Chapter 2013: New Variable Eos looked around Limbo; he could feel that something had changed in the last hundred thousand years. It was as if the corruption inside Limbo was growing, but Eos knew that this was not the truth; instead, the corruption was being concentrated. Eos did not just buy time for himself, but he also bought time for the forces of End, and they would ensure that the Origin Realms were so tightly surrounded that it would be impossible for anyone to escape them when the battle began. It may appear as if he was free at the moment, but Eos was not; his responsibilities tied him tighter than any chains, and the Ancient Primordials knew that he would never abandon the Origin Realms and flee. One reason was that the Origin Realms were far too important. Rowan had achieved a miracle with their creation, and it was unknown if this miracle could be repeated. If there was no longer any choice left, if Eos detonated all of the Origin Realms, it would surely lead to the death of all his enemies and everyone he protected alongside them. The Ancient Primordials knew he would not take this step, but as long as the option was still on the table, this made it a resource that Eos could not abandon, and so they knew he would not abandon the Origin Realm and flee. They were gathering all the corruption in Limbo to be concentrated around these Realms. This would take a long time; Limbo was a massive place, and a few million years would have to pass before all of these preparations were completed. Barely a hundred thousand years had gone by, and he was already seeing the effects of this change. Leading Eva, he took her to a seemingly random location in Limbo. Eva looked around in confusion. There were no broken realms here or the remnants of a battle; it was just empty space that stretched for as far as the eye could see. She looked at Eos for feedback and caught him staring at a random spot in space, folded between two different dimensional plates. Following his eyes, Eva looked deeper at that spot, and she noticed a crack in space-time. "Let’s go in," Eos said, and, filled with curiosity, Eva followed him and entered the tear in space time. She had been expecting to see a grand realm or a lost treasure of the past; instead, they entered a fairly small room with only an open closet inside. In that closet, born from a single, crystallized tear shed by a minor immortal fleeing the destruction of her world, was a single, flawless orchid made of starlight. It had no reason to exist. It served no purpose. It was just... beautiful. And it was alive. Next to it, etched on the wall by a finger, was a single rune. It meant "Remember." Something inside Eva’s chest squeezed, and she did not know when she began to cry. Eos saw this and remained silent because he knew that this place would deeply affect Eva more than him. In the past, he had seen a vision of Eva as a child, born at a time when the Primordials had not fully shattered Eosah’s reality with their hunger. When the battle began, she had been taken by the Celestials and remade to become a Creator, but before then, she was born from a blue grass, and she had fled for a long time before she was captured and changed into a new being. This place... this room, was one of the places that Eva had stayed for the night as a child, and with the many destructive events that had been happening over the Eras, there was no way this place should have survived, but it did, even when it was thrown deep into Limbo. What was even more amazing was that one of the Archai had found it, and Eos had recognized the spirit of Eva in this place. The miracle of such an event floored someone like him. This room had survived the impossible, and he had found it. "End’s arithmetic cannot account for this," Eos whispered, his hand hovering near the flower, not touching it, afraid his majesty would crush it. "It cannot explain why beauty persists in forgotten cracks. It cannot explain why love leaves a mark on a wall in a dead universe. This," he pointed from the orchid, to the rune, to the Singularity in his hand, and finally to Eva’s tear-streaked face, "this is the flaw in its equation. This is the variable it cannot solve for. We do not fight End with a bigger sacrifice. We fight it by proving its math is wrong." He turned to her, and for the first time in a year, he offered her his hand, truly. "The year is over, Eva. You have shown me everything you wished. Now, will you stand with me? Not to make me accept the old, broken arithmetic, but to help me write a new equation?" Eva stared at the flower near his hand, a remnant of her tears, and then up at him. The guide that wanted to change Eos’ shifting viewpoint was fading away, and in its place was just Eva, laid bare, her revelations turned inward. "And what if I fail as a witness? What if I cannot bear to see you fall, clinging to this love?" "Then perhaps," he said, his voice barely a whisper, "you need a new revelation. The coldest fact in all existence, Eva, is entropy. End. The fact that all things fall apart. My entire life has been a war against that fact. Sacrificing the Primordial Record accepts End’s premise that something must be broken for something else to continue. My love for my children... and my trust in you... are my weapons against that fact. You are not my compass to acceptance. You are my witness. Your tears are the data that proves my path is real." Eva chuckled silently as she reached for his hand, "We would lose, your enemies would see that you are not giving up a single world for them to consume, and they shall fall on you with all the rage that they can bring." Eos closed his hand, the tear merging with his own eternal essence. "Then we fall together. And that, too, will be a truth worth recording." The Primordial Record pulsed in Eos’s hand, and in its true first page, the one created by the Temple of End that outlined its purpose... the words on it began to change. Directive Updated. Primary Function: No longer ’Record All That Is.’ New Primary Function: ’Record All That Is Worth Saving.’ Victory Condition Redefined. New Variable Added to Core Equation: ’Us.’