In the Infiniverse Crucible, silence folded in layers over Noah as his eyes narrowed into thin slits of intent.
Within him, thousands upon thousands of golden lattices surged forward like celestial filaments unraveled by existence itself, each etched with the impossible majesty of the True Source of the Protagonist.
They did not rush. They drifted with regal inevitability, they left his being like strands of golden breath, threading through the sprawling Infiniverse Wheel of Existence with no destination and every destination.
Every destination.
Everything!
Wherever they passed, the air itself seemed to lean in reverence, Authority kneeling to its terrifying external influence.
The most terrifying thing about the True Source of the Protagonist...was its unfathomable external influence as it sought to make Noah the center of unknown entanglements!
He raised no hand. He gave no further command. His eyes slowly closed as his chest exhaled a quiet breath of controlled revelation, and in that moment, it was as if the veil between stories thinned.
Absolute Fictional Transcendence surged.
He did not activate it with force. It simply acknowledged him. The concept of fiction- woven, curated, and defied- opened like an ancient eye buried beneath all Existence.
And he saw.
Not clearly. Not precisely.
But he glimpsed fables. Just like before with Master Hannibal and the Masters of the Mannafolds and the Chronosect of Threadbound Folds.
Roles whispered by narrative forces that transcended logic.
He only smiled faintly.
Then...
Darkness came.
Not in his sight, but in the shift.
For the perspective was no longer his!
HUUM!
—
Deep within the Hollow Concord of Nullity, far removed from the glimmering madness of a certain Infiniverse Crucible, there lay a realm drenched in stillness.
Here, silence was thick. Here, the air did not move unless it was commanded. Here, beneath forgotten frequencies and across the weavings of unfinished paradoxes, a sea of blood stretched across an entire Omniverse.
A Omniverse that was alive. Inside a True Frequency of Life that was inside a living Wheel of Existence!
The sea of blood inside the Omniverse was crimson-gold. Still. Endless.
It was not metaphor. It was literal. Blood of entities. Blood of existences.
And seated upon its trembling surface atop a throne of pale bone and folded wings... was him.
Aetheron.
A crownless wonder. A forgotten prince. Draped in flowing white robes unmarred by stain, his long silver hair drifted lazily over his shoulders, though not a single breeze dared approach him.
His complexion was porcelain, but not fragile. He looked human, but impossibly beautiful. And impossibly wrong.
Eyes the color of wine- deep, somber, and utterly detached- gazed down at the figure in his grasp.
A woman. Once a proud Pioneer of Existence. Now a trembling husk.
"You’re screaming very loudly for someone so irrelevant," Aetheron murmured, his voice smoother than silk, with a drawl of apathetic cruelty.
He lifted her easily with one hand.
Then sank his fangs into her neck.
There was no resistance.
Only surrender.
The blood glowed with shimmering color as it flowed out of her and into him. Her eyes rolled back. Her existence flickered once, and then vanished.
And when he was done... he sighed.
Aetheron tossed the lifeless body into the crimson sea, where it joined countless others. They bobbed gently on the blood, some half-intact, others reduced to shimmering fragments. Billions. Each one once an Entity of hope.
He burped.
"Excuse me," he said with a bemused smirk to many lifeless corpses.
Then, with a flick of his fingers, his Authority pulsed.
Like an uncaring anomaly idly reaching across dimensions, Aetheron’s hand closed around a flickering light somewhere within the Omniverse. It warped. Compressed.
And reappeared before him.
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