Chapter 3878: The Living That Are Bound! II

Across the weavings of existence.

Within the Nullvein Gravewake Folds.

BOOM!

Living Dimensional Authority detonated in absolute silence.

It was an elegant annihilation of causality itself. The fractured corpse of a dead Wheel of Existence quaked as Authority more ancient than time swept across it.

Paradoxical gold followed.

A blaze of contradicting frequencies, folded and twisted until they radiated something both glorious and unspoken. Together, the silver and the gold painted a weaving of power that did not belong in this desolate region!

And then, two figures emerged.

One, impossibly still. The other, impossibly shocked.

Moiraine, her body cleaved from the waist down, floated amidst the ruin like a sovereign cast from royal paradox.

Her long white gold hair flowed without wind, her eyes twin golden stars flaring beneath her brow. Cracks laced her skin, yet nothing about her presence seemed weakened. Authority clung to her like a loyal hound.

And in her arms...

Ozymandias, or what was left of him.

A portion of his head, his upper chest- those remained. Everything else had been reduced to raw echoes.

He opened his eyes.

There was no panic within them, only the silent weight of someone who had already decided what came next.

Moiraine’s eyes flared as she looked down upon him.

Her voice was quiet. Too quiet.

"Living Dimensional Authority," she whispered, the syllables trembling. "That was Living Dimensional Authority. You...!"

Noah looked up at her.

Not hurried. Not moved by urgency or spectacle.

Only deliberate.

"There is no time," he said, voice a low current wrapped in certainty. "You have this span of an instant."

The way he said it- this span of an instant- as if time bowed to him, not the other way around.

His gaze met hers.

Unshaken. Quintessential!

"You’ve walked beside me this far. Protected me when it served no gain to do so."

Moiraine said nothing.

She listened.

A true Paradox did not interrupt the unfolding of inevitability.

Noah’s voice did not waver.

"I mean to save you," he said, "but I also require my own assurances."

A slight shift. His words were calm and absolute.

"Accept me. And I will show you what those dogs in the Goldfolds just turned away from with their snouts in the air. You have now- this single moment to decide."

A single moment!

A single instant!

After he said this, he moved.

His forehead came to rest against hers.

Not a movement of affection.

An initiation.

He activated the same ability he once used on Sigrid- the binding force of an Early Creature, one meant to tether Living Existences to himself!

But where Sigrid had been fragmented and lost, Moiraine was whole.

Even damaged, her power was vast.

A cathedral of flame and knowledge. A storm of living contradiction. The kind of being that did not submit!

His aura pressed into her.

And like a thread of silk trying to wrap around a mountain, it faltered.

Small. Honest. Entirely insufficient.

Unless...

Unless the mountain leaned down.

Unless the storm... allowed it.

Moiraine did not rush.

Because this single instant... stretched long within her.

She thought of the Honored Ones.

Of the Council.

Of Diviticus.

Of betrayal wrapped in white fire and honeyed tones.

She thought of how power turned loyalty into hunger. Of how easily the Foldless Ones had shifted with want. With need. With entitlement.

And then... she thought of him.

Noah. Ozymandias.

This anomaly. His words. His actions. Why she truly believed he was the answer and what Diviticus had done was wrong!

She had to decide.

And so, she did!

She folded herself down. Compressed her essence. Let her glory become wrap-able.

She allowed it.

She chose.

BOOM!

A rupture exploded out from the dying Wheel, carrying with it a shockwave of Paradoxical Complexity. It tore through the Gravewake Folds with impossible pressure, searing through layers of silence and ruin.

Prompts burned into Noah’s vision.

|You have successfully bound a second Living Existence under your banner as an Early Creature.|

|You have successfully bound a Living Paradox. Living Paradoxes may now be born within the Festival of Existence and the Early Veiled Shore.|

...!

His gaze flickered, silver light sparking from the hollow of his forehead.

Moiraine exhaled slowly.

Her body trembled beneath the sheer exposure to an Early Creature’s resonance- closer than she’d ever been. Even she, with her eons of sovereignty, had to brace herself.

Noah’s voice was quiet again. It simply pressed downward with finality.

"You are mine now."

WAA!

Moiraine’s head did not bow. But her weavings flickered once in acknowledgment.

And then, both of them vanished!

A nanosecond later.

The Gravewake Folds rumbled again.

HUUM!

A ripple of white and blue bloomed.

From it emerged a massive form, a nine-headed turtle, its carapace glistening with Living Origin Authority that poured off its heads in controlled, solemn swells. Around it, the Gravewake dimmed.

Its many eyes were somber.

They focused on the residue of silver and gold that lingered like fading starlight.

Moments later, Altheon and Shaynara arrived with other Living Origins- each cloaked in silent power, each face cast in veils of caution and shock.

Altheon’s voice came low and steady.

"This aura... belonged to a Living Paradox."

He paused.

"One that is approaching Honored Tier."

He turned to the others.

"Why did they come here? Why did they vanish?"

There were no answers.

Only the frantic spreading of their weavings, an effort to trace a path that no longer existed.

They would not find it.

They never could.

---

The Early Veiled Shore

The Veiled Shore trembled as a new existence arrived above its radiant sands from a light of Living Dimensional Authority.

Moiraine!

The sands shifted beneath her. Her torso floated upright, flames cascading from her exposed abdomen like a burning veil. Her eyes opened wide.

She had barely acclimated when a hurricane of Living Paradoxical Authority bloomed around her, many magnitudes beyond the Dyson Singularity.

Boundless Authority flooded into her as she rapidly healed, her feet slowly landing to touch the vibrant sand below her!

She stood, battered and magnificent, absorbing the storm as if she had always belonged to it.

And as her eyes rose until they found him.

Noah.

Not the Ozymandias half-dead in the Folds.

But the one who had always been here.

His main body stood on the clear sands, shirtless, upper body etched with glowing white-gold waves of light that pulsed with life. His obsidian pants shimmered with brilliance, his expression unreadable.

But his eyes were seeing a rise of prompts!

|An extremely complex lifeform has entered the Early Veiled Shore. The probability of Rare and Unique Early Living Marine Lifeforms manifesting has increased.|

|Warning: Population Limit of the Early Veiled Shore exceeded. To stabilize equilibrium, progressive waves of Early Living Marine Lifeforms will be drawn until the limit is restored.|

...!

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