Chapter 480 (2/2)

The ies faded, and the aspect of Fate continued “A scaled fist is closed around the world Only when its grip is broken will the false walls corrupting the natural order be torn down”

My stomach sank I couldn’t place the sensation exactly, but so’s tone made me uncomfortable “What happens when these ‘false walls’ come down?”

“Existence continues The worlds spin on Tiolden threads flickered an light

‘Entropy,’ Sylvie thought, the word resonating ominously inside me ‘The natural order is to follow the arrow of time Just like she said’

The aetheric space around us hardened, taking on defined edges, then color, and finally texture, a scene of the real world again bleeding into being around us The bright and un inside a stained-glassBut when I turned to look around, the hard edges bleay, just sand on the wind

We were standing in the desert A heavy wind blew froure of woven threads was once again Haneul He waved a hand, and the wind subsided Sand drifted like fine snow back down to the desert floor In the distance, I could see the tall standing stone that had e

Haneul crossed his ar his hands into the opposite sleeve like some old monk His eyes closed, and he turned his face toward the sun “Channel the rune you call ‘God Step’”

I hesitated Instead of following Haneul’s instructions, I bent down and ran h the sand “Is this the real world?”

“No” Haneul did not look at me but maintained his meditative posture “We are still in between What you do noill have no effect outside of the keystone, but it will allow me to show you the answer to your question”

‘Be careful, Arthur,’ Sylvie thought

Standing straight again and brushi+ng sand from my skin, I took a deep breath With one foot in the real world and one in the keystone, it was easy to channel aether into the Godrune The aetheric pathways, bright lines of violet light, connected each point in space to every other point Except the paths weren’t straight as they always had been before The individual points that ed, as if so them from the other side, and the connective paths bent and warped

Haneul opened his eyes again The light pink irises were tinged with ht you to a future where you have already defeated your ene this world has been released, but you are still needed I will teach you how to lance the wound”

Sylvie nervously shi+fted her footing in the sand besideinto the aetheric paths, I took hold of one,Fate

“Good,” Haneul said “Now, envision in your mind how every pathway is interconnected in a continuous loop, like the string of a cat’s cradle, running in and out of each point in space E free”

Whilefocus on God Step, I split the output of my aether and channeled a streahost of the runes warht purple particles of aether ran down rip on the path, I heaved

My ared Aether instinctively flooded thean to tre beneath th

“This isn’t a test of brute physical force but of insight,” Haneul patiently explained “Your insight into this rune is inco of the path of aevuned Share this burden”

Relaxing without releasing the path, I looked to Sylvie She aze with a serious nod, then dissolved into the silver sprite, which drifted into my core

“Open your minds to one another,” Haneul continued once ere joined “The dragon’s insight is imprinted on her spirit, not learned She must open herself to you co to lay her o of the barriers that we had both erected over the years to protect each other and ourselves, but it was not easy ‘Insight requires risk Growth requires pain,’ she thought, then repeated it again ‘I am made from you, and you’re made from me I can bend the arrow of time’s path, so you can too’

Slowly, I felt Sylvie’s understanding bleed into e of her body dissolving into gold and lavender motes cut across ht back, her voice rising up froue of fierce ht I passed through time itself, and time marked me I’m not sure I understood what that meant, before But now…’

Slowly, ouras one In that ripstrings tightened, and the entire network of connective points and paths flexed I wasn’t fully cognisant of whatever understanding Sylvie was sharing with ht

One by one, the points began to rip open

Aether spilled through

I kept pulling, ripping the gap wider and wider until—

The fabric of reality gave way

I grabbed Regis, who dissolved and took shelter in my core with Sylvie as an eruption of aetheric force like nothing I had ever seen or could have iined rolled across the desert Sand lifted up into the air as the atmosphere boiled away, the foundations of the continent shattering far beneath me, unable to resist the force

Soround and into the air as the surge rolled endlessly past e as the explosion scoured the desert clean and cracked the world down to its core The violet iped Sapin clean next, then flattened the Grand Mountains Soon, all of Dicathen was gone, lost beneath the violet ocean

I floated free of the eruption, up and up, watching the aether s the oceans and then Alacrya before spilling freely into the emptiness of space beyond

‘Movement from order to disorder, form to formlessness The dissolution of structure Entropy’ Sylvie’s ression of all things’

Haneul was gone, but the thread-woven form of Fate’s aspect floated with me “This is freedom This is the absence of constraint This is where your path takes you, Arthur-Grey You are the key”

I turned toward the doll-like figure, my movements slow, my expression haunted “All those s turned out just so This is what it was all for—what you’re trying to accomplish?”

