Noctis turned to look at Rowan, a weird light in his eyes, but Rowan did not care what Noctis was thinking at this moment because he was in awe of what he was witnessing.

Landing on the ground, Rowan had expected to see more of the temple layer, but not an entire starry sky that stretched into infinity; it was as if there were another existence beneath the one he knew.

His perception tried to reach for the heavens to touch these stars and know if they were Realities or something else, but certain unknown restrictions in this place or the laws that guided this area prevented his consciousness from rising for more than a few million miles… this was clearly not enough for him to understand the entire truth of what he was witnessing.

Rowan had kept his wings unfurled behind him all this time, but the moment he set foot in this place, his wings shrank into his body without his control. It was as if the concept of wings did not exist in this place, and so it was banished from existence. Of course, if he wanted, he could forcefully recall his wings, but there was no reason to do such a thing here, especially as the connection with Eos was now incredibly faint.

With this link, Rowan knew that, at least, no matter how faint, there was still a connection with existence and his main body, and he was not alone.

Rowan peered around, noticing that in this place, he could not fly, and he frowned as he looked around him for the tunnel that they used to enter this place, and it was gone.

"How do we leave this place?"

Noctis did not reply to him; he continued walking ahead for a few more minutes before he stopped, and although Rowan did not see anything there before, a closed door had appeared in front of Noctis.

The door hung a few inches off the ground, and there was nothing behind it, yet the feeling of weight that it carried was palpable. If Rowan closed his eyes, he would almost believe that this door was the gate of a dam holding back enough water that could flood all of Existence.

"This is as far as I go," he said. His voice was gentle, almost apologetic. "This holy ground would allow no one past this threshold who still carries traces of the Origin in their bodies. I have no more Origin in me, and after your baptism, you will have none."

"You did not answer my question," Rowan said, "How can we leave this place?"

"Noctis shrugged, "The only way to leave is to go further in. You want the truth, there is a price for something that valuable. Walk through this door, and find it out for yourself. Only then would you be able to withstand the Aura of the Artifacts above, and be ready for your destiny."

"My destiny?" Rowan cocked his head to the side.

Noctis smiled, a weird light shining in his eyes, "If you know the truth, you become one of us, or you can remain in this place for all eternity, take your time to think about it, in this place you have nothing but time… little archivist."

Then he stepped back, and darkness swallowed him, leaving Rowan alone.

He could not say that he was not expecting something like this. Threatening a being as powerful and old as these Architects would usually lead to one outcome, and that was they would lash out.

Rowan had deliberately played this card because he wanted to see the worst outcomes as early as possible when he still had the means to counter them. He had inferred certain things from what Noctis had been telling him so far, and as amazing and ridiculous as they all sounded, he could not deny that they appeared more like truths to him as he dwelt upon them.

If this temple signified what it did, then it meant that there was once an entire existence before this one, which validated some of his earlier theories about the state of existence.

You see, the Archai had calculated the expansion of existence, and so it was easy to reverse engineer that formula and figure out when this expansion first began. With this method, Rowan was able to figure out the age of Existence as they knew it, pegging it for 500 million Cosmic Eras in age.

So he knew when the expansion of Existence began, and if this temple and this place were the right spot, then he could be standing at the seat of Existence, the place where that expansion began.

Rowan had hypothesized on the origin of Existence, and now an answer had been given to him. Noctis had said that the destroyer of the previous existence was dead set on destroying this one.

With everything that was happening, Rowan could not deny these truths, but there could be more to this than meets the eye, and he needed to find out the truth.

He reached for the handle of the door, and it was uncomfortably warm, as if he was touching a living thing and not an object. The door opened inward without sound, and Rowan stepped through and vanished.

He reappeared inside a small space, which almost led to a sense of disorientation, but he shook it off. The door behind him closed and vanished, leaving him without a method to leave and severely reducing the link that he had with his main body.

With this level of connection, the possibility that he would be able to receive quick aid from his main body was nearly zero, and so Rowan simply focused on sending information in order to optimize what little connection he had left. He would no longer be able to receive any message from his main body until he left this place or perished within.

Walking towards the edge of this space, Rowan paused because the featureless space under his feet had vanished, replaced by ashes, and then those ashes transformed into bones.

Rowan bent and picked one of the bones from the ground, but as he did, his eyes caught something in the distance that he had not seen before. It was a pair of wings.

They hung on the far edges of this space, and they were still attached to large pieces of bones and flesh, as if these wings had been torn from the body of the owner.

They were vast, larger than this space should allow, feathers of pure light, what Rowan suspected was once golden, now bleached bone-white by the weight of what they had carried. They reeked of death and desolation.

The core of the wings was stained with the blood of an unknown being that glowed in colors that were hard to describe, and the edges of the wings continuously trembled, as if trying to beat in a wind that had not blown since the beginning of existence.

Between the wings, the flesh where they had been torn away was still raw, with white muscle and bone exposed, weeping slow drops of liquid dawn that hissed when they hit the floor and became new cracks that bled into existence.

Rowan's breath caught in his throat when he realized that the aura from the wings was the temple itself.

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