CHAPTER 417

THE TURNING WHEELS

Black-jetted eyes stared longingly at the wanton destruction, a brilliant glimmer in them shining brighter than the stars. Dancing about, they searched every corner of the piles of rocks and remnants of dried blood, desire virtually manifesting into billowing smoke and light. A sigh escaped, whispered into the wind – soft and caressing.

"… so close," he mumbled, biting his lip. "So close… I'll find you… we'll be together again… my love…"

**

A perpetual haze of darkness, ashen smoke acting up like mist, curtailing hills and sharp, bladed mountains generated an eerie sense of nothing. Tepid silence reigned over the misted lands, hidden away in dull, dazed flames. Lakes of fire lived on the mountain tops, repeatedly spitting out blaze like wreathing mouths, causing molten lava to trickle down the steep ends like a river. All-around and about, there seemed to be no pattern to anything; as though randomness, pure chance, garnered it all.

The land itself was massive, beyond measure, distances between two living souls so great they may never get to meet one another. There was no center, there were no edges, no tops, and no bottoms; it all seemed to stretch out into edged infinity, out of reach of any one soul, of any one arm.

“It is time…” a whisper, both soft and hard, piercing and tranquilizing, broke the concept of the infinity and engulfed the entire everything. It was heard by all the living, and all the dead, and it was heeded by them all. Fires akin to torches soon lit up, seeming like stars in the nightly sky within the misty blackness. Hundreds… thousands… millions… even billions. They lit up the otherwise perpetually nightly world, granting it the first dawn it has ever experienced. “The Empyrean is above the Southern Divide… end all this foolishness, once and for all.”

Within the catacomb of nightmares, stacked with bones beyond count, on a throne of the hellish blaze, elevated above the lake of cyan flame, a figure akin to a humanoid shadow sat, only visible feature a pair of dangerously burning eyes similar to two miniature suns. Just then, a burst of energy ripped open the fabric of space as a smoky shadow warped itself over, stopping in front of the burning eyes.

“—what are you doing?” Ataxia asked in the same, robotic, indifferent tone.

“You’ve lost grip of him, Father,” the figure replied. “It is time to end it.”

“… Ashtar, withdraw your order.” Ataxia’s tone firmed slightly.

“You’ve entangled yourself too close to the boy, Father,” the figure replied somewhat solemnly, its voice a choir of the countless souls. “You have lost the sight of everything that matters. One day, you’ll thank me for it.”

“… you have never defied me before because you trusted me,” Ataxia said, his voice mellowing down strangely. “You trusted me with Eve, with Eldon, with Elan, with Esther, with Eynnor… I haven’t forgotten, Ashtar. I can never forget. Withdraw, and let me handle it.”

“No… you’ve softened on the boy,” the figure said. “You've given him freedom beyond count, the knowledge he should have never been privy to, and a chance to see through it all. I will not stand by and watch the boy drown you in the stars of sin.”

“You cannot win, Ashtar – not even One has the capacity to kill the boy anymore,” Ataxia said after a short silence. “It is over.”

“I do not plan on defeating or killing him, Father – I plan on winning.”

“What worth is it all if it’s comprised of ruin and ash?!”

“It is better than nothing… it is better than nothing, Father…”

**

Two was currently staring at a deep chasm spreading north and south of the central line. She could not see its deepest point, not even with the Divine Sense, not even today. She has come here at least once every thousand years to try out her luck, yet to no avail; no matter how strong she got, how further away she could sense things, she was never able to see the depths of the gorge.

The dull wind bellowed at her, fluttering her black hair and robes backward. She was certain there was a story behind the deep gash, the greatest wound of the world, but no bard to tell it. It certainly wasn't natural, as the gorge separating two parts of the Forsaken Continent was the only one of its kind. Even though the continent was surrounded by massive bodies of water from all ends, none of it penetrated the gorge, regardless of the fact that the gash ran all the way to the continent's edge, opening out into the ocean.

As someone tasked with understanding Noterra better than any other soul, the gorge always remained the bane of her existence – the solitary reminder of her failure. She knew all else, all the secrets, all the tombs, the hidden ends and the beginnings… yet she didn’t know anything about the gorge. It seemed as though it was there since the time immemorial, as though it was born with the world itself, a scar that would never heal.

“… above the Southern Divide…" suddenly a whisper entranced her, a distant yet familiar one, the choral sound of the countless voices banging against the walls of her mind. "In fortnight… be prepared…”

She frowned and sighed into the wind, her expression growing complex as she bit her lower lip. What she imagined would be a simple generation, another thousand years passed in content boredom of pointless bickering and wars, has become so much more. The Empyrean has managed to shake the foundation of the principles so quickly that most of the world didn’t have time to catch up to the changes.

