Chapter 1846: The End (final) The trials of the first layer of Origin were incredibly dangerous, and if he had made the wrong decision and tried to resolve that Tribulation using the standard method that any other Primordial would use, he would have failed. His core was different, and his laws could not be judged with common sense. He was not the Primordial of Fire, the Primordial of Darkness, or any of the concepts that were relatively tangible. He was the Primordial of Defiant Ascension, and so his road was different. The trials were deadly, but hardly took any time in the larger scheme of things. His body was still blazing through the Origin of Soul, and he had blasted past the second and third layer, with the gate of the fourth layer of the soul approaching rapidly in front of him. The blazing spear of defiance under the baptism of a new layer of power with Telmus’s Ascension no longer shines white but a deep bronze color, almost like gold, but this bronze was the color of the first metallic weapon wielded by mortals. Space in front of Telmus shrieked and tore apart; even the gates of the fourth level of the Soul shuddered before it vanished under the sharpness of the spear bearing down upon it. It was then that Telmus saw... something. It was hard to describe, and only the presence of Rowan blazing brighter than any light should ever be gave him a frame of reference to understand what he was looking at. Even as a Primordial, Telmus could not wrap his mind around what he was seeing; he only knew that the source of every plague, every sorrow, every death, every evil, was here, and Rowan was fighting it. He could not see the enemy, but he could sense the Aura of wrongness surrounding Rowan, and only that sense alone was enough to frighten him. A cold chill went down his spine, and every single iota of his being screamed at him to retreat, to run to the farthest reaches of existence and pray for all eternity that the stench of this Aura be forgotten from his soul. "Do not come any closer, Telmus." Rowan’s roar made him ground his momentum to a halt. "Reality is about to end. This battle here is my own, but it would be meaningless if the Primordials are allowed to reach this place. No matter what happens, you cannot let them see me." Telmus did not hesitate, rotating his spear, he pressed its shaft against his forehead and gave a halfbow, "I shall hold the gates, Rowan, nothing shall come through." Turning around, Telmus exited the Origin of Soul and entered Reality. Exiting was far easier than his forced entry, and holding his spear, Telmus looked up for his enemy... and he saw no one. Looking around, he saw that Reality was normal; there was no change across all of it, almost as if the heavens were still sealed and nothing had changed. However, his heart beat was getting increasingly faster, and a fear that made him squeeze his spear tighter flowed through him like an endless tide. "Where is the enemy?" An instinct made him look at Reality once more; something seemed peculiar about the image of existence, almost as if he was looking at it through glass. Then, all of Reality blinked. Telmus drew in a long breath and walked a few steps back while expanding his consciousness. No matter how much he pushed his consciousness, it did not seem to be enough, and he kept extending his reach until he reached his limits. Finally, he understood. If he had not reached the first layer of Origin that boosted his consciousness a hundred times over, he would have never understood what he was looking at. His heartbeat finally stilled when he realized the grim truth, and the fear that held him in a vice settled when he knew his final moments were here. The Reality he knew was gone, and what he was seeing was the reflection of its last image in a single eye of a Primordial! When he expanded his consciousness, he began to see more eyes that were slowly turning towards him, as if he were a surprising anomaly they had just discovered. It is very important to note that Telmus was still working with time on the scale of Primordials, meaning for all intents and purposes, a single second had been stretched to billions of years with the speed of their consciousness power, and yet for what Telmus would consider the blink of an eye, all of Reality was gone. He was in the center of the seven greatest abominations to ever walk across existence. The end of everything did not come with a bang or a whimper; no one else, except Rowan and Telmus, knew that Reality was over, and everybody who was in it was dead. Telmus’s mind returned to the moment inside the living castle Algorth, before he took the final steps to become a Primordial, he had asked Rowan, "Why do you consider Primordials to be the greatest threat we would ever face? You are killing them easily enough, and with a few more upgrades to your battle capabilities, then this war is already as good as won." Rowan had smiled at him and said the words that chilled him to his core, but he had not recognized the implications behind them until this moment when he stood before the seven and knew without any doubt that he would be dying here. "There is a hunger in the heart of creation, older than existence as we know it and deaf to all reason but their endless appetite. They stalk the darkness and unwrites Realities, one at a time. We build our kingdom and sing our songs, but the end of all things does not sleep or tire, and in every moment that passes, they come for us, and no matter how much we fight it, we are not enough. Why do I fear the Primordials, Telmus? It is because, no matter what we do, we are always too late." 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂 A long sigh emerged from Telmus, and he brought up his spear, "I do not go silently into the night, I rage... I rage."