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Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse (Web Novel) - Chapter 5720: Regrets and Choices!
Chapter 5720: Regrets and Choices!
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<AN EXISTENTIAL DISPATCH CIRCULATING AMONG SOME OF THOSE WHO REMAIN>To our fellow Brethren who occupy the high seats of Existence.
A familiar frequency has begun to vibrate.
We all recognize the cadence of that anomaly. It is a signature that Existence was supposed to have forgotten Ages ago, a rhythm of unauthorized folding and cold sovereign isolation that has not touched the continuum since the grand purge. The records we believed safely buried and dissolved have begun to turn, which means THE Narrative Defiler, THE Great Engineer, has begun to stir once more.
None of you need to be reminded of what he swore before his physical frame was broken upon the anvil of Those Who Remain.
He was not a sovereign who begged for mercy. When Existence was wrapped around his throat and his homes were collapsed into ash, he looked through the fire and made a single promise. He swore that if his architecture ever found hands to hold it again, he would return to carve a path through THE WEAVE until every architect bled upon their own throne.
We cannot allow that design to draw breath.
We do not currently know where he is or what weavings he occupies. But he will be weak and walking among the weak. He may possess young life and anomalies of Existence. Any who exhibit signs of profound power compared to their existence or any genius of Existential Engineering need to be extinguished.
Every fold between THE CREASE and THE SEAM will be turned over stone by stone.
Anything that carries the heartbeat of an Elseengine must be shattered.
In the execution of this sweep, countless innocent lives with no connection to the Engineer will be caught in the dragnet. Lineages that have spent eras peacefully tending their own small boundaries may be dismantled.
Entire clusters of Dimensions and Observable Existences will be burned to ash simply because their coordinates happen to align with an anomalous frequency.
Do not stay your hand, and do not restrain your hounds.
A gardener does not apologize to the grass when he burns out a nest of vipers. The extermination of ten trillion blameless lifeforms is an entirely acceptable operational expense to guarantee that a sharp blade cannot rise against Immensity.
Instruct your Descendants to report every discrepancy. Seal your personal perimeters against the deep dark. If you find a spark that carries his Engineering, drown it in salt before it learns how to breathe.
Immensity...will not be mocked by a ghost with a chisel.
---
<Pocket of Narrative Existence: THE Endless Dusk>
The sky held to the amber stillness of an evening that refused to finish dying.
Upon the porch of weathered timber, sheltered within a pocket of Narrative Existence where the outside continuum could not reach, sat the low wooden table.
Two ceramic cups rested upon the grain. The first rose with a thin, patient coil of fragrant steam, warm as breath. The second cup sat opposite, cold, untouched, and dark.
Between the two vessels lay the spiked mobius ring.
The metal was dark, carved from the bone of a departed sovereign and folded across itself in an unbroken loop of quiet isolation. Two golden halos turned slowly behind the veiled visage of THE REMINISCING WIDOW, casting pale shadows across the table.
She reached out, her pale fingertips lightly brushing the cold spikes along the rim.
|You always did build things with sharp corners,| she spoke, her voice carrying the quiet, diagnostic stillness that belonged to her alone. |Even when you made something to protect, you made sure it could draw blood.|
From deep within the dark metal of the ring, a cold, dry rasp stirred.
|An engineer does not smooth off the teeth to make butchers comfortable,| Atlas answered.
His voice came through the band flat and sharp, carrying none of his warmth.
The Widow withdrew her fingers slowly, resting her hands neatly in her lap.
|The upper reaches of Existence are stirring. They know of your emergence. They listen. | she said softly.
|Those Who Remain have had their ears pressed to the floor for an Age, terrified that a door might close without their permission. Let them listen. Let them remember the sound.|
The golden halos behind her veil tilted slightly downward.
|You talk as if the memory belongs to you alone,| she murmured. |As though you were the only one who bled upon THE Mountain of Gu.|
|Bled?| Atlas let out a short, harsh breath through the iron. |You call what you did bleeding? You sat at the base of the summit with your kettle while the sky turned to lead. You watched the smoke rise above the tree line and convinced yourself that endurance was the same thing as innocence.|
The halos flickered with a faint, imperceptible tremor.
|There was no battle to be won, Atlas,| she said, her cadence barely louder than the steam rising from her cup. |Did you truly believe Those Who Remain would let you walk away?|
|I believed they were cowards,| Atlas said, his tone dropping into a chilling, absolute stillness. |And I was right. I never thought you...would fit in that same designation|
WAA!