Though she imagined he’d merely remain a passing glimpse of madness in the grand scheme of things, she was wrong. As she was wrong about this very gorge many times before. Glancing southeast, toward the so-called Southern Divide, a span of water perpetually doused in weather very few cultivators could withstand, her eyes turned downcast. Even if he stung her pride, she didn't wish to commence the full-out war. The only reason she ordered the search for him in the first place was that she knew nobody would be able to find him. Not even One could. Nobody… except a solitary figure resting in the lakes of fire.

“… you withstood me, Lyonel,” she mumbled softly. “Can you withstand the worlds? Can you show us another miracle?”

**

Lino and Hannah suddenly froze as they entered their chambers in the fortress, their eyes dulling in a symphony, as though their souls were sucked out of them. Their bodies remained stiff for a moment before relaxing strangely, as though commanded by someone else entirely.

“Ashtar will disclose our location…” Ataxia’s voice escaped Lino’s lips soon after.

“… you weren’t able to convince him otherwise?” Astrum asked, a faint trace of worry present in her voice.

“No…”

“… we’ll have the whole world barreling down at us. No amount of formations, arrays, scheming and mind games will be enough to contend with that.”

“… we’ll have to run, then.” a third robotic voice joined them as Alison appeared in-between the two of them. “Preferably to the Outside.”

“… there’s no need,” Lino seemed to have startled both Nirvana and Astrum as he spoke out. “From what I gather, the only reason he can locate us is because he can locate Ataxia. The problem seems easily solvable.”

“…” neither of the two replied as Lino smiled lightly.

“The ever-talkative Writs growing silent? Psh, what is this? A joke?”

“Well, if you’re leaving… so am I. So, it’s all good.” Astrum said.

“… apparently, so am I.” Nirvana added.

“So I guess Lucky is as well,” Astrum added.

“… boy, you want to get some alone man-time, but no, my handsome ass has to be followed by a whole slew of women. Tsk, tsk, the curse of being the handsomest, most charming, most brilliant dude—“

“Hold the brakes on your ego for a bit,” Hannah quickly interjected, rolling her eyes. “I’m confused. Who the fuck is Ashtar, and how the fuck can he sense Ataxia’s location?”

“Oh, right. Ashtar. The Devil. I mean, the Devil. You know? The one they call their Origin Father or something.” Lino said. “As to why he can sense Ataxia’s location, the bastard went mum. I imagine it has something to do with the fact that Non is his relative. As in, I don’t think he cared much what he fucked early on.”

“You, me, Ally, Lucky, I imagine Ion, Seya… who else?” Hannah muttered.

“Yeah, no.” Lino quickly rejected. “You coming with? Of course. Ally and L’ can kiss my bottom, but they ain’t coming. And if you think for a second I’d take those two kids with me, I’ll blow in your ear, woman.”

“W-why can’t I come?!” Alison asked both meekly and fiercely at the same time, somehow.

“You’re right,” Hannah nodded, sighing whilst ignoring Alison. “We can’t afford to get entangled in a war, and it’s going to be pretty hard to catch the two of us. The more people we bring, the greater the chances of being caught.”

“Hey! Answer me!”

“… now, all that’s left is to figure out where the fuck should we go…”

“HEY!!”

**

Sitting beside an emerald-green lake reflecting homely light of the sun above was a woman in seemingly her early thirties, her hair breathtakingly silver, a pair of eyes piercing through the contours of reality without any effort. She sat on top of a wooden, rocking chair, heaving back and forth whilst seemingly sunbathing. Her body shuddered all of a sudden as a chilling whisper trickled into her mind, waking her up from her tranquility.

Gaia had a complex expression on her face; the gaze of her eyes seemed disillusioned, the weakness in them apparent. She sighed lowly and shook her head, resuming her pastime, though clearly distracted.

“… you’re all gentle fools,” she whispered into the nothingness in front of her. “Playing to the tune of a playwright dressed as a clown. All is already lost… all is already lost… all is already lost…” she repeated in a strange rhythm for hours on end, without taking a single breath.

**

Amadeel stared at the bend and wound stretch of time, the distortion encompassing a massive sphere of convoluted threads winding over themselves in a brilliantly destructive loop. His expression was sour and difficult, his lips faintly quivering. The dilation was growing at a terrifying rate; time around it now accounted for a tenth of the one outside, that is to say that ten minutes outside was a minute in.

However, beyond the sheer horror of the dilation itself, he understood something far, far more worrying – it wasn't merely someone artificially trying to stretch time and cause one natural catastrophe or another. Rather, someone has successfully managed to formulate an external Singularity, one far more condensed than that of cultivators – someone, or something, has managed to create an artificial black hole, one with an accelerated growth rate that put a timer on the existence of the entire world… and everything within and without it.