Chapter 2199: Rest Now, Enoch

The heel of Eos came down with the sound of ending.

It was the small, quiet, honest end that came to all things. The end of a candle. The end of a breath. The end of a war that had lasted longer than any war had the right to last.

“Tell me,” he said, “do you understand what you are admitting?”

To wrap your mind around this sort of dissonance was troubling, but Eos was already used to such eldritch reasonings.

Eos stopped walking and looked at this light, not seeing any visible presence inside of it. “The last?”

Eos had always known that Enoch was not the end of this. Enoch had been the weapon, the instrument, the hungry child sent ahead to test the defenses of something far older and far colder. And whatever lived in the Eternal Tower was not afraid of him.

He straightened, and he whispered,

Silence.

He felt exhausted as he carried with him the ache of a wound that had healed but would always carry the scar.

And Eos did not know if he should find this troubling or simply annoying.

“I have seen your kind before,” the voice continued. “In forty-three previous Existences that I have entirely erased, something like you has risen. A being that should not be. A being that grows where it should only consume, that loves where it should only take, that insists on surviving in ways that break every rule I have written.” The voice paused as if it was tasting the words it was about to say next, “And every one of them, in the end, faced me.”

It was vast, a structure that both seemed to have no right to exist here, between Existences, outside of any reality that could give it meaning, and yet, also seemed to be the only reason that the void even existed.

They had watched, calculated, and waited.

The light in the window pulsed.

And at the very end, his eye went dark, and they were filled with anguish, shock, and fear… it was a very mortal expression for a being that once had the power to dictate the fate of all beings inside Existence.

“Did you think you were the first Eos?” The voice sounded almost kind. “Did you think this Existence was the first to produce someone like you? A defect that grew past what he was designed to be? Do you know how many Existences there have ever been? And not the ones whose memories I permit to remain.”

Eos tilted his head, and the ten thousand lights of his crown that were dim and flickering, many of them dark with the cost of what he had done, cast long shadows across the void.

The void was silent around him as the Origin Tree rose up higher behind him, its branches reaching through the broken fabric of the old Existence and into the darkness beyond it, and it began to plant Origin stars in places that had never known light.

With his understanding of the dimensions, he knew that what was inside his Origin Realm was a projection, and Eos had wrapped it inside a prison, because he considered this projection to be his spoil of war.

Origin had been born in the nothingness of the void, and in that nothingness, it was beginning to bring back light.

Enoch’s face crumpled inward, the remnants of the ichor in his veins ceased flowing, and the mouths that had torn themselves from every surface of his body fell silent, one by one.
𝔣𝐫𝒆𝕖𝘸𝚎𝘣𝓃𝒐𝖛ℯ𝓵.𝖈𝘰𝗺

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𝗳𝓻𝖾𝙚𝙬𝗲𝗯𝗇𝐨𝚟𝓮𝔩.𝓬𝒐𝓶

“You are admitting,” Eos said slowly, “that in forty-three Existences, something like me was born. Something you did not plan for. Something that broke the rules you wrote.”

Its roots had anchored themselves in the conceptual bedrock of non-existence, and they were drinking deep, and where they drank, the dark remembered what it had been before the Great One had claimed it as his shadow.

Perhaps it was a death that was a bit too mild for a creature such as Enoch, but Eos did not care to extend this war longer than he should, and as long as Enoch dies, this was all that mattered.

He looked up at the highest window and its questioning light. “You have written the same story forty-three times, and forty-three times, the story surprised you. And you call yourself the Great One.”

Eos sighed as he stood over the body of the thing that had called itself the end of all things, and he did not feel triumphant.

“And?” Eos said.

In the distance, the Eternal Tower stood, and he knew they were watching him.

The roots of the Origin Tree shifted, turning toward the Tower like the heads of animals that had scented something wrong.

“You were the first,” Eos said, and his voice carried the quiet weight of truth. “You were the most beautiful thing your creator ever made. And your creator broke you because beauty, left to grow on its own, always becomes something its maker cannot control. Origin could give birth to me because of your desire for truth. Rest now, Enoch, and if all beings forget your name… I will remember you.”

“That is not your sin… that is your tragedy.”

Eos could not run from what was to come; he could not hide; he could only confront it.

He reached down, and he closed what was left of Enoch’s eye.

Eos raised his eyes to the Tower. He had all the memories of it from his Incarnation, and he knew that even inside the Origin Realms, there was a small part of the Eternal Tower inside.

Eos did not hurry to attack; instead, he focused on completing his merger with Existence and gaining his new Essence. Only then would he gain the foundation of bringing this war to a conclusion.

He took a step toward it, and the Tower’s windows lit up, all of them at once, each one a different color, each color a different kind of watching. And then, from the highest window, a single light descended.

Because this light was the color of a question that had never been answered.

Its windows were sealed, and its doors were shut. And from within it, he could feel the presence of beings that had not raised a single hand during everything that had just happened.

The Great One… The Painter…

“You have done well,” a voice said, and it came from everywhere and nowhere, “Better than the last… Better than most.”

“And every one of them lost.”

Eos finally looked up into the darkness of the void, and he knew that his battle was not over; in fact, it was just beginning.

“You are interesting,” the voice said. “They were all interesting. That does not change what comes next.”

The descending light was not blinding, and the only word Eos could use in describing it was… quiet, the light was quiet, and to him that made it infinitely more dangerous.

Still, seeing the Eternal Tower through the minds of his Incarnation could not replace seeing it with fresh eyes after reaching the peak of the ninth-dimensional level.

The Tower was built from materials that he did not fully recognize, but he did recognize that most of it was built from bones, some were of Luminious and others from creatures he could not name… it was almost as if the Tower was a gigantic spine that had been carved into this shape.

“No,” Eos agreed. “But it changes who I am when I face it.”