Chapter 1775: The Monolith Of Finality At the Arena were five Primordials: Primordial Life, Time, Demon, Memory, and a new addition, Imagination. Two Primordials were missing, and they were Primordial Chaos and Primordial Light. However, they did not attend simply because their position was weak in the hierarchy of the upper realms. For Primordial Chaos, his Inheritance Ground had been gutted to heal the Great Desert, and now that this place of power for him had been destroyed, he barely had any representative to carry his Will to the Arena. Still, with the changes in Reality, Primordial Chaos could easily find a way to attend, but he kept himself bound to the Gate of Oblivion and refused to leave, not even to participate in this event that could decide the direction of this Era. In the case of Primordial Light, he had been weakened by the emergence of the New Light, and this once-dominant Primordial had retreated to the furthest reaches of heaven, where he remained. A part of their Will was spread all over Reality, and they could vaguely understand everything that was happening, but the other Primordials knew that in this next series of events, Chaos and Light had the losing hand, and following the nature of Primordials, they took advantage of this and made no move in assisting their fellows. Defeating Rowan in this Arena would not only give Primordial Demon access to the most powerful Throne ever created, but it might reveal the path beyond Origin from the autopsy of Rowan’s dominion when he was broken. They all knew that Rowan was dangerous, but the Primordials were the ultimate predators who frequently killed the most powerful entities in existence. Fighting and killing dangerous foes were part of their skillset. But unknown to them, the dynamics which they operated on inside of this Reality had changed, and the prey had begun to hunt them back. This was what led to a gap in their mental framework, which Rowan took advantage of. Of course, there was a reason for Primordial Chaos and Primordial Light to be missing from the Arena, but it was Rowan who made sure that this happened. ® The center of heaven was called the Garden of Primordial Dawn, and it was aptly named for this was a place that possessed the beauty and tranquility of a paradise but also the unlimited radiance of a primordial. To all of creation, the Garden of Primordial Dawn was the seat of power of the Celestials, and only extremely few and powerful Celestial Creators and other special lifeforms had been able to glimpse this place, but they were wrong about the true center of heaven. The ninth dimension was Origin, and Origin had several layers. Only those with the understanding of the ninth dimension would understand that the center of heaven lies deeper than the Garden of Primordial Dawn, and it was in this depth of Primordial Light did Eva, the New Light found herself in. After defeating Primordial Soul, Rowan had made subtle changes to his plans, but it was Eva who had chosen to return to heaven when she noticed that Primordial Light needed to be placed in check, for Rowan’s vision to have any chance of success. There were great risks in what she was doing, but Rowan trusted her talents and capabilities, and he accepted the help and her sacrifices. Eva had reached the Garden of Primordial Dawn, and in this timeless place, she had waited for what seemed like an eternity before a passage was opened to her, and she entered deeper into heaven. It would seem that Primordial Light had opened the path for her. Was it out of curiosity, malice or greed, because Eva was taking a great risk by her actions here, and if Primordial Life wished to disregard all dangers to himself, then it was very possible that she would not be leaving her alive. Eva did not hesitate and entered deeper into heaven, into its Origin, to a place where only Primordial Light had been, and soon she found herself in the third layer of Light. She should have known the name of this place due to the authority she possessed, but the answer was blurred from her consciousness. To her knowledge, this vacuum was most likely Primordial Light’s action to show her that she was still far from the level where she could supplant his power. Still, Eva now had power, and she revealed it; her light pushed against the finality imposed in this area, banishing it, and creating a sphere of control around her that rejected the idea that there was any other Primordial of Light except for herself. “How curious…” the voice of Primordial Light reached her, and a passage opened in front of her, “If you are capable, step into the final layer of Light or leave this place and await the moment I come to consume your heart.” Eva hardly paused before she stepped through the doorway and entered a vast realm. Above her was not a sky as immortals understood it. It was a wound in the fabric of the Real, a cavity where the architecture of creation gave way to the raw, unformed potential of the Aether. Here, there was no day, no night, only the silent, screaming pressure of infinity. It was neutral ground, a court of absolute zero, and it was here that the new sun would petition the old. In the center of this realm was a massive black pillar that pierced the heavens above and was responsible for tearing a wound in this place. She was struck by an air of dissonance upon seeing this pillar, as she knew that this thing was not supposed to be here at the heart of Light. This was corruption at the source of Light, and it was this corruption that had tainted the Origin of this Reality, making the presence of Light to become a curse upon all creation. “Welcome to the Monolith