The extinction of the Luminious was now possible. The last series of destruction that ravaged Existence had shaken their realm.

The Desolate Era they had always feared was coming for them, faster than they could imagine. These truths could no longer be denied.​With this in mind, in the next rebirth of Existence, the Luminious sent some of their members all across Existence.

They descended not as conquerors but as teachers.​They walked among the short-lived races, gods, immortals, mortals, and spoke with voices that tasted of dawn.​"Cease your striving," they said. "Power is an illusion. War is needless. Lay down your ambition, and live in harmony."

​However, their teaching fell on deaf ears. Wars and the chase for power continued. End came, as it was now inevitable.​In the next circle of rebirth, as time shifted forward, there were even some of the Luminous who entered the battlefields and, with a wave of their hand, ended conflicts across hundreds of Realities, sending ripples to every edge of Existence.​

With such a massive display of power, for the first time, war ended across Existence, and all of the lesser races stopped and began to listen to the words of the Luminious. No one had ever seen power like this, which made Existence, which was seen as infinite, so small.

But the Luminious did not understand that their efforts would only lead to the power of End growing stronger. They had never needed to survive and had never known fear of scarcity, of death, of irrelevance.

The beings they taught listened in awe, at first. Surely an omnipotent being must have lessons and wisdom that were unmatched and would answer all their problems, but they saw that they were wrong about their saviors.

Then resentment began to grow. To the starving, "cease striving" sounded like "accept hunger."To the oppressed, "lay down ambition" sounded like "remain enslaved."To the dying gods, "power is illusion" sounded like mockery from beings who had never felt their divinity fade.

The Luminious, in their invincibility, had essentially lost touch with how life was supposed to be.​

However, they were not fools; they acknowledged that they needed to do more after countless reports reached them about their lack of understanding.

And so, the Luminous tried different methods. Some of the most adventurous of the Luminious took mortal forms, living among the short-lived to learn their struggles. Curious about this change of state, multiple Luminious descended from beings of light into one of flesh and blood.

But even incarnate, their nature shone through. Crops grew abundantly around them without effort. Wounds healed at their touch. Death itself hesitated in their presence, and it did not matter that they took the forms of mortals; they were too beautiful and too perfect. Their immortality meant most of them mastered even the most obscure skills to levels that were unimaginable, and even in mortal bodies, they had no predators.

They could not teach lack; the Luminious could only demonstrate surplus. They could not teach peace when they could not experience strife; they could not teach humility and contentment when they were born with everything.

It was inevitable that rebellion followed. Races united in their combined jealousy of the Luminious; their attempts to reach the lesser lifeforms were seen as acts of mockery and not a desire to teach. The Power that they feared now seemed to be the thing that all races should pursue.

"If they withhold true power out of arrogance, we will take it."

Forbidden rituals resurfaced, grander than ever, as entire Realities were sacrificed just to hurt the mortal bodies of the Luminous.

The Luminous that were being attacked defended themselves, but they did not attack those who attacked them; they took away their weapons and the knowledge to make those weapons. They sealed rifts, quelled uprisings, and healed the wounds of war.

They thought they were making progress, but each intervention fed End indirectly. For every war prevented, ambition found new outlets, and the whispers of End became more obscure and could be found in places that were unexpected.

For every life saved, the saved grew bolder in their pursuit of immortality. They did not believe in the salvation of the Luminious and saw them as a way to prevent their rise.

This Existence ended in fire and screams, and the cycle did not just continue; it accelerated.

The Luminious began to notice something that began to scare them, as they could no longer deny the fact that this malevolent power, End, was growing closer to an unknown threshold.

End was still mysterious and extremely powerful, even to the Luminious who had sturdied it for countless Eras, and the fact that this power was growing and evolving, and there was a premonition that it was about to evolve, was a great shock to the Luminious.

The Luminous convened in their Gardens of Lumina for the first time in recorded eternity.

There, a hot debate began to rage, the first time that this had ever happened in the society of the Luminious.

Some argued for continued teaching, believing that patience would prevail and citing many examples of the countless conflicts resolved by this method and how it delayed the end of many Existences in the past.

Other Luminious were tired and fed up with their work inside of Existence; they had changed their comfortable nature to help lesser beings, yet they were being prosecuted for it. They wanted to withdraw entirely and let the lesser beings finish themselves.

However, the fact that they did not know what happened to that unknown god still haunted them, and they knew that abandoning him and the subsequent rebirth of Existence may be connected, and they were wary that leaving Existence once more could be more dangerous for them because they would not be able to monitor whatever changes might happen.

This contradiction between those who wanted to stay and those who wanted to leave led to a third conclusion,

"Let us end it ourselves."

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