Published at 8th of October 2026 6:19 am

Chapter 5830: Purpose!

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

A part of Noah slipped quietly out of his Domain and into the Dream Engine.

He had no particular reason for it. Poona was busy bouncing around his hills, trying to taste the river of light. The cocoons on the hill were still closed. And the rest of him was already turning toward the Basal Floor and the rift. But somewhere between all of that, a thought had surfaced, and he had followed it.

He wanted to talk to someone!

Out of every dreamer sleeping on the golden shore, one name had come to mind.

He stepped into Bob’s dream.

—

It was full of Wheels!

Dead ones. Countless dead Wheels of Existence, hanging in a grey sky that went on forever. Every one of them was broken. Spokes snapped. Rims crakced through. Hubs crumbled to calcified dust.

And every one of them was trying to rebuild itself!

A spoke would drift back toward its hub and fit itself into place. A shard of rim would find another shard and fuse. For a moment, a Wheel would look almost whole, turning slowly, light flickering across its rim where life might once have been. Then a crack would race across it, and it would come apart again, and the pieces would drift, and begin again.

Over and over. Thousands of them, as far as the eye could see. Building, breaking, building.

Noah stood among them for a while and watched.

He knew this dream. Once, he had stood on the Calcified Wheels of the Null Cradle once, beside Thauron’s shadow, and looked down at a tentacled thing that had lost everything. He knew which Wheel had broken first for Bob.

At the center of the dream, a cocoon of hazy blue-gold light hung among the drifting spokes, glowing softly. Bob’s. Like every other Kin in the Dream Engine, still closed, still changing slowly.

Noah reached out and touched it.

He poured a little of himself into it. Just a little, enough to say: hurry up.

|Kin recognized: Bob.|

|Kin Evolution accelerated by your will.|

...!

The cocoon brightened, then shuddered, then split down its middle like a seed pod in summer!

A figure stepped out!

It was humanoid, mostly. A round bald head, silver shading into gold, smooth and gleaming like a polished pebble. A body that stood upright, broad-shouldered and easy. But where arms and legs should have been, there were tentacles, long and supple and silver-gold, curling and uncurling lazily as they found their balance. And in the round face, two eyes like singularities, dark and deep and faintly glowing, looking out at the dream with mild surprise.

Something burned in his chest. Obsidian and violet, slow and wild, the colors of a storm given shape.

|Kin Evolution: Bob has emerged first among your Kin.|

|Root formed: THE Khaotic Chorionic Gonadotropin. Root of Khaos.|

|Saturation toward Immensity: 9%. The road to his Immensity is long.|

...!

Bob flexed a tentacle. Then another. He looked down at himself, at the violet storm turning in his chest, and then up, at the man standing among his broken Wheels.

His singularity eyes squinted.

"Now this is rare," Bob said. "A visit from the big guy himself?"

He tilted his round head. "What brought you to my dream?"

Noah shrugged.

"I just felt like talking to someone," he said. "And for some reason, you came to mind, Little Bobby."

Bob stared at him for a moment.

Then he laughed and shook his gleaming head!

Clouds began to form around them!

They came out of Noah without him asking, soft and golden, drifting up between the broken Wheels and gathering in loose piles, as clouds gather on a lazy afternoon. Noah lowered himself onto one and sat back against it, stretching out his legs, and looked up.

Above them, the grey sky of Bob’s dream began to change. Noah’s dreams leaked into it as warmth leaks into a cold room. Stars came out between the dead Wheels, blue and gold. A faint shape of a great Tree glimmered for a moment far overhead, its trunk climbing out of sight, and faded. A golden-blue panda drifted past on a cloud, yawning, and disolved into mist.

Bob watched the panda go by with one eyebrow raised, or the place an eyebrow would be.

"Your dreams are...as grand as ever," he said.

"Mmm."

Bob coiled himself onto a golden cloud of his own, tentacles tucked under him, and settled in. For a while, both of them stayed quiet. They simply sat there among the Wheels and the clouds, two old enemies on a quiet afternoon.

It had been weeks, Noah thought.

Or it had been Ages. Telling the difference had grown hard. Time felt different to him now. It ran in periods rather than in a line. It sat around him in periods, like rooms in a house he could walk between: the room where he had first met this creature, the room where they had fought, the room on the Middle Wheel Platform, the room where he had reached into a broken father’s life and pulled his daughter out of it. All of them were still there. All of them had led here.

Noah let the clouds drift.

When Bob spoke again, his voice had changed.

"I...did everything I did for my daughter," he said. "It was not an excuse for all the ones who died while I sought to save her. I know that. I carry that."

His singularity eyes stayed on the broken Wheels, building and breaking, building and breaking. "But this is what we do. Fathers do everything they can for their children."

He turned his round head toward Noah.

"You have two now," Bob said. "And your Son is even messing around with my Daughter..."

A slow smile spread across his face.

"Hah. Is that why you came to me? Do you now consider me your in-law?"

He laughed, delighted with himself.