‘Arthur, destroyer of his world, or keeper of the universe,’ Regis thought darkly ‘Talk about perspective’

The aspect of Fate’s blank face regarded me emotionlessly “The wind does not seek to topple the tree The ocean waves do not conspire to wear away the cliff face The current state of reality is counter to the natural progression of this world The moment your spirit entered your body, you becah which this would be corrected”

I waved weakly down to the de wave of aether “But this? How is this better than what Kezess or Agrona have done?” I threw up my hands, nearly overcoe “No No, this isn’t the future I deny it I refuse”

“Of course,” the aspect of Fate said, di its form “Now But this is the only path forward And you will come to realize this in tiht have this conversation Eventually, you will live the perfect sequence of events that allows you to see the truth”

I gaped at the doll-like form “If I never leave the keystone, I can’t destroy the world” My expression hardened into a fierce glare “If necessary, I’ll stay here forever The pocket di me will eventually collapse, and rona will find me and kill low flickered across the figure’s blank face, and I couldn’t help but think it was s down of the barrier and the release of the aether back into the physical realm And in every version, you are the lance that bursts the cyst”

‘It can’t know that,’ Sylvie thought

“space, tiether, these aspects of aether produce Fate And Fate is the act of knowing, of aligning just so,” the aspect replied “If I know, it is only because there is no other way the world could be”

Regis scoffed, the noise running through me like a shi+ver up my back ‘What a crock This is total bullshi+t Maybe the bits and pieces that have coagulated into Fate used to be alive, but this ,’ Regis added

‘It sees across time and space the e look across a rooht ‘How many millions—billions, ether to form Fate? It may be able to see forward and back in time to study cause and effect, but it doesn’t understandthat has experienced so much death, such breadth of loss, us—our whole world—we’re just too small’

The silver sprite drifted free ofall the life of this world a necessary part of returning everything to normal?”

“No, it is not necessary It is natural It is unavoidable It is…not important”

‘You’ve seen every future, every possible outcois asked, his mental projection turned directly to the aspect of Fate

“Fate is every future, every possible outcoone Whatever connection linked Dicathen with Epheotus was gone The aetheric soup hid the distant stars, the sun, and the uishable from the aetheric realm

“But you’re not infallible,” I said, led for soardless of what I’d said, I had no intention of staying locked forever inside the keystone “You can’t see everything—okay,you see When I arrived, you mistook the memories stored inside that crystal for“You thought this Haneul, so before I was ever reincarnated in this world, was soh I’d never even seen or heard of hilow flickered sporadically up and down the thread-wound body “But infallibility is not a necessary co a state of natural equilibrium Failure in action is how the world evolves, a natural component of entropic decay”

I closed ainst the There had to be a way forward, but—

I gasped, realization hitting me like ice-cold water We were half in the physical realm, and I had effortlessly been able to reach for my Godrunes

Aether released froed in the lava pits of the Relicto the rune there

Myinto several splintered directions at once King’s Ga I had experienced earlier were gone I was close enough to my body to utilize the Godrune nor several different possible arguer, frustration, and dis itself in the cold coold thread followed each thought With every consideration, Fate was there, watching the line of thought play out No hts I held at once, the threads of Fate oven into every one

There was a necessary sequence to events, and I laid the to solve each step Like the aetheric pathways connecting into and through both the physical realm and the aetheric void, however, each step connected to the next in a loop I couldn’t acco the keystone with insight into Fate—without knowing how to accoolden threads acted like a cohts, I used these threads of Fate to pull individual frames of my own splitthe h thee entire worlds and tihts of my mind’s eye, I saw dozens, even hundreds of possible conversations with Fate unfold, playing through each simultaneously and in its entirety I rona and Kazess, searching for an effective plan to scour the it Finding a solution to the problem they presented was in turn required to even consider the act of releasing the pressure of the aetheric realrowth, because any attempt to do so relied entirely on the results of the first two events Despite my best efforts to explore potential solutions to the release of the aether, the results of any specific sequence of cause and effect was dramatically altered by how I resolved the previous situations, creating a cyclical loop of endless destruction in which even King’s Ga

There was no sense of a passage of ti of so er across my face that I snapped back into so, ever-branching sequence of ht

Sylvie was hovering in the void in front of me She looked down at her hand, which was streaked with blood I licked my lips and tasted salt and iron

“Arthur, your nose…” Sylvie said a moment later

I tried to focus aether toward the bloody nose My core didn’t respond

Dozens of separate branches of thought collided together by ones and twos, each collision sending a spike of pain through h focus to look inward

My core was e away as fuel for old froing A strong ar freely in emptiness

‘Hey, chief, you need to absorb soht and wakefulhot embers of pain down the base of my skull

‘He can’t…’ Sylvie’s fear sent tremors up my spine ‘It’s his real core that’s ehts faded in and out I couldn’t process thehts were ’s Gambit still active? My brain felt as if it had been sliced into a hundred pieces, like those old scientific displays on Earth that were just thin slices of a person, each layer pressed into glass and set out for the world to see…

The world couldn’t see my brain But the threads of Fate could Fate had been with le considered course, every theorized sequence of events Those golden threads ound through every branching thought I’d had

The golden threads weren’t the coe of sense I had I was the co olden threads

Through the closed lids of ht appeared in the distance The light grew closer, brighter, and then turned into a bright blur, forcing me to shut my eyes Indiscernible sounds assaulted my ears When I tried to speak, the words came out as a cry