The Primordial Record

Chapter 1911: The Thread Snaps

Rowan had met a lot of selfish individuals in his life whose narcissistic traits had become fused to the core of their being. To become a god or an immortal requires an individual to have the desire to dominate and suppress everyone and everything around them. Why should they walk the same path as the masses or allow death’s cold hands to touch them after a few decades? If to live for longer or acquire enough powers to crush the stars, then they would gladly drain the essence of everything around them to empower their ascent. Every immortal, even Rowan, had done the same thing, but Enoch was on a league of his own.

Although born a Luminious, a being of incredible power, Enoch never saw himself as part of his race, and even if he did, the well-being of his entire existence meant nothing before his goals. Logically speaking, there was no way Enoch would be able to tell if the destruction of everything he knew would lead to change; he had no reason to know that a power like End existed, and he had just ended all of existence because they did not follow his whims.

Enoch was born with supreme power, and so he did not have to fight against existence to grant him more strength. There were many ways he could have set out to bring change across existence, and Rowan believed that with his innate power, in time, Enoch might have brought about sweeping change across the society of the Luminious. It would have been slow and backbreaking, but he would have changed existence by his Will alone; but his responses were fatalistic.

For such a consummate selfish being who saw everything around him as a means of satisfying his desire, Rowan did not need to imagine what Enoch would do when he noticed that his passion had led to existence eating him. Rowan was correct.

In the visions, he could see Enoch screaming his rage and disbelief into the void as more of his body was drawn away from him. There should have been no way that his cries should have been able to do this, but it spread across the expanding existence and began to cause changes, such was the depths of his rage.

His scream crossed a thousand nascent Realities that were beginning to find their personality and became a supernova that lit them all for seven perfect seconds before collapsing into a black hole that devoured its own light alongside these new Realities.

The newborn gods, who were among the few who could still hear the voice of Enoch, looked up and wept, because they felt their father dying in the act of giving them birth, they could sense his rage, and where once there had been joy and the endless freedom to pursue the myriad path being created by him, now the voice of Enoch only held rage.

Rowan could see that, despite the incredible selfishness of Enoch that led to the destruction of the first realm of existence, what he had managed to create out of its end was marvellous. Rowan could not speak for the Luminious because he had briefly glimpsed their form in Enoch stories, but something in him told him that if they saw the result of what Enoch created out of their ashes, they would be happy.

It was not as if the Luminious did not appreciate change; they were only incapable of it, and if one of their number could create an infinite number of lives and spectacles that made all of existence sing, Rowan knew they would be proud.

However, Enoch did not care for any of this; he fought against his impending demise. His rage had not ended, but it had become tempered by fear, and so he began to rebel against the pull.

He clawed at the edges of himself, trying to hold the thread together with sheer stubbornness, and Rowan could not help but admire and fear the passion with which Enoch fought to keep himself from falling into eternal darkness.

Rowan could see Enoch remembering being a child in the Eternal Spire, watching flowers open and close in perfect, predictable rhythm. Enoch remembered the rage that had driven him to murder eternity. He remembered wanting surprise more than he wanted to exist, and Rowan almost jerked on his throne when the Memory of Enoch screamed into eternity.

“I was wrong,” he roared to the power of End. “I’ll take it back. I’ll unmake them. Just give me back myself.”

The End did not answer. It only drew more from him. Enoch had entered too deeply, and there was no way to pull himself away from the brink.

Rowan watched all of this with a complicated feeling in his heart. As a bystander, he could see so much more. He watched Enoch rage, and in his madness, he did not notice that the last of his creations emerging from his nearly exhausted essence were the most beautiful beings ever to walk this present realm of existence, and Rowan, who was a creator, could attest to this.

He could see a planet where every creature was born knowing it would die in exactly one hour, and spent that hour falling in love with everything it saw. He saw a star that sang its own death song in a voice that shattered moons. A species of beings made entirely of goodbyes, who spent their brief lives teaching each other how to leave gracefully.

Enoch felt each one peel away another layer of what he had been, and he did not appreciate the magnificence he had been blessed with, and Rowan wanted to scream, “Look at the miracles that arises from your flesh, you should be grateful and thankful that a part of you made something like this to exist, instead your vision is so narrow.”

Of course, even if he screamed, this was all in the past, and it was impossible for him to change it, and he suspects that even if Enoch could see and hear him, it would be meaningless.

“When the final strand of my Will stretched too thin to hold, I saw it all at once: a multiverse teeming with unpredictable, vicious, magnificent life. Every atom of it had once been part of me. Every screaming mountain, every bleeding moon, every god who rose and fell in terror and wonder; they were my dismembered self, given new names and new hungers.

In the center of it all floated a perfect, aching absence shaped like a boy who had wanted too much.

I tried to speak one last time. Perhaps I wanted to apologize, or warn them, or simply say my own name so someone would remember it. At this time, I had fought for as long as I could, and I had accepted my fate.

But there were no mouths left in any of the nascent Realities that knew the shape of Enoch.

All of Existence kept spinning, wild and free and forever. They would never know they had been paid for with the only soul who understood what true stillness felt like.

And in the place where everything ends, End itself finally closed its eyes, satisfied. The transaction was complete. Change had won at the cost of the only being who had ever truly wanted it.

The thread snapped. I snapped.”