Chapter 4842: Helheim!
Chapter 4842: Helheim!
He was being flung across Existence, but it was not even a traversal of space and time.
It seemed to be a traversal of definitions!
Where he was defined before to be in the era where THE Fallout had just occurred, at this moment, he was defining himself to be in a different era entirely. And he could only reach it by passing through spaces between spaces, between what was Observable and what was not.
This time around, he had specific coordinates.
Temporal markers burning in his foundations, guiding his passage through The Interstices toward a moment that had occurred eons before his birth.
|Temporal Traversal Analysis|
|The Weavings of your existence are passing through innumerable definitions across The Interstices|
|You have crossed past what is defined as THE Earliest Folds|
|You have crossed past what is determined to be THE Infinite Unfurling|
|Current trajectory: defining yourself toward the definition of a time extremely early within THE Infinite Unfurling, when things were in their early stages of differentiation|
|The coordinates Pebanista Yacuruna provided are aligning with remarkable precision|
|Take a step and you shall leave The Interstices to the new era|
|One note: I have no data on this time period. We’re operating blind|
...!
Noah felt uniquely how the Weavings of Existence had changed even though he was still in The Interstices.
The murky darkness that had surrounded him in the Capillary Threads was gone. The Primordial Gray pillars of the Primary Veins were absent. Instead, when he looked around, he found himself funneling through a path of great brilliance.
Light that wasn’t light.
Meaning that wasn’t meaning.
Definition in its purest form, unfiltered by the corruption and complexity that eons of Existence had accumulated. It felt clean here. Ancient. As if he was passing through the moment before everything became complicated.
He steadied himself.
And took a single step.
The moment he did, he exerted a new definition. The spaces between spaces faded. What was Observable and Unobservable separated around him like curtains being drawn back. He anchored himself into a new era with authority that burned through his 27 Seals.
HUUM!
The moment he stepped out of The Interstices, what he felt was immense coldness as he was shooting down at high speeds!
He smashed like a meteor onto a riverbank filled with obsidian frost, his arrival carving a massive crater into a frozen landscape that seemed to reject the very concept of warmth. The cold was so penetrating that even with his Foundation, even with the weight and Immensity he had accumulated across his journey, he felt it seeping into his existence.
The cold of endings. The cold of finality. The cold of a realm that existed to receive those who had nowhere else to go.
Noah placed his hands on the lands around him, feeling obsidian ice that burned with temperatures that shouldn’t have been possible. His Seals circulated around his body, their blue-gold light pushing back against the encroaching frost. The First Tongue began to permeate all around him, linguistic authority reaching out to gather information from an era that predated everything he knew.
Information rapidly began forming in his mind.
He heaved as he felt the strain on his existence calming down.
He breathed out while feeling as if his muscles had just withstood tremendous weight.
His 27 Seals were all shining brilliantly as they healed from being bent by the weight of a mere Hollow Echo. The micro-fractures were sealing themselves, authority flowing through channels that had been stressed to their limits and were now recovering in this frozen landscape.
As his awareness spread, Noah rose from the crater and looked upon where he had arrived.
An expanse of obsidian sky stretched above him, filled with mist and coldness that seemed to have weight. There were no stars here. No sun. No source of light that he could identify. And yet he could see, as if the darkness itself had learned to illuminate in ways that defied normal perception.
He could hear the sounds of a heavy rushing river nearby.
The water, if it could be called water, moved with a terrifying force that made his foundations buzz just from proximity. This was not a river that could be swum. This was not a river that could be crossed by normal means!
The current alone felt like it could crush Fundamental Depth entities, grinding them down to nothing through sheer relentless pressure.
|Location Analysis Complete|
|You have arrived at a unique point in time in the distant past of THE Infinite Unfurling|
|Cross-referencing available data with First Tongue here|
|This location is deemed to be the Primordial Realm: Helheim|
|The Weavings of an ancient type of Paradox permeate all around|
|Specific coordinates place you at the riverbanks of Gjöll|
|Historical context: Gjöll is recorded as one of the boundary rivers of Helheim, separating the realm of endings from the rest of Existence|
...!
Helheim.
