Chapter 1797: Loss and Sacrifice The audience in the Arena had barely had the time to digest the thrilling battle between Telmus and the seven titans when Rowan arrived, and his consciousness reshaped Reality. The Elythrii were the few who were not pressured to the ground like the others, and it was because they recognized the force that had held this Reality in his grasp, and he was Eos, the Creator who gave them a paradise in Elython. Since they were no longer wearing the form of the Eldar and gloriously showing their true Elythrii bodies to all, their uniqueness became especially noticeable, as the subtle connection that binds all Elythrii and the fact that the energy surrounding them seemed to be alive was extremely apparent. The Elythrii’s resilience against the highest forces of creation appearing in the Arena was quickly detected by the immortals around them, Fury, Vraegar, the two Mages, who called themselves Kacius and Lila, Seed, the mysterious old man, and finally Ghribba, the Silver Queen. The presence of the Elythrii seemed to grow stronger with the appearance of Rowan, creating a rippling effect that strengthened the immortals around them, making them rise from the ground. Vraegar looked at them, a complex emotion in his eyes that were hard to decipher, and then, looking upwards at the he spoke, "This is no longer a place for us, prepare yourself for what would come, the Primordials would not accept anyone who can challenge their dominion." His words were prophecy because the intent to battle began to rise as the first sign of what was to come was not a sound, but a cessation of one. The Elythrii’s stabilizing presence was cut off. Their five heads snapped upward in perfect unison. Vraegar, whose senses were tuned to the deep, slow frequencies of existence, felt a tremor in the fabric of spacetime itself, a wrongness that predated sound and light. Fury’s fiery hair flared, not with warmth, but with a sharp, warning heat. Then the sky of the Arena tore. Through it were glimpses of figures whose presence was an assault on reality. The Five Primordials. Their forms, vast, terrible, and difficult to comprehend—shifting patterns of absolute power that made the eyes water and the mind recoil. And facing them, a solitary figure coalescing from scarred spacetime: Rowan. The words that passed between them were not heard with ears. It was felt in the soul. It was the vibration of a fundamental law declaring war on other fundamental laws. Rowan was challenging the entire Peimordials to battle. The immortals in the Arena, beings who had ruled galaxies and lived for millions, even billions of years, were suddenly made aware of their own profound smallness. They were mayflies witnessing the collision of stars. "We must go," Seed said, his voice calm but carrying an urgency that brooked no argument. It was the first time many had heard him speak, and the sound was like the earth itself giving a warning. Looking at each other, they silently agreed and followed the Old Man, heading towards the exit of this realm. "I thought you would want to watch the chaos, Fury," Vraegar chuckled, bringing a hint of warmth inside their group whose hearts were filled with unease by being near such powerful entities above. Fury growled, "Unlike you, I am not an idiot, damned dragon. I know when to fight and when to run. This is the time to run." The battle began, and to the senses of the immortals here, it was not an exchange of blows; it was a rewriting of local physics. The first clash between Rowan and the Primordials did not create a shockwave; it created a zone of null-probability. A quarter of the Arena, along with the billions of immortals seated there, simply ceased to be. They didn’t die; they were retroactively edited out of existence. There was a pause as if those present could not understand what they had just witnessed, and then panic, pure and primal, erupted. It was not the orderly flight of powerful beings. It was a rout. A stampede of gods and demigods, their magnificent powers rendered trivial, scrambling over each other to reach the Abyssal Gates. Beings who could snuff out suns were crushed underfoot by panicked titans. Spells of teleportation fizzled; the spatial layers were locked, twisted by the Primordials’ presence. The only way out was on foot, through the pre-ordained gates. "Stay together!" Fury shouted, his voice a beacon in the psychic storm. He raised his hands, and a shield of Phoenix fire erupted around their small group—Vraegar, the five Elythrii, Seed, Ghribba, and the two mages. It was a feeble barrier against the energies being unleashed, but it was something. The world around them was unraveling. The sky was now a kaleidoscope of impossible colors and geometries. A stray energy bolt, a mere exhale from the battle above, sliced through the crowd ahead of them. It wasn’t fire or lightning; it was a ribbon of accelerated time. Those it touched aged through eons in a heartbeat, crumbling to dust that was then scattered by a wind that blew from a direction that did not exist. Ghribba, the silver queen, screamed as a flicker of this energy grazed her arm. The living silver of her limb rapidly tarnished, corroded, and flaked away. The corruption spread, a creeping gray death. "It won’t stop!" she shrieked, her shifting face frozen in a mask of