Sigrid’s voice faded with finality.
Silence lingered like a thin veil after a thunderclap, its weight heavy.
Master Shen slowly turned, eyes narrowed in clear disbelief. He shook his head with the lazy grace of a man unsure if he was drunk or struck.
"...I feel like I missed some critical parts of this story," he muttered. "That little tidbit you told everyone at the beginning and this one...there seems to be a gap in between!"
His gaze swept between her and Noah.
Noah stood motionless.
But his eyes, crimson-gold and sharp like a thousand spinning blades, were radiant.
The implications twisted through his mind with perfect clarity.
The Living Paradox... it had spread its influence across the Folds not through domination, but through orchestration. Through a trade. A contract of despair. And all it had needed was for a being to give away its everything.
He analyzed what it meant, what it could still mean.
But for now, he focused.
"To defeat an Inevitability," he said softly, almost to himself, "one must give it everything."
Then, louder. With clarity.
"If the solution is everything..."
His body surged with Living Origin Authority.
"...then let us give it everything."
...!
CRACK!
His arm rose like judgment passed. From his palm, the air screamed.
Then...
BOOM.
From his hand, incandescent fireballs of ancient suns streaked upward like a chain of miniature supernovae. Crimson-gold flames, radiant and primal, shot toward the screeching Inevitability above.
Each sun was forged with Authority.
Each one, a piece of Origin.
The Inevitability screamed in euphoric hunger. Its writhing mass, layered with wings and pulsating crimson tendrils, absorbed them greedily.
SHAAA!
It consumed them all.
And from its body...
BOOOM!
A brilliant new wing erupted, featherless and veined with white runes. Its aura intensified into a storm.
But it did not stop there.
The Inevitability countered.
From its bulging core, jagged tentacles erupted like a sea of falling blades. Hundreds of them. Each one radiating existential rot and imitated authority.
They fell like a crimson-gold monsoon upon Noah, Sigrid, and Master Shen.
Master Shen’s face twisted into grim resolve.
His foot stomped down, the Tree quaking as a shockwave of green-gold runes bloomed beneath him.
"[Verdant Bastion: Wrath of Rootbound Yggdrasil]."
BOOM!
From the roots beneath him, a colossal wall of spiraling wood and mythic bark erupted. Glowing with ancient sigils, it formed an arched bulwark etched with the memory of the First Tree.
Dozens of tentacles slammed into it...
CRACK!
And shattered through its layers.
Sigrid stepped forward as golden threads wove between her fingertips.
Her face was serious but resolute.
"[Sanctuary of the Origin Warden]," she whispered.
HUUM!
A circle of blinding white runes expanded around them, forming a dome with intricate spirals of celestial script.
HUMMMM!
Light bloomed.
An enormous statue formed at its center- an Origin Warden, faceless and serene, its arms spread in a glorious embrace. It radiated waves of calm.
From it came wonders.
And they came just in time!
Because the remaining tentacles came with fury.
They struck.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM!
The dome of white light shook.
Cracks spread like veins across its shell.
But it held.
Barely.
Inside, Noah stood untouched, still feeding fireballs upward with a raised hand. The stream never faltered. A constant beam of flame like molten scripture surged toward the Inevitability.
It drank it all.
Screamed in glee.
And grew again.
A pulse of crimson-gold light exploded from the Inevitability’s mass.
Then... it retaliated.
Crimson gold light radiated from its dozen eyes.
All across the vast region of the World Tree, the bark trembled.
Crimson-gold roots instantly erupted like coiling serpents across branches.
And then...
BOOM!
From all around, pillars of consuming ruin exploded upward.
Rays of "ending" descended like falling moons, erasing all they touched in streaks of imploding reality.
Master Shen gritted his teeth.
From his chest, an emerald sphere burst forth, merging with the roots below and forming a titanic image of the World Tree behind him. A tree layered with runes, twisting upward to shield against the devastating end-rays.
THOOOM!
Sigrid reinforced her Sanctuary of the Origin Warden, as the massive Warden statue lifted its hands and extended its wings of script.
Crimson-gold beams struck.
BANG!
The shields cracked, but held.
Smoke and steam erupted.
Master Shen stumbled.
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