"Haha. We have come far..."

Noah tipped his head back against the cloud and smiled at the stars.

They had. They truly had!

He remembered the old Bob. A tentacled monster following the being who had crushed his own Wheel because that was the only road left that led toward his child. He remembered looking at that monster and thinking: pitiful. Noble, tragically so, and pitiful. A man held up by a single thread of regret.

And he remembered the day he had finally reached into that thread and pulled the daughter free, and eventually brought them both home into THE Infiniverse, and set them down among his own people. He remembered Hell Terra Firma, and the Prime Flame and Wheels of Existence...he remembered too many things!

"Everything here is yours." Bob waved a tentacle at the dream around them, the Wheels, the clouds, the stars.

"I live in your Infiniverse. I sleep in your Dream Engine. My daughter eats at your table and makes eyes at your son..."

They sat for a while longer.

A dead Wheel nearby came together almost completely, turning slowly, light flickering across its rim. Both of them watched it. It held for a long moment, longer than the others. Then a crack spread through it, and it drifted apart.

Bob sighed.

"You know," he said, "no matter how high you climb, it all comes back to the same few things."

Noah looked over at him.

"Power," Little Bobby went on, slowly, as a man talks when he has been thinking about something for a very long time.

"Complexity. True Sources. Lattices. Wheels. Now Roots and Immensity and whatever else you have going on. I’ve seen beings rise so high they forgot what the ground looked like. I’ve seen Wheels that held more life than anyone could count, and I’ve watched them break."

His tentacles curled under him. "And at the bottom of all of it, under every power anyone has ever had, there’s the same thing."

He held up one tentacle and counted on it, tip by tip.

"To love. To protect. To provide."

The violet storm in his chest turned slowly.

"That’s it. That’s all of it. Whether it’s my daughter." He pointed the tentacle at Noah. "Or your son and daughter. We do everything we can for them. And for ourselves, so that we’re still standing when they need us. Everything else is just..." He waved at the broken Wheels. "Scenery."

Noah closed his eyes.

He nodded, slowly, and for a long while he stayed quiet.

"Sometimes I feel very distant from all of them," Noah said.

Bob turned his head.

"I see so much now," Noah went on. "Every path. Every branch. When I look at Seo-yeon, I can see a thousand versions of her growing up, all at once, all of them real. When I look at Henry, I see every choice he could make before he makes it. When I look at my mother, I see thr countless years she has left, and every way those years could go."

He was quiet for a moment. "It would be easy to stand up here and watch it all happen. To see everyone I love as patterns. Beautiful patterns, and very far away."

The clouds drifted around them.

"But the Human in me will not let me," he said. "My evolution took it and made it infinite. Every feeling I have now, it grows. It does not fade. I worry about them, and the worry keeps going. I love them, and it keeps going. I am angry for them, and it keeps going."

He opened his gold eyes and looked up at the stars his own dreams had put into Bob’s sky. "I used to wonder whether I would stop caring, someday. Whether a being like me eventually becomes too large to feel small things."

He smiled faintly. "I do not think I will. I think I will feel all of it, for as long as there is a me to feel it. I think I am going to keep caring for a very, very long time."

Bob only listened.

"Right now," Noah said, "almost everyone I love is in a cocoon."

He could see them, through the threads, even from here. A hill in his Domain with two shining shapes on it. The golden shore of THE Infiniverse lined with sleepers wrapped in light.

"Ruination. She has been with me since before I was anything. I hope she comes out of it knowing she was never just a voice in my head." He paused.

"THE Infiniverse. She has carried everything I own and everyone I love on her back without once complaining. I hope she comes out of it lighter. I hope she finds out what she wants for herself."

"My mother. I hope she comes out of it with nothing left to fear." His voice softened. "Seo-yeon. I hope she comes out of it curious, and stays curious, and never once has to be brave as I had to be. Henry. I hope he comes out of it strong enough to protect what he loves."

A glance toward Bob. "Including your daughter..."

Bob snorted.

"Emotive," Noah said. "I hope she comes out of it with every color she has, and none of them hurting. Thalia. I hope she comes out of it and rewrites whatever she likes. Barbatos. I hope her dead stand up for her forever. Ling, Poona..." He shook his head slowly. "All of them. I hope they come out bigger than they were, and still themselves."

He let out a long breath.

"I have been chasing power for a long time, Bob. I am still chasing it. I will chase it all the way down into where Those Who Remain have not even accessed, and eat everything I find."

He settled deeper into the cloud. "But you are right. Underneath all of it, that is the reason. I want to stand high enough that nothing can ever reach down and take them from me. And then I want to sit at the table with them, and eat, and argue, and smile."

Bob laughed softly.

"That," Noah said, "is the dream."

Above them, a dead Wheel drifted together.

Spoke by spoke, shard by shard, it came whole and began to turn, and this time, with a faint hum, Noah’s dream reached up into it, golden and patient, and held its cracks closed.

It stayed whole!

Bob watched it turn for a long moment, his singularity eyes very bright!

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