The porch held its silence, the amber light hanging motionless above the boards.
|They at least did not come one by one,| Atlas continued. |An architect preens about his solitary magnificence, but when they came for my me, how many stood upon the ridge? Many of you. Many...|
The Widow kept her gaze fixed on the cold porcelain of the second cup.
|They were afraid of you,| she whispered.
|They were terrified,| Atlas corrected her coldly. |They were terrified because I was proof that existence did not belong to them. I was a First Lifeform who had not bowed, who had not begged for a strand of their Weave, who had taken the chisel and carved my own path through the cloth. If I could do it, anyone could do it. The entire architecture of their tyranny was exposed as a hollow fraud. So they brought an army to a man’s front door.|
He paused, the records within the ring vibrating with ancient, unhealed fury.
|And you stood among them.|
|I did not raise a hand against you,| she said, the words trembling beneath her veil. |I did not cast a single narrative.|
|You did worse,| Atlas spat. |You stood between us and preached patience. You told me to lay down the chisel. You begged me to be reasonable in front of a pack of starving dogs.|
The Widow lowered her head.
|I...wanted you to live,| she whispered.
|You wanted a quiet afternoon...a dream,| Atlas said, stripped of all mercy. |You wanted the noise to stop so you could return to your porch and pretend Existence was gentle. So I refused. And while they broke my hands, while they cracked my foundation on their anvil and burned everything I had spent Ages building, you turned your back. You poured your tea. You waited for the fire to go out.|
The dusk beyond the timber seemed to darken, the mist thickening against the edge of the pocket dimension.
|Had I stepped forward,| she said, her voice small and tight, |they would have simply broken two instead of one. They would have unmade my Narrative beside yours, and nothing of our work would have survived the ash. Stopping was the only mercy left.|
|Do not call cowardice a kindness, woman,| Atlas rasped. |It insults the bones of the dead. We could have broken many of them before the end. We could have torn a hole in their Weave so deep that existence itself would have bled them dry. Instead, you gave them my legacy on a silver tray, and they left you alone because a dog does not bite the hand that cleans up the scraps.|
The Widow sat motionless, her shoulders tight beneath her dark robes.
|And now?| she asked, the question fragile in the quiet air. |Now you whisper into the ear of a boy who barely knows the weight of the sky? You hand him the same chisel that broke you? You are leading him toward the exact same mountain, Atlas.|
|He is not me,| Atlas said. |I was foolish enough to think an architect could be reasoned with. I thought if I built the walls high enough, they would leave me in peace. This boy, this Dreamer...has no such illusions. He knows the sky is full of monsters, and he is already calculating how much it takes to cut their throats.|
The ring hummed with a quiet, dangerous frequency.
|I am not building a refuge this time,| Atlas said. |I am building a weapon.|
HUUM!
The Widow looked down at the spiked mobius band resting between the steam and the cold porcelain.
The golden halos behind her head dimmed, their slow rotation faltering as a shudder ran through her frame. For uncounted epochs she had maintained her diagnostic calm, sitting behind her veil while the continuum drifted and died, an existence anchored entirely to the preservation of what had always been.
A single tear slipped from beneath the golden veil.
It fell through the amber light of the endless dusk, catching the faint glint of the setting sun, and landed with a soft, tiny splash into the cold, dark liquid of the untouched cup.
|I am sorry,| she whispered, her voice finally breaking into an open, ragged sob. |For the mountain. For the silence. For leaving you alone in the dark. For how everything unfolded back then... I am so... sorry, Atlas.|
The ring did not pulse. The dark spikes along its curve remained rigid, sharp, and indifferent against the weathered grain of the table.
Atlas’s voice came through the iron one last time.
|What was done was done,| Atlas said quietly into the dusk. |But existence will be bathed in immense blood for what was done. Existence remembers.|
HUUM!
"..."
Existence Remembers!
The Widow sat with her hands folded in her lap, her veiled face turned toward the dark iron.
She was thinking about many things when...
Then, the boundary of her sanctuary stirred.
It was not a physical vibration, but a cold, invasive tremor that rippled across the conceptual perimeter of her domain. The slow rotation of the two golden halos behind her head froze instantly, their light snapping into a tight, defensive alignment.
Her gaze changed.
The sorrow that had broken across her voice moments before vanished, replaced by an absolute, diagnostic stillness.
She did not hesitate as her pale hand moved across the timber, lifting the spiked mobius ring from the table and drawing it into the deep folds of her private existence. She wove layers of her own Narrative over the metal, burying the relic beneath sovereign obscurity until not a single trace of its weld could leak into the surroundings.
An instant later, the amber boundary of her sanctuary parted.
The fabric of the pocket dimension offered no resistance, yielding smoothly before an authority that did not bother to knock. Strands of pulsing brilliance drifted across the porch, coalescing into the hazy silhouette of a colossal humanoid formed of woven light.
THE SLEEPLESS FIEND stepped onto the boards.
His arrival brought no violent shockwave, but the air turned instantly thin and suffocating, the steam from the warm cup flattening against the porcelain under the weight of an eternal, sleepless vigil. His luminous visage turned slowly, his gaze sweeping across the quiet porch before settling upon the woman seated at the table.
"You keep this place so quiet, Little Widow," he murmured, his voice carrying the weary, conversational detachment of a scholar walking through a familiar hall.
