The confession pulsed in the white-gold space between them!
This was the voice of someone who had watched a being they cared for suffer unimaginable loss, and who would do anything to prevent such tragedy from occurring again!
Anything.
Maybe even...Everything?
Noah’s eyes shone brightly as he thought of many things.
He listened to this powerful being...one whose standing was among the greatest, with imposing calm.
His expression remained thoughtful as he absorbed every word, every nuance of meaning that colored her speech!
When she finished, he was about to shake his head, to deflect her questions with the same mysterious evasions he had employed thus far.
But in the next moment, Duke Gwendolyn’s gaze changed with the suddenness of glory!
Her expression shifted from concerned inquiry to profound shock, her eyes widening as if she had just been told or shown something heavy!
Her entire bearing transformed, authority giving way to alarm as information flooded her consciousness through channels that existed beyond his perception.
Noah felt surprise flicker through his own awareness as he witnessed this dramatic change.
"What happened?" he asked, his voice carrying genuine curiosity.
Duke Gwendolyn looked at him briefly, her expression cycling through thoughts as if she were debating whether to share.
Her eyes shone with inner light as decision crystallized into action, and when she spoke again, her voice carried somber weight!
"The reason I am so cautious about every variable, every unknown factor that enters our calculations," she said, her words measured with careful precision, "is because so many unprecedented events have been occurring over the last few hundred years. Things that show us something unknown is approaching, something that threatens the very foundations of how existence operates."
She waved her hands with movements that carried the authority to alter existence itself, and in response to her gesture, a massive illusory screen bloomed behind her in the white-gold expanse!
The surface rippled with images that seemed to exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously, displaying scenes from across the breadth of existence itself.
"Living Existences are dying at rates that would have been unthinkable in previous eras," she continued, "More Inevitabilities manifest with each passing day, their numbers growing exponentially as if something is deliberately feeding the chaos and Paradox that spawns them. Every force that promotes stability becomes weaker while everything that encourages destruction grows stronger."
"This is why Order is so important," Duke Gwendolyn said, her gaze finding Noah’s with intensity. "Why the Young Miss represents hope that transcends personal attachment. She could be one of the core answers to all of this chaos, one of the few remaining forces capable of imposing structure upon entropy."
As she spoke these words, her expression shifted once more as new information flooded her consciousness. Her eyes blazed with the light of someone receiving reports from across impossible distances!
"And just now," she said, her voice taking on notes of somberness that made the white-gold space around them tremble, "I have received information about a different type of chaos blooming in the Transcendent Temporal Folds. Groups of terrifying... Dead Existences have been sighted for the first time in many years."
HUUM!
Noah’s weavings buzzed.
"There are Living Existences," she said, her voice growing more somber with each word, "and there are Dead Existences. Not the pathetic creatures that Fold Dwellers sometimes call ’Dead Things’...beings who have no true understanding of what death actually means, who play at darkness while remaining fundamentally, inescapably half alive."
The screen behind her shifted again, displaying images that made Noah’s enhanced perception recoil involuntarily.
Here were entities that existed in states so antithetical to life that merely observing them challenged the very concept of existence itself!
"Dead Existences," Duke Gwendolyn continued, "dissolve Living Existential Authority through simple proximity. They devour everything that possesses the spark of consciousness, feeding upon the very essence of what it means to exist. Their presence transforms thriving Folds into voids where even the memory of life becomes impossible to maintain."
Her voice took on the cadence of someone reciting records that most preferred to forget.
"Throughout the vast majority of existence’s history, Dead Existences and Living Existences have barely interacted. Not through choice or mutual agreement, but because THE Creature...worked to keep the two sides separated."
As she spoke, the screen behind them displayed scenes from the Transcendent Temporal Folds that challenged Noah’s ability to process what he was witnessing!
Eerie figures moved through landscapes of purple-blue rivers with a synchronization.
They walked in perfect formation, their heads raised toward skies that held no stars, their movements carrying the mechanical precision of entities that had long since forgotten what individual will meant.
But it was their feeding that truly captured Noah’s horrified and glorious attention.
Their mouths pulsed with rhythms that seemed to echo the heartbeat of death itself, opening wide to reveal voids that contained nothing...actual nothing that hurt to perceive directly!
From these impossible maws came a suction that drew in the brilliant purple-blue rivers of temporal authority that flowed through the Temporal Folds like the lifeblood of reality itself.
They devoured time. They consumed the very essence of causality, their feeding transforming the carefully maintained streams of temporal energy into voids where cause and effect ceased to have meaning!
The massive tear that had allowed their entry into the Temporal Folds pulsed with deathly authority that made the surrounding space convulse in recognition of something that should not exist.
From its edges seeped energies that transformed everything they touched, turning vibrant rivers of temporal power into stagnant pools of crystallized ending.
But even as Noah struggled to process the implications of what he was witnessing, the scene on the screen took a turn toward something infinitely more terrifying.
"SKEE!"
A sound erupted from the display...not quite a scream, not quite a roar, but something that existed in the space between meaning and madness.
It was the audible representation of entropy given voice, a cry that seemed to originate from the concept of ending itself!
From the tear in reality, a massive obsidian hand began to emerge with the deliberate certainty of nightmare.
The appendage was composed of what appeared to be fossilized bones, each finger larger than ancient towers!
The aura it radiated...
Even here, in this protected space between existence, even filtered through the barrier of the illusory screen, the presence of that emerging hand caused Duke Gwendolyn to fall silent.
Her ancient eyes widened with recognition of power that approached her own magnitude...authority that operated on the level of Dukes!
"Motherfucker," she uttered with cold precision, the profanity carrying more weight than most formal proclamations!
This was something even she had not anticipated, a development that challenged calculations!
Her frown deepened as she turned toward Noah, her expression growing more grave with each passing moment.
"The Dukes of the Living Temporals have sent word demanding that the Coalition of Living Existences deploy all available forces to close this torn Veil of Existence," she said. "Every free Honored and Prime Living Existences must converge on the Temporal Folds before this breach expands beyond our ability to contain it."
...!
Noah blinked, his mind working through the implications.𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺
"Why did they not send Honored and Royal Living Temporals the moment they discovered the breach?" he asked, "Why allow things to escalate to this point when immediate action might have prevented the situation from becoming dire?"
...!
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