Noah’s eyes twinkled as his existence buzzed with Immensity.
He began to rise up from that crater, obsidian frost falling from his form as he took in the full scope of where temporal traversal had deposited him.
The landscape stretched out in all directions with a beauty that was terrible to behold.
Massive glaciers of black ice rose in the distance, their surfaces carved with symbols. The ground beneath his feet was permafrost that had never known thaw, obsidian earth frozen solid since before differentiation had finished sorting Existence into its current categories.
Skeletal trees dotted the riverbank, their branches bare and reaching toward the lightless sky like the fingers of the dead grasping for something they could never reach.
They weren’t truly trees, Noah realized. They were concepts. Ideas of trees that had wandered here and become trapped, taking root in soil that accepted all things that had ended.
Mist rolled across the frozen plains in waves, each bank of fog carrying whispers that might have been voices or might have been the sound of Existence itself mourning what had been lost. The whispers spoke in languages he didn’t recognize, tongues that had been forgotten before THE Infinite Unfurling had given shape to what Observable Existence would become.
And the river Gjöll...
It roared beside him with fury that felt personal. The waters were not water but something else entirely. Liquid endings. Flowing finality. The current carried fragments of things that had once been, grinding them down to their base components before depositing them somewhere deeper in this realm of conclusion.
Bridges of bone spanned the river at distant intervals, their arches constructed from the remains of beings who had attempted to cross and failed. They served as warnings and pathways both, monuments to the price of passage through a realm that demanded payment in collapse.
It was an utterly surreal experience to be observing all of this.
A Primordial Realm from the early stages of THE Infinite Unfurling, preserved in a moment of time that Noah had no right to be witnessing. The cold. The darkness. The weight of endings pressing against his existence from every direction.
And yet his awareness quickly locked onto something that was here that should not be here.
An ancient-looking ship sat at the edges of the rough river Gjöll...calmly.
It was paradoxically appearing and disappearing, flickering in and out of definition as if it couldn’t decide whether it existed or not. One moment it was fully manifest, its hull carved from wood that had never grown on any tree. The next moment it was translucent, barely there, a ghost of a vessel that refused to fully commit to presence.
The ship was massive, easily large enough to carry armies across waters that would destroy anything less. Its sails were furled, fabric woven from shadows and silence. Its prow was carved into the shape of something that might have been a serpent or might have been a concept that had never been given a name.
And on its deck, a single aura could be felt.
The being stood at the helm of that impossible ship, his presence radiating authority that made the frozen landscape seem small by comparison. He was a regal and majestic humanoid obsidian entity, his form carved from the same material as the glaciers that rose in the distance.
A massive obsidian crown floated and spun above his head, rotating slowly with weight that spoke of dominion over things that most beings couldn’t comprehend. His robes shone obsidian-gold.
The aura he radiated was that of an Absolute.
But not just any Absolute.
This was the weight of someone who had stood among THE Four. Someone who had held a Claim on one of the oldest aspects of Existence itself. Someone whose authority had shaped what Paradox meant before THE Living Paradox had ever existed.
This was another being that Noah recognized.
The ancient entity smiled, his obsidian features shifting into an expression that held warmth despite the frozen realm around them. He opened his mouth, and when he spoke, his voice carried across the river Gjöll with authority that made the rushing waters seem quiet by comparison.
"I have been waiting across time for thee, my friend."
The words were archaic! Spoken in a cadence that belonged to an era before modern speech had been differentiated from the primordial expressions of meaning.
"Come aboard. We have far too much to accomplish, and the Weavings tell me that things have grown corrupted."
His obsidian eyes held knowledge that spanned eons.
"Thus, we possess little time to do what must be done."
BOOM!
Noah stared ahead with a sense of incredulity.
He was currently looking at what he remembered from the memory of THE Weavers to be THE Primordial Paradox.
The original holder of that Claim.
The being who had been consumed by Erwin, by THE Living Paradox, in an act of betrayal that had reshaped the hierarchy of THE Four.
The entity who had given pieces of himself to his disciples before the end, hoping that contingencies might somehow save what could not be saved.
And he had been waiting across time for...him?