The Primordial Record

Chapter 1721: The Soul Whales

If Rowan wanted, he could know all the thoughts inside the hearts of his children, their desires and fears, but he deliberately held himself back from doing such a thing. He acknowledged the sanctity of the mind, and he left their destiny to them.

Everyone had the freedom to make their choices and learn the life lessons that came with those choices. If they requested his wisdom, he would give it, but if not, he would watch and, where necessary, he would guide.

Watching his Avatars surround him like satellites, Rowan smiled, and it reached his eyes. He listened to their words, drank in their praises, and laughed with them.

The impossible weight he carried on his shoulders for this brief moment felt light. However, like all good things, it must come to an end.

Bringing one of his massive fingers and touching each Avatar gently on their head to ruffle their hair, Rowan gave them the task of beginning to heal the Origin Land. This should take a long time, but he gave them only a year in real-time; he also gave himself a year to completely master Soul Origin.

It was time for his soul to get a much-needed upgrade.

With a finger gesture, his dimensional soul emerged from his body. Presently, it was fit into one of his arms, not even big enough to cover his entire body. Rowan had outgrown his soul.

The soul drifted to the Origin, being held by the body, and taking one last look at the body, Rowan, as the dimensional soul sank into it.

Rowan had been through four layers of the void to understand Space Origin, and he thought he should know all the intricacies that might arise when it came to understanding the other Origins.

In a manner, he was correct; his soul immediately sensed several layers hidden within the origin of the soul, but he had not expected that the first layer of the soul would be a castle.

To any immortal, the first layer of the soul would be greater than any universe or dimension they had seen, but Rowan’s senses were impossibly vast and were fine-tuned to find out the smallest of details. He was able to immediately detect that he was inside a castle, and this castle reminded him of Sheol.

It was almost as if, unconsciously, he was copying the pattern of the soul’s origin in building the City of Sheol.

When his soul saw the surface nature of this place, its name came to him: The Sanctum of Eternity.

“So, I am dead?… I did not think it was likely, especially not by your hand, not after all I have taken.”

Rowan looked around, knowing the voice of Primordial Soul intimately, but he could not find any of her traces. “You…”

“Ah… you don’t even know my name. How could someone like you be able to kill me?! Come find me in the lowest level of this Origin. If you are unable to do so, then I have to question how you could kill me.”

Rowan wanted to respond, but he sensed she was gone and became quiet. It would seem that he still had more to learn about Origin, especially when it came to the aspect of preservation of life.

In the depths of Space Origin, Eosah had been able to preserve herself, or at least a fragment of her consciousness, and Primordial Soul had done the same.

“I really don’t know her name,” Rowan chuckled self-deprecatingly. Yet he could see the truth for what it was: He was becoming more cold and less open to understanding his enemies’ mindsets.

Time and time again, he had extended the hand of understanding, and every time, he had been burned. The more he learnt of the Primordials, the less he wanted to know of them.

Killing Primordial Soul had been a work of pure butchery. He had not looked at her like a living person, hardly spoke during their interaction, and did not acknowledge her pleas or the chance to bargain; he had just slaughtered her in the most efficient manner possible.

’There will be a time for deep psychological introspection later, for now, my main body alone is bearing the burden of soul origin and holding the essence of all souls in Reality from dissipation. I need to relieve him of that burden.”

Killing Primordials always had a price, and Rowan had to have someone to bear the burden of one of the pillars of existence, or it would all come crashing down. If he had not been compatible with the essence of souls, then killing Primordial Soul would have led to the end of Reality, similar to what occurred with the New Light fiasco.

Yet, holding onto this burden would place a huge restriction on Rowan, but he had a way to work around this issue because his soul, unlike any other immortal, was almost a separate entity, and if needed, would carry the burden of existence, freeing him to act.

Rowan also acknowledged that it was probably a good thing he had the serpents who could carry the weight of existence from the slain Primordial Beasts. If they had not existed, then it was unlikely that Rowan would be able to kill any Primordial-level creature without fearing the consequences of that act.

“Well, let me explore the Sanctum of Eternity, who knows what sort of answers I may find.”

Opening his consciousness to this level of soul, Rowan found his entire being throbbing as if he were a string on a guitar—this was music. His heart shook in surprise as he found that he had come across something similar when exploring the first level of the void, and that was the Sky Whale of Creation.

Now inside the origin of souls, he could hear their music, but it was different. Unlike the Sky Whales of Creation, who seemed to be lethargic and pushing forward with their task based on instincts alone, the sounds he could hear in this place were richer.

His understanding brought enlightenment as all around him, countless figures of flying whales appeared above and below him.

They were colossal, translucent beings gliding through the light, their bodies woven from starlight veins and eyes like liquid prisms. The shadows they cast were miniature rainbows.

Rowan was stuck in place, admiring these beautiful creatures. They were Soul Whales, and their songs are the Sanctum’s heartbeat.

Using their songs as a highway to reach all parts of this level, Rowan began to explore and comprehend the first level of soul origin.

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This was not a place; it was the still point before creation, a sphere of radiance suspended in the soul’s void. It was a good thing that, inside this place, time does not flow, giving Rowan the chance to comprehend this layer slowly; after all, he did not have Eosah’s voice to guide him.

To better understand the Sanctum of Eternity, Rowan pictured it as a house with walls made of frozen dawn. For an immortal to picture such a thing in their head, they would think of it as a crystalline lattice humming the frequency of the first thought.

The floor was made from a pool of primordial quicksilver, cool and weightless, and the sky was not like any other sky, because it was memories made manifest.

Rowan sighed at the beauty of the sky, filled with swirling nebulae of forgotten colors, reminding him of the color of a mortal’s tear he once caught mid-air, or the shimmer of Vraegar’s draconnic scales in twilight.

“Interesting, this place… this sky, reminds me of my son.”