The golden bubble hung suspended in the void like a captured sun, its surface rippling with currents of Living Origin Authority that bent reality around its edges.
Within its confines, Duke Gwendolyn’s sigh carried the weight of eons as her gaze swept across the assembled beings who would determine Sigrid’s fate.
"These are the Existences that will be traveling with you," she said.
"Altheon, Thessaly, Titano, and..."
Her eyes drifted to Noah, and in that moment, something shifted in her expression.
The stellar darkness within her gaze deepened, wheels within wheels turning as she studied him with an intensity.
She was a Duke. One of the eighty-one who sat at the pinnacle of Living Origin hierarchy.
Throughout her impossibly long life, she had catalogued and categorized every form of power, every variation of authority that dared to manifest across the infinite Folds.
She always knew what she looked at...it was not arrogance but simple fact, as fundamental to her nature as breathing was to mortal creatures!
But when she gazed at Noah Osmont, that certainty fractured.
Her mind turned through possibilities.
Perhaps he was someone intrinsically connected to THE Living Order, bound by threads of Existence so profound that even she could not fully perceive their nature.
The way Sigrid looked at him, the casual ease with which she accepted his presence...there was something binding between them!
Or perhaps he was the scion of another Duke, one of her carefully cultivated allies....
The game of Dukes was one played across Folds and ages, where a single move might take millennia to reach fruition.
The third possibility made her chest tighten as...perhaps he carried an Inheritance so profound that even Living Existences would tear apart existence to have it. What he displayed in Concordia could be part of it!
She was curious, desperately curious, about exactly what-...!
|Do not worry too much about his identity.|
Sigrid’s voice bloomed in her mind like a flower of pure thought, |Just know that he... will absolutely protect me.|
HUUM!
The mental communication carried undertones that Duke Gwendolyn had not heard from the Young Miss before- absolute certainty mixed with something that might have been fondness!
Duke Gwendolyn sighed at such words.
Things were getting more and more entangled!
Duke Gwendolyn’s gaze shifted between them....Sigrid watching with that small, knowing smile, while Noah continued his earnest instruction of Titano as if he were a sage imparting the deepest mysteries of existence to an eager disciple.
The massive titan nodded along with such sincere concentration that his entire form seemed to vibrate with the effort of understanding, occasionally interjecting with "Yes, brother!" and "This makes sense!" as Noah explained what appeared to be the fundamental principles of...finding a baddie through material wealth?
The absurdity of it- a supposed Fold Dweller lecturing one of the more terrifying weapons in the Living Origin arsenal about romantic economics should have been laughable!
Instead, it filled Duke Gwendolyn with a profound unease that settled in her bones.
She released another sigh, this one carrying the weight of responsibilities that stretched across existence itself.
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