char. The truth behind these creatures was finally revealed, and Rowan calmly deepened his understanding of their nature. Panic would not serve him here. They were an extradimensional law—an invasive axiom that had lain dormant in his dimension, studying its unique nature to understand the process to destroy him. They were a malignant force that had remained silent for so long, waiting, recording, learning, and now they were killing him. Primordial Memory had played the long game. He waited for Rowan to fully unleash the potential of his dimensional flesh, and when he saw that Rowan had claimed his Fate Origin, knowing nothing would stop him from reaching the level of Primordials, he attacked and unleashed Gilded Maw. Across his dimensional flesh, stars and worlds screamed and perished as they were impaled by slender, golden lances—spikes that were longer than solar systems. Rowan had killed countless beings, and he had collected an insane number of souls over the years, causing the number of Angels of Char to reach a near-infinite number. Today, he paid the price for his oversight. Rowan growled as weakness filled his flesh, and green suns began to appear in the heavens in number without counting. Death was here, and in order for this malignant force to burn Rowan’s dissipating immortality, it was going all out. A dull roar was exploding from Rowan’s flesh as his lifespan, which was no longer tethered to his flesh, began to emerge from his body in countless streams. The green suns above began to burn brighter, but their flames were not hot but colder than the depths of the Abyss. Rowan could hear the voice of death in his consciousness, "I told you I was inevitable."