Re: Timeless Apocalypse

It was similar to the lock Uriel had undone as they were lured towards Lucianna.

Back then, he remembered that the lock had been a concentrated and folded mass of laws and primordial energy; unstable and chaotic, standing in an endless void that should've collapsed into a zone of void flames.

But it hadn't.

It hadn't because the spire had made the fabric of space so stable that even the absence of laws couldn't budge it. It was this discovery that led Uriel to realize the Spire was alive.

But here…

The laws were being broken down into small units and fragmented forms of themselves that were unstable and imperfect, fused into masses of impure and unstable primordial energy.

The only thing holding everything together, ironically, was space itself and the World Will, the will of order infused across it.

But therein lay the issue.

If Uriel shattered the formation, space would shatter since they were now one and the same, and if that happened, the bomb that the room had become would go off since nothing would stabilize the worldly goop anymore.

But if he waited, by the time the room was filled with goop, they'd most likely be dead, and even if not, space would be too weak by then and it'd only be a matter of time until the bomb exploded.

And all that assumed the goop didn't harm them while also assuming they'd be able to do anything without access to aether.

The situation was…complex.

"…" Uriel took a deep breath in, then exhaled slowly.

"Kih?" Emrys, who'd been sleeping on Uriel's head for quite some time, finally stirred as he sensed the chaotic echoes of space around them.

"Did you sleep well, buddy?"

"No."

Uriel shook his head lightly. "Yeah, I know. In due time, it'll happen."

"Have you seen the fabric of space here? What do you make of the situation?" he asked Emrys.

The little fox peeked out from his thick and long ivory hair, soaring out before jumping around the room and examining dozens of spots before eventually returning and nestling himself once more.

"Kih!"

Uriel was taken aback. "A folded pocket of space from a larger dimensional space…does that mean we can try and teleport out?"

"Instead of tearing space and bridging two points, what if we travel along the fabric of space itself, like two-dimensional figures moving across a piece of paper?"

PAH!

Emrys lightly smacked Uriel's head and the latter winced.

"Kih."

Uriel groaned. "Alright, I get it, I get it, too complex. But it sounds viable though."

"Kih."

"So we're stuck here," Uriel said with a sigh.

If even Emrys, the spatial expert who had as much control over space as he did light, couldn't find a solution, then there was nothing to be done.

"…"

Perhaps he was looking at things wrong.

'The spirit said to survive, and only then should we leave, and only once we have left should we start looking for the third floor.'

The thought came to Uriel naturally. 'Are we supposed to…stay here until space explodes?'

He frowned. 'But how?'

He wracked his mind and twisted it a dozen different ways, but still couldn't find an answer.

But then, he decided to change his perspective.

The first trial had been one where his body's natal fabric layers of existence, the first two to be precise, had been compromised and twisted into a lock.

He, specifically, had cleared this trial almost instantly due to his pioneer path, which had opened a totally new avenue of power to him.

But to the average person, though it would've taken much longer, they still would've come out of this trial, if they passed it, much stronger than they'd entered.

Their bodily control, aether control, and core synergy would've been off the charts simply by virtue of learning how to interact with their layers.

And then…the reward of the first floor had been a perfect foundation, one that interacted with all natal layers and talents of one's being and made them perfect.

Trial and reward worked in tandem.

The trial taught a lesson, while the reward capitalized on that lesson.

'I could be wrong, and this could be a grave mistake but…let's try it.'

Uriel suddenly lowered himself and sat cross-legged in the rising goop.

He looked at Korynth. "Sit down and meditate on the goop."

"The what?" Korynth frowned, her icy expression melting away just enough to reflect her confusion.

Uriel reddened in embarrassment ever so slightly. "The viscous green liquid coming out of the cylinders."

Then, he closed his eyes and focused entirely.

"…?"

Korynth looked around at the rapidly collapsing space, then at the duo standing not too far away. Her jaw tightened, but eventually she sighed and did as told.

She sat down cross-legged behind Uriel, their backs pressed against one another, then closed her eyes and began to meditate.

…

During his clash with the Regulator, Uriel had made quite a few breakthroughs.

He'd regained his True Core, but he'd also gained three additional cores, forming a perfect foundation of seven cores that supported his existence.

He'd also refined his Will again and again, gaining what the system called a Formless Will Origin, and had even tempered it further while inside the dimensional prison moments before he fought Kael.

But the biggest breakthrough he'd made was a simple one.

He finally understood the purpose of cores.

It was very simple. Cores were vessels and proxies.

His True Core was the vessel of his Will, the very manifestation of his existence and heart, but his True Core was also the tool through which his Will expressed itself.

Through that, he could make his Killing Intent tangible, subtly influence minds as he'd done with Kael, and very easily channel the Wills of his rings.

Once that was understood, the purposes of his other six cores became obvious.

Or did they?

Uriel, upon forming his cores, had learned of their names.

After witnessing the primordial dance, he'd formed the Chaos, Erudite, and Orderly Cores.

But after solidifying his Will, dying over and over again, and seeing his Soul shatter against the Regulator…he'd formed the Hell…Heaven…and Void Cores.

"…"

Chaos. Erudite. Order.

Hell. Heaven. Void.

"…"

Uriel didn't know why his mind had drifted toward these truths.

The moment he'd closed his eyes and begun to meditate, using resonance and harmony to bind himself to the worldly goop, he found his mind swirling.

Rather, it was as if his mind had become unbound now, the limits his body placed on it suddenly put on hold, finally allowing him to use the full breadth of his consciousness.

'And how do the arts of control play into that?' the thought flowed. 'My cores are expressions of them, in a sense.'

'No, they definitely are. The system said that by comprehending resonance, dissonance, and harmony, I gained my new cores.'

'But if all cores are tools of control, tools of the arts, then the monikers of my first three cores don't come from the arts I comprehended.'

'They come from the primordial dance. Inversely, the last three cores that I formed, not counting my True Core, must be linked to my body and life, since that's the only thing that was undergoing massive changes at the time.'

'I was dying. Can't be much of a bigger change than that.' He chuckled, but rather than losing focus, it plunged him even deeper.

He didn't even notice that the worldly goop had risen to his neck, nor did he notice the runes faintly lining themselves across his frame.

'The formation of a dimension and the rebirth of my body.'

The link was clear, and so was the mirrored truth. But Uriel found it odd.

The body, as Uriel understood it, had ten layers—the three pillars and seven aspects—with each layer having deeper subsections.

It was a universe within a universe. Endlessly complex.

While on the other side, the world only had three direct layers that Uriel knew of.

There was the runic fabric, which birthed the runic worldly laws that dictated reality. Then there was the primordial energy fabric, the primordial sea of energy that fueled the world.

And finally, born from the resonance between living beings and their Wills alongside the primordial energy fabric, there was what Uriel had begun to call the Spiritual Fabric.

He'd never seen it before, but he knew it existed.

When he thought of things in such a manner, he found it rather…odd.

Almost incomplete.

He didn't know why, but he felt as though a part of his understanding of either the body or the world was fundamentally wrong.

'My True Core.'

When he witnessed the primordial dance…why had his True Core shattered?

He'd never thought about it before because he'd never known it was something essential to him, but now that he was beginning to deepen his understanding of Ascendance, he realized that he'd once stood a step away from being crippled.

'At the time, if I didn't have my runic scar to act as a vessel for my Will, would I have…died? Or would I have become a mindless puppet?'

Even after his runic scar had been broken by his past self and had started to become corrupted, it had still remained whole enough to act as a vessel for his Will until he formed his True Core.

'Did the world try to enslave me?' Uriel's mind sharpened.

'Did…the system try to enslave me?'