Chapter 1777: Shifting Tides Eva could feel herself growing more steady in the understanding of her nature. She was beginning to understand that the Circles Rowan used in shackling the power of Light to her form also gave her a measure of his potential. This could be very dangerous in the wrong hands, because Eva was now understanding that at the time Rowan had recreated her, he did not adequately define any limitations to her system, and here she was, battling with a Primordial about Origin, and she was not losing ground. The cold embrace of Old Light surrounded her, but she was no longer backing down; there was no fear of loss, only the desire to fight for what she believed was necessary. Rowan might have seen her as a way to check the powers of Primordial Light, but she wanted to do more, to be more… for him. The conflict escalated beyond words. Now, their very natures began to manifest their debate in the void. Around Old Light, constellations of pure, mathematical form began to appear: perfect spheres, flawless crystals, intricate grids of energy that hummed with relentless, impersonal order. It was beauty, but the beauty of a flawless equation, cold and awe-inspiring. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎 Around Eva, light burst into forms of organic, chaotic splendor: swirling nebulae in a riot of colors, galaxies shaped like blooming roses, lightning storms that danced to a silent symphony of fury and joy. It was the beauty of a sunset, a storm, a forest, a face. It was warm, terrifying, and alive. She no longer cared if her manifestation may seem lesser in the eyes of a Primordial, as she knew that it held the weight that could not be denied. The two fields of light around them began to interact at their edges. Where the perfect grids of Old Light touched the swirling nebulae of Eva, a violent reaction occurred. The grids tried to measure, define, and solidify the chaos. The nebulae tried to melt, warp, and animate the grids. Sparks of raw creation and destruction flew where they met, birthing and annihilating entire micro-realms in nanoseconds. For an extremely brief moment, something shifted under the human-like facade of Primordial Light, revealing a creature of madness and hunger before it was covered by his light, but Eva had seen it, and a chill ran down her spine, but she did not stop fighting. “Your chaos is inefficient,” Old Light stated after a while as he observed the carnage at their boundaries with detached interest. “It creates and destroys with no net gain. It is wasteful.” “Your order is sterile!” Eva retorted, her form flexing as she poured more of her essence into the struggle. “It creates nothing new! It merely arranges what already exists into ever more perfect, and ever more dead, patterns. You create nothing!” Primordial Light smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. Something was bubbling underneath his calm facade, but Eva refused to back down. She knew his pride had taken him down this road, and he would not crush her with his hands when he still had his words. Still, the voice of Primordial Light was now colder and deeper, and he was placing much more emphasis on his intonation, as if he was forcing himself to stick to his rules. Something she had said had truly gotten under his skin. “I am the foundation upon which all is built!” he spoke slowly, “I am the reason anything is worth building!” The verbal battle was now a full-blown ontological war, and the Celestials far below would be feeling it as a schism in heaven itself, a terrifying and exhilarating storm of dual revelations. A part of Eva, she did not even know existed, but was most likely the remnants of Rowan’s wisdom in her soul, was coldly analyzing the Primordial in front of her. It told her that Old Light must have realized that direct confrontation was leading to a stalemate and that in this conflict they were surprisingly too evenly matched, two halves of a whole, locked in an eternal opposition. What was expected was that he would soon need to break her not through force, but through understanding. The Primordial would have to make her see the inherent flaw in her own being so that he could create a seed of destruction within her. Old Light suddenly withdrew his manifested light, pulling it back into his core. The perfect geometries winked out. The violent reaction at their boundary ceased, leaving a scarred and quivering Aether. Eva, surprised by the retreat, held her own light in check, watching him warily. “You speak of love,” the Old Light said, his voice now quieter, almost contemplative. It was a dangerous change in tone. “Of warmth. Of growth. These are all things that require an object. You love something. You warm something. You make something grow. Your light is contingent. It is dependent on the existence of other things to have meaning. Without a world to warm, you are just a fire in a vacuum. Without life to inspire, you are just a meaningless fury.” He paused, letting the logic of it settle. It was irrefutable. “I,” he continued, “am not contingent. I am absolute. I would be exactly what I am if there were no worlds, no life, no angels. I would still be the Light of Definition. I would still illuminate the truth of the void itself. My existence is self-contained. My purpose is inherent. Yours… yours is borrowed. It is parasitic. If all of creation were to end, I would remain. You would perish, for there would be nothing left to love, nothing left to warm. Your light would go out, not with a bang, but with a whimper of irrelevance.” It was the most devastating argument yet. He had framed her entire existence as secondary, dependent, a mere accessory to creation, while his was primary, fundamental, and independent. Eva felt the cold of that logic seep into her. It was true. Her light was for something. It was relational. It was, by its very nature, turned outward. If there was nothing out there… what was she? For a moment, a flicker of doubt crossed her fiery gaze. The light around her dimmed ever so slightly. The Old Light saw it—the first crack in her will. He pressed his advantage, his voice dropping to a whisper that was colder than the void itself. “You need them, Eva. You need their love, their worship, their growth, to justify yourself. You are defined by your relationship to them. I define them. There is the difference. You are a slave to your creation. I am its master.” The words were like spears of ice. Slave. She was passion, and passion needed an object. He was principle, and principle stood alone. Eva looked down, as if at the countless realms teeming with life far below. She saw the mortals, the Celestials, all the beings who basked in her new light. She saw her purpose. And she saw the trap he had laid. If she accepted that purpose, she accepted her dependency. She accepted that she was less than him. The silence stretched. The Old Light had won. He had defined her into a corner from which there was no escape. Then, Eva began to laugh.