Chapter 1790: Past Memories and Shared Vision Soul clutched the hand of Time with both of hers, her form seeming to glow with the intensity of her conviction. “Together, we could achieve this. Your sacrifice would not be an end. It would be the greatest act of defiance ever conceived. It would give meaning to all of this! To every life that we have taken, every star consumed, every tear ever shed on our unholy names! It would reveal the reason! It would be the final, beautiful note to the song of all creation!” The sweet moment of shared wonder at a new life curdled into the bitter scheming for an ancient death. Time did not know when Soul had become insane. Perhaps he suspected that he also was insane, but in this body of a mortal, he saw truths that his main body had forgotten. He looked from her fervent, beloved face to the innocent, pulsing light of Eos. He did not see a key. He saw a child. He did not see a bridge. He saw a living thing, sacred in its own right, not a tool to be used and broken. His love for his sister was a fundamental force. But in that moment, another force, older and even more fundamental, rose within him: the principle of guardianship. The duty to protect the flow, to safeguard the new, to honor the natural order. To use this child as a weapon and himself as ammunition was the deepest perversion of that duty imaginable. The love in his heart for her twisted into a knot of agony, but his voice, when it came, was calm. It was the calm of a river that has decided its course, no matter what stands in its way. “No,” he said. The word was simple and final. It contained no anger, only a profound, unshakeable resolution. It was the sound of a door closing for all time. “I will not be your sacrifice. And I will not let you pervert him.” The glorious light in her eyes did not just dim; it shattered. It was replaced by a cold, steely resolve that was more terrifying than any fury. The love was still there—he could see it, trapped and screaming behind the cold bars of her ambition—but it was twisted into something else: a furious, desperate need that brooked no opposition. She had seen the summit of the only mountain that mattered to her, and he had refused to be her ladder. Her hands released his. The warmth vanished, leaving a coldness on his skin that felt eternal. “Then you leave me no choice,” she said. Her voice was no longer a symphony. It was the flat, dead sound of a final verdict. “The truth will be known. With you, or without you.” ® The memory shattered, and Rowan blinked, for that barest moment, he had been Primordial Time, and he had seen the heart of this Primordial before he had become corrupted by Evil. In another life, Rowan might have been sympathetic, but such times had passed. The present crashed back in with the force of a supernova. The roar of his own power, the seething presence of the five Primordial, the cold, hard reality of his vengeance—it all returned. But he was changed. Rowan still felt the ghost of Primordial Soul’s hand in his, the echo of her final, cold words in his ears. He looked at the Primordials before him—Vorthas, Xylos, Elgorath, Xyris—and he saw them with new, devastating clarity through the eyes of Primordial Time, because for a moment he had been the Primordial, and the effect still lingered. Rowan allowed himself to become Primordial Time for a moment longer as new truths were revealed to him. He saw not just the beings who had killed him and this Reality. He saw the deeper, older failure. His sister’s sublime, terrible plan did not die with her dissent. Soul’s ambition, her hunger for that ultimate truth, had festered. It had leaked from her, a psychic plague, and infected the others. They had imprisoned her, but Time knew that even that was under her cruel calculations. However, they had lacked her vision, her understanding of the delicate, sacrificial mechanics required. They had sought to harness Eos by brute force, to tear the secrets from his living heart rather than build the elegant, tragic bridge Soul had envisioned. Their clumsy, violent attempt to force Eos to reveal the secrets of the Layer Beyond Origin had been an abomination. It had been what sparked his rebellion. Their failure to comprehend what his sister had instinctively understood led to their catastrophic, ham-fisted assault… which led to his war against them… which led to the deaths of all those who sided with him, his chosen family. Primordial Time fully understood Rowan; he understood his vengeance was not just for his murdered family. It was for the sublime, beautiful, terrifying future his sister had thrown away for a selfish dream. It was for the child, Eos, who had been subjected to their violent stupidity. It was for the principle that some truths are not worth the cost of their knowing. Her failure, and then theirs, had set them all on this grim, bloody path to extinction. They, the Primordials, who had ruled since the beginning of time, who had witnessed the first dawn and would, they thought, witness the last… would now all end within it. There would be no one to stand on the cliffside and watch the endless tides of Limbo. The circle, at last, would close. The final note of the song would be one of silence, born not of peace, but of absolute, self-inflicted ruin. The knowledge settled in his heart, colder and heavier than any weapon. It was the most profound tragedy of all. Then, he let the coldness harden into resolve. The memory had not weakened him. It had shown him the true depth of what he was fighting for. As undeserving as it was, Primordial Time would fight for his life. He met Rowan’s weary eyes, and for a moment, Primordial Time and Rowan shared an understanding that transcended their hatred. Since Rowan had become Primordial Time for this moment, the thought they had shared was the same. Then the moment passed. Rowan’s power surged, darker and more absolute than before. The speech was over. The memory was past. Now, there was only the ending. ® There was no teleportation, no burst of speed. One moment, Rowan stood facing the Primordials, his form a silhouette of contained, infinite night. The next, he was among them. For that brief mosmnt when Rowan was Primordial Time, he did not move through time. He was Time. And he stretched that moment into an aeon of violence. His first target was Primordial Demon; among all the Primordials, he alone was able to break the shackles of time a bit faster because this was his domain, and his power was supreme here. His body of darkness and malice was already moving as his right hand transformed into a great single-edged butcher blade that could sever concepts. This blade could cut the thread of destiny with a thought, and Primordial Demon crackled with excitement as he swept the blade towards Rowan’s neck, but found its edge in Rowan’s hand. Rowan did not block the ethereal sword of absolute severance that manifested to cut him down; instead, his hand closed around it, stopping its descent. “BOOM!” The sound was not of metal on flesh, but of a paradox shattering. The power of the blade, which could divide anything from itself, met the one thing that could not be divided: a singular, absolute moment. Rowan held the blade, and the moment held firm. With a wrench that twisted the geometry of the void itself, he shattered the blade not into pieces, but into a stream of isolated, disconnected instants, rendering it null. His other hand, fingers curled into a fist that contained the weight of every ending that had ever been, drove into the demon’s core—literally punching the Origin of Primordial Demon. The excited laughter of the demon transformed into a pained howl as he vanished. The force from the punch had not sent the Primordial flying; it was the application of a terminal punctuation mark to his existence. Primordial Demon vanished, not just through space, but through time as well. He was hurled downwards into the arena’s past! The Arena was meant to withstand the battle of Primordials, but the force from Rowan’s punch smashed Primordial Demon into the Arena, splitting it in two, and his body continued past the dimension of the Arena, descending deeper into the Great Abyss. His body tore through a hundred levels of the Abyss, killing Demons of all levels in their trillions and exterminating countless Demonic strongholds. Rowan had already been moving when he threw that punch, his body flashing over to Primordial Life.