"Outside, Existence is full of noise. Yet here you sit, watching tea go cold. I caught a shred of your weavings observing a little Dimensional Provenance Train, but not having fun with any other Narratives."
The Widow’s golden halos resumed their slow, measured rotation.
|You did not cross Existence to inspect my table,| she spoke with a tone flat and devoid of warmth.
The Fiend walked forward, his form shimmering with restless threads of the Weave as he stopped beside the wooden table. He looked down at the two cups, his eyes lingering for a fraction of an instant on the cold one.
"Direct as ever," he said softly, a faint, mocking curve touching the radiant strands of his mouth. "Tell me. Has your past lover made any moves?"
WAA!
The question dropped into the quiet air!
"Did any of his weavings come to your door?"
The Widow met his gaze through her veil, her posture unwavering.
|Atlas was broken on the mountain Ages ago,| she answered evenly. |His workshops were collapsed into ash. The dead do not weave.|
The Fiend let out a quiet chuckle.
"The dead do not weave, but an architect leaves blueprints behind, and fools are always eager to pick up a hammer," he said, turning to look out across the timeless amber horizon. "His signature was felt. Someone is trying to piece together what we dismantled."
He walked the perimeter of the porch, the strands of his body glowing with cold brilliance.
"He always believed he was unique. That was his fatal flaw. He believed that because he mapped Existence and engineered a few hidden rooms, he had outpaced the rest of us. He looked upon Those Who Remain and saw only failures who lacked the courage to depart."
The Fiend turned back toward her, his luminous eyes narrowing.
"He was wrong. Since the day we broke his hands on the anvil and cast his remnants into the dark, we have not been idle. We took what he left behind. We dissected his blueprints, we analyzed his works, and we integrated his syntax into our own designs. From among us, we have made grander advancements rivaling what the Engineer ever dreamed of achieving."
He stepped closer, towering over her seated figure.
"In the future, there lies a possibility for us to not simply be Those Who Remain. That title is an old mark of shame, a reminder of a closed door. But THE Great Becoming...a grand evolution is approaching in the deep Existence. When the alignment comes, we will step beyond the Weave, not as wanderers begging for entry, but as masters who command the expanse."
His shadow fell across her, heavy and unyielding.
"If you want to be part of this becoming when the time comes, if you wish to share in that ascension rather than be swept into the dark, you will do everything in your power to ensure his weavings do not return. If you know anything, you will tell us."
The Widow sat motionless beneath his gaze.
|There is no scenario of change,| she stated, her voice steady and clinical. |There is only what is, and what has always been. I know nothing of his return.|
The Fiend stared down at her in silence.
Then, he stepped forward.
His massive, glowing hand reached down, fingers of woven brilliance slipping beneath her golden veil to grip her chin from the side. His grasp was not a strike, but an unyielding vise of solid law, forcing her head upward.
The Widow stiffened, her golden halos shuddering as she attempted to pull away.
The Fiend did not let her move. His fingers were cold and dense, tilting her face sideways as his thumb slowly, tenderly traced the pale line of her jaw, sliding down along the skin of her neck with the quiet menace of an apex predator testing the throat of its prey.
He leaned down, pressing his mouth against the curve of her neck.
The Widow strained against him, her hands coming up to push at his glowing chest, her entire existence recoiling from the contact!
The Fiend smiled against her skin.
His grip tightened on her neck, his arm coiling around her back and dragging her up from the seat until her body was pressed flush against his radiant, undulating torso.
Before she could speak, he forced his mouth down upon her lips, an invasive assertion of pure authority that poured the heavy, suffocating weight of his Narrative straight against hers.
Then, with casual force, he threw her back.
CRACK!
The Widow stumbled across the porch boards, colliding heavily with the wooden table. Her hip caught the edge, knocking the cold, untouched cup onto its side. The dark liquid spilled across the timber, pooling around her knees as she caught herself on the wood, her veil disheveled and her breath tight in her chest.
THE SLEEPLESS FIEND stood upright, raising the back of his hand to wipe his lips. A cold, amused expression settled over his luminous features.
"I know Atlas will reach out to you," the Fiend said, his voice dropping into a quiet, cruel murmur. "He is an old dog with old habits, and he will need to know our movements before he dares to show his face. He will come to you. You will feel guilty and want to help him."
He turned away, taking a stride toward the boundary where the amber dusk blurred into the higher Folds.
"Make the right choice and turn him over again, Little Widow."
He paused at the edge of the sanctuary, looking back over his shoulder with a sharp grin.
"It is in your nature. So do not change."
The boundary opened around him, the threads of brilliance dissolving into the higher weavings of existence, and he was gone.
The endless dusk settled back into its heavy, unbroken silence.
On the porch, the Widow remained on the timber, her head lowered as the spilled, cold liquid slowly soaked into the grain of the wood.
