Chapter 4933: Are You With Us? II

As Eon stared at Paradox and Noah on one side of THE Agora, something else was occurring in another section entirely.

In another region of THE Acropolis.

THE Acropolis was the highest district, accessible only to Polemarchs and above under normal circumstances. The Crack of Observable Existence dominated its skyline, that terrible wound in reality through which corruption now poured. But THE Acropolis had many sections beyond the main courtyard where battles had just been fought. It also had the Primordial Archive and the Chamber of Judgment where the most important debates occurred.

Inside the Primordial Archive, something terrible was unfolding in silence.

The structure itself was vast and ancient. Marble floors stretched toward distant walls that held alcoves filled with knowledge accumulated across eons. Floating scrolls drifted through the air in lazy spirals, their contents glowing with authority that made them visible even in the sourceless light that illuminated this place. Books hovered in formations that defied gravity, organized by principles that transcended alphabetical or chronological ordering.

At the very center of the Archive, where the most precious knowledge was meant to be protected, multiple Cracks had formed. They led to different places. To different Primordial Realms. To regions of Observable Existence that had always been connected to THE Agora through pathways that few knew existed.

The Archive was eerily silent.

No sound of turning pages. No whisper of scrolls unfurling. No footsteps echoing against marble that should have rung with every movement.

And yet in this place, there were actually thousands of beings present.

Followers of the aspects of the Oldest Paradox of Existence filled the Archive in numbers that exceeded its apparent capacity. Glossarians stood in orderly rows, their linguistic authority dim and muted where it should have blazed with the power of THE First Tongue.

Paradoxians waited beside them, their contradictory natures no longer expressing themselves through individual choices but through unified purpose. Chaosites, who should have been impossible to organize by their very nature, stood in perfect formation.

Chaos...was very orderly.

Existentialists, who had dedicated themselves to questions of being and meaning, now possessed answers they’d never sought.

There were thousands of them.

And yet none made a sound.

They orderly entered the Cracks at the center of the Archive and disappeared. One by one. Row by row. Moving with coordination that spoke of singular will rather than collective decision. No one pushed. No one hesitated. No one expressed any individuality whatsoever as they stepped through portals that would carry them to other Primordial Realms.

In the air above them, Nyx floated with calmness that matched her master’s.

The disciple of THE Secretive Eon watched their collective begin to spread out. She, as they, observed the process with satisfaction that belonged to something far older than her individual existence. Her eyes held the same calm purity that Glossikos had seen in Eon’s gaze. Her smile held the same warmth that had made the Strategos forget her concerns.

THE Agora of Primordial Judgment was always the endgame.

It connected to all the other Primordial Realms as it was a nexus. The Cracks that led to other realms were features, not flaws. They were pathways that allowed THE Agora to fulfill its purpose.

And when the nexus came under their control, they could spread even easier.

So they did.

Existence was vast and filled with terrors.

Beings suffered in isolation, fought wars that had no purpose, struggled against entropy that would claim them eventually regardless of their efforts. They didn’t understand that there was a better way. They didn’t know that unity could solve the problems that individuality created.

They had to move as a collective to show the way.

They knew the way. The others just needed to be shown. When they were shown, they would understand. There were countless problems out there, and they had already found a solution.

They were the solution.

The others would just have to be shown this to understand.

The terrifying and eerie process continued as in heavy silence with barely any noise, thousands containing the will of THE Primordial Mycelia flooded from THE Agora and spread out to other Primordial Realms. They moved through Cracks that led to the Jotunheim, Alfheimr, Helheim...to territories that had been protected for eons by beings who would soon understand the glory of unity.

The rot was spreading.

And it spread in glorious silence.

---

The terror of losing one’s identity was a unique one.

What did it mean to be yourself? Was identity the sum of your memories, the accumulation of choices made across existence? Was it the consistent thread of consciousness that linked who you were yesterday to who you would be tomorrow? Or was it something deeper, something that existed at the foundation of your being, something that couldn’t be defined but that you knew was there because without it, you would cease to be you?

When that foundation cracked, when the thread began to fray, when the sum started subtracting from itself without your permission...

What remained?

The horror wasn’t simply death. Death was cessation. Death was an ending that at least had the dignity of being final. This was something else entirely. This was watching yourself disappear while still being aware enough to mourn what was being lost. This was feeling your existence hollow out from the inside while the shell remained intact. This was becoming a stranger to yourself one memory at a time, one choice at a time, one fragment of identity at a time.

It was a horrid thing to say the least.

Even more astounding was how one could realize the process was happening and be halfway through having their identity erased, but still have awareness of it occurring as they sought to stop it.

This was what was currently happening with a lone entity who had always been alone and lonely across existence.

THE Living Temporal.

Since his identity began to fade, he had been running across time!

He’d traversed into the past to anchor himself into an identity of back then, believing that if he could root himself in who he’d been, the infection couldn’t claim who he was. And yet nothing changed. In fact, the infection tried to establish itself retroactively, reaching back through the timeline he’d created to claim versions of himself that should have been beyond its grasp.

He’d run into the future, hoping that establishing himself ahead of the infection’s spread would allow him to outpace it. And it did nothing. The infection felt even stronger when he sought to establish himself in the future, as if it had already claimed what he would become before he could become it.

At this moment, THE Living Temporal found himself surrounded by stellar purple rivers of time.

The currents flowed around him in streams that held the weight of eons, carrying moments and possibilities and might-have-beens in their luminous depths. His Civilizational Authority manifested as tendrils of golden light that wove through the purple rivers, trying to maintain structure, trying to keep the flow of time moving in patterns he could control.

And THE Living Temporal swam.

He physically swam against the rivers of time with desperation that would have shocked anyone who had known him in his prime. His arms swept through temporal currents that pressed against him with weight that exceeded physical resistance. His legs kicked against the flow of moments that tried to carry him toward a future he could no longer face. Each stroke kept his Temporal authority churning and active, preventing the infection from claiming more of him while he desperately searched for a solution across all of time.

His features had changed.

Previously, he could look old and young simultaneously, his mastery of time allowing him to present whatever age suited his mood or purpose. His face could hold the wisdom of ancient epochs and the vigor of fresh beginnings in the same moment. His eyes could burn with experience accumulated across eons while sparkling with the curiosity of someone just beginning to explore existence.

But right now, he only seemed aged and tired.

Lines creased his face that he couldn’t smooth away with temporal authority. His hair, which had always shifted between colors and lengths at his whim, now hung gray and limp against his shoulders. His eyes, those stellar purple depths that had witnessed the birth and death of countless civilizations, now held exhaustion that exceeded physical weariness.

Only glimmers of majesty remained. Faint echoes of who he’d been before the infection began its work.

And as he swung his arms and swam against the current of time, even though he didn’t show it on his stern face...

He was terrified.

An Absolute like him was terrified.

He had thought of himself as grand. He’d expected his journey across existence to be even grander, a story that would be told across eons, a legend that would inspire beings who hadn’t yet been born. He had thought he could contend against THE Creature and THE Living Paradox and THE Primordial Chaos. Even though they laid claims to the aspects of the Oldest Paradox of Existence, he had time.

He had time itself in his hands.

He’d definitely known he could be just as grand as them. He’d seen the paths that led to THE Second Scale of Existence, had traced them through timelines where he succeeded, had believed with absolute certainty that he would walk those paths eventually.

And he was heading there.

He was!

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