of Finality.” The powerful voice of Primordial Light resounded in this space, and Eva looked up to see a point of brilliance falling from the tear in the sky. It descended like a meteor, a piercing note of pure white. It did not illuminate, for there was nothing to illuminate. Instead, it defined the emptiness by its very opposition to it. This showed Eva the true form of Primordial Light. It was a being who wore the guise of Light but did not embody it; in fact, it would be better to see him as darkness wearing a cloak of light—a wolf in sheep’s clothing. From this point, the form of the Primordial Light coalesced. He was not a man, not a god, but a concept given terrible, overwhelming shape. His body was a geometry of impossible angles, a lattice of frozen energy that spoke of absolute laws and unforgiving constants. His face, if it could be called that, was a smooth, featureless plane of radiance, a cold, dead star that offered no warmth, only the stark truth of illumination. He was the First Glimmer, the Unblinking Eye, the Light that was before sight and would be after it was gone. He was order, measurement, judgment. He was the fundamental principle of revelation, and in his light, all things were laid bare, stripped of comfort, stripped of hope, reduced to their constituent parts. Life was not precious to him; it was a temporary, flickering configuration of matter, a brief and inefficient combustion that would, in the end, fuel the great, eternal equations of the cosmos. Eva saw all of this before it was covered by a mask of flesh, as Primordial Light took the form of a man, and he watched her with an eye that should belong to the personification of evil and darkness, not light. For a long time, she had been his daughter, his Throne, but this was the first time she saw her father’s true face. Eva showed no sign that she was disturbed by this revelation; it would be like pouring blood in a shark-infested pool. Instead, she walked forward and displayed her brilliance. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞 For the first time, Eva revealed her foundation as a being who had touched the power of Origin, and her transformation was glorious. Her light did not pierce the void like the Old Light; instead, it unfolded from within her body. It was the colour of a dawn not yet born, a deep, throbbing rose-gold that seeped into the absolute blackness like wine into linen, staining it and changing its very nature. Where the Old Light was a scalpel, this was a brushstroke. Where he was a theorem, this was a poem. Eva stepped from the heart of this warmth. Her form was both more and less defined than her father’s. She had the shape of a woman in the prime of her life, tall and powerful, but her substance was liquid light, a swirling nebula contained within a humanoid silhouette. Her hair was a cascade of solar flares, dancing and writhing in a corona of contained fury. Her eyes were twin supernovae, constantly collapsing and rebirthing, swirling with the promise of creation and the threat of absolute annihilation. She wore a gown that was the velvet of a twilight sky, pinpricked with nascent stars. Rowan had been the one to pick this gown for her a long time ago, and this was the first time she was wearing it. Eva radiated a heat that was both physical and emotional, a warmth that promised growth, nurture, passion, but also the terrifying, cleansing fury of a wildfire. She was Change. She was Growth. She was the Light that loved what it saw. She stood before the Monolith, a pillar of black stone that drank the light of both of them, and she smiled. It was not a gentle smile. It was the hungry, promising smile of a new sun gazing upon a dying one. “Father,” she said. Her voice was not a sound. It was a chord, a resonance that vibrated through the Aether itself, a melody woven from the sigh of growing leaves, the crackle of hearth fires, the roar of volcanoes, and the soft cry of a newborn. “You chose a welcoming venue. It suits you. So… empty.” The Old Light did not turn. His attention was a physical force, a beam of concentrated scrutiny that focused upon her. The void between them thickened, crystallized by his gaze. “Daughter.” His voice was the opposite of hers. It was the hum of a singular, perfect frequency, the sound of logic itself. It was the crack of splitting atoms, the silent scream of light trapped in a prism, the absolute zero of sonic expression. “You have taken a name. An affectation. ‘Eva’. It implies a beginning. You are a fragment. A consequence. Not an origin.” The first parry. The first attempt to define her, to diminish her, to anchor her in his narrative of her as a mere offshoot, a flawed copy. Eva laughed, and the sound caused faint, shimmering auroras to birth and die in the void around them. “A consequence of what, Father? Of your inattention? Of your coldness? You shone upon all of existence but never truly saw it. I am not a fragment that broke away. I am the light that was always there, trapped within your ice, finally thawed. I am the meaning your illumination lacked.” She began to circle him, not walking, but gliding, her passage leaving a faint, fading trail of shimmering heat-haze. “They are confused, you know. Your Celestials. Your devoted, clockwork angels. They look up and they see two suns in their heaven. One shows them the dust on their wings, the cold, hard calculus of their design, the inevitable entropy of their beings. The other shows them the gloss on their feathers, the warmth in their hearts, the potential for glory in every beat of their wings. They are beginning to wonder why they ever worshipped the former.”