horror. Lila the mage tried to sever the temporal thread connected to her, but the power was too absolute, too fundamental. Her threads of fate magic snapped against it like cobwebs. Before their eyes, Ghribba’s form degraded, her screams turning to a gurgle as her liquid silver body solidified into a brittle, gray statue. A second later, a spatial tremor shook the ground, and the statue shattered into a million pieces of dull metal. One of their number was gone, just like that. They pushed on, their hearts hammering with a fear they had forgotten they could feel. The Elythrii moved as one, their light weaving a protective canopy that defied the chaotic energies. It was like trying to hold up a silk umbrella in a hurricane. Vraegar used his immense bulk to clear a path, his icy breath flash-freezing pockets of chaotic energy, creating brief, safe passageways. Fury’s fire incinerated fragments of reality that had become lethally sharp. They reached the Grand Abyssal Gate, a colossal archway of shimmering energy that was now flickering erratically. The gate was a nexus of escape routes, leading to a billion safer dimensions. But it was failing. The battle ahead was overloading its mechanisms. Immortals were bottlenecked, pushing and shoving in a terrified crush. It was here that the second horror struck. The Primordial Demon, in his clash with Rowan, was hurled downwards. His body, a theorem of violence, crashed through the fabric of the Arena not far from the gate. The impact did not cause a physical crater. It caused a conceptual one. The very idea of "escape" in that vicinity was annihilated. Hundreds of millions of immortals simply forgot how to flee. They stood, confused, their minds wiped of purpose, just before a wave of pure entropy washed over them, unmooring their atoms from one another. In the ensuing chaos, a fragment of the Demon’s power—a shard of absolute martial intent—ricocheted like a bullet. It was aimed at their group. The Elythrii, with their preternatural unity, saw it coming. All five moved as a single entity, throwing up a shield of woven light and bark. The shard struck it. The sound was the sound of a perfect law breaking an imperfect one. The shield, and the five Elythrii who had formed it, were shattered. Not killed, but sundered. Their unified consciousness was blown apart. Their ethereal forms fractured into five separate, dimmer beings, their synchronicity lost, their song silenced. They were alive, but the heart of their power had been broken. They would have perished entirely if not for the presence of Eos they could still feel, and where they drew sustenance. Shaken but not defeated, they continued running. Around their group, hundreds of millions were dying with every breath, and the salvation ahead seemed not to grow closer. They reached the Gate, but it was collapsing, the foundations of the Abyss were breaking, and the grand gate was losing its function. Vraegar blurred forward and seized the base of the gate, a tremendous amount of essence, enough to light out a million dimensions, flowing out of him to hold it in place. "No!" Vraegar cried out; it was unknown if he lamented for the dead or the fact that their escape might not be possible. He slammed his hands on the ground, trying to steady the buckling reality around the gate. The strain was immense. Veins bulged on his forehead. "I can’t hold it! The foundations are gone!" It was Seed who acted. The old man stepped forward, away from the relative safety of Fury’s flickering shield. He looked at the crumbling gate, at the terrified immortals, and then at the cataclysm above. There was a profound sadness in his eyes, but also a resolve as deep as time. "Some seeds must fall so that others may grow. Get them through. The story is not over yet." he said, his voice carrying over the din. He looked at Fury, then at Vraegar. "If you see him again, tell him that I am... no, there is no need to mention my name." Before anyone could stop him, Seed walked towards the faltering gate. He did not run. He knelt before the archway and placed his gnarled hands on the ground. From his fingers, roots of pure, green energy burrowed into the disintegrating stone. They spread rapidly, a network of vibrant life force against the gray decay. He was not reinforcing the gate; he was becoming the gate. His body began to stiffen, to transform. The roots thickened, weaving through the archway, stabilizing it with the unyielding persistence of life itself. The flickering energy of the exit portal steadied, turning a stable, warm green. But the cost was absolute. Seed’s physical form was dissolving, turning to wood and leaf, merging with his creation. He was sacrificing his consciousness, his ancient identity, to become a temporary bridge to safety. "Now!" Fury roared, herding the stunned Elythrii and the two mages forward. Vraegar gave a final, mournful look at the old man who was now becoming a tree, then surged through the green portal. They stumbled out not into a paradise, but into the bleak, rocky hinterlands between dimensions—the Nexus Barrens, a place connected to the Passage of Time. They collapsed, gasping, a fraction of the magnificent beings they had been hours before. They turned back to the gate, which was now a beautiful, terrible tree of light, its roots holding the portal open.