Chapter 5854: Convergence

<THE Maker of Scales>

The moment Vakochev stood upon the lid of his coffin, THE Unwithering Grove bent under an immovable presure!

A vast weight rolled out of him in every direction, steady as a rising tide. Beneath it, the verdant light of the canopy dimmed. The snow hanging suspended in the air tumbled downward in a sudden rush, as if the sky had released its grip! Across the clearing, thousands of Provenance Lifeforms pressed their foreheads into the drifts and held still, the Provenance of Life inside them flattening into silence.

Then the weight erupted into waves!

HUUM!

They poured off his bronze skin one after another, each surge vaster than the last, rolling out across the floating Elsedimension and over its edges into the dark beyond! Ancient trees taller than mountain ranges swayed like grass in a summer gale. Dimensions nested within their branches rocked in their nests! Far below the island, roots trailing for light years swung in unified rhythm, caught in an unstoppable current.

Above the clearing, the nine blinding suns flickered!

THE Clockless King’s brilliance hardened into absolute stillness!

The waves kept climbing. They surged past the Ancient suns and reached ever higher, until the bronze-skinned sovereign standing atop a simple coffin seemed to match their stature, or look down upon them from above!

Upon his head, the small round obsidian slime rippled, deeply pleased.

Vakochev looked down.

Beneath the coffin, the clearing parted in absolute silence!

The snow-covered loam, the roots, and the ancient floor of the Grove opened wide, revealing a boundless sea beneath.

Obsidian. Endless! Its surface lay flawlessly smooth and perfectly black, plunging past any floor the Ancient suns could illuminate, reaching further than the Grove, further than the Legacy itself. It swallowed the suns’ glare whole. And from deep within its core came a slow, rhythmic pulse, like a primordial heart that had been beating long before existense had names to give it.

THE Primordial Source!

And every thread of it...held Vakochev’s Immensity.

IMMENSITY!

Across that mirror surface, black stairs rose into being.

They ascended from the obsidian depths one step at a time, each slab humming with dense resonance, forming a long straight line down into the dark below.

Vakochev stepped down onto the first stair!

|THE Maker of Scales speaks.|

|"Follow me."|

He left them to decide for themselves whether to follow as naturally, they followed!

Nine Ancient lights drew inward, condensing their radiance to fit, and drifted down after him onto the stairs of the Source. Behind them, the floor of the Grove knit together like water closing over a dropped stone, leaving the thousands of meditators kneeling in the cold while the emerald glow returned to the leaves above.

The stairs plunged deep into the abyss!

They descended through the obsidian sea, which parted around them dry and weightless, cradling their descent like an immense hand. The pulse of the Source grew louder with every step. Massive currents drifted past in the dark, warm and ancient, bearing phenomena beyond the vocabulary of the suns. Distant sparks flickered like the earliest seeds of light, alongside drifting contours that suggested the first drafts of Existential law!

THE Sun Who Remembers Before Light, the oldest among them, let out a low sound of pure awe at the sight of unique Immensity.

Vakochev walked with measured cadence. Upon his head, the slime rode in silence, its surface rippling with the pulse of the Source as if keeping time.

The march continued through the deep.

Then the stairs ended!

At the bottom of the stairs lay a vast flat expanse of the Source, covered in deep snow.

The suns halted in place!

Snow lay thick across the black obsidian for miles in every direction, falling out of the void onto a foundation where only warm void belonged. The bite of that chill was unmistakable.

THE Long Night had taken root inside the Primordial Source!

And in the center of the drifts, a titan hung bound!

It stood gaunt and towering, frozen through its entire frame. Its body resembled old ice carved in an ancient age, pale grey and translucent. Beneath that frosted shell, thousands upon thousands of tally marks burned in cold cerulean fire from its heels to its throat. Icicles formed a jagged crown atop its narrow head.

Where its eyes belonged, two small scales hung suspended, frozen pans tipping slowly upon icy beams.

In one hand it held a tally-board of ice, its surface covered in more tally marks.

In the other it held nothing. That hand was empty and reaching, as if it had been reaching for something when the chains closed.

Those chains were forged from the Source itself. Long black links of obsidian ran out of the snow and wound around its limbs and throat and chest, humming with the same deep pulse, and wherever they touched it, the ice of its body smoked!

Its scale-eyes turned, slowly, and found Vakochev.

|THE Maker of Scales speaks.|

|"This is an Existential Epitropos."|

The nine suns gathered their light into taut points.

|"Its distinction is THE Assessor of Unpaid Winters. It tends the flow of THE Long Night through a region of existence, as many like it do. It came looking for me."|

Vakochev regarded the chained figure with the calm detachment of an artisan inspecting a tool.

|"It meant to weigh me. To judge what I owe for the Scales I made, and send its winter to collect. Many like it are agents of THE Long Night. They walk the cold toward whatever they decide is owed."|

He turned to face the nine.

|"I care little for the cold itself. The cold is part of nature. Winters come. Things that have grown too old fall away, and new things grow in the spring. I have seen it many times. I do not resent it."|

His dark eyes held them.

|"But when greed is woven into it, the winter changes. When arrogance is woven into it. Envy. Pride. Every weaving of a living thing’s wanting, braided into the flow. Then THE Long Night stops being a natural cycle. It becomes a catastrophe."|

Snow drifted down between them.

|"Getting your hand on an Existential Epitropos is difficult. But if and when you do, the cold across a vast stretch of existence can be eased. And some of them hold Shards of IT, scattered across existence after the path broke and gathered up by hands that should never have held them."|

He looked at the chained thing in the snow.

|"These can be your targets. Take them, and you will take away a great deal of unfair adversity from existence."|

A pause.

|"I am all for adversity. Adversity is how anything becomes worth being. But I am against wanton destruction. I even favor THE Long Night, and every hardship it brings."|

His voice stayed level.

|"So long as it is natural."|

...!

The nine Ancient suns looked at one another.

Their distinct hues revolved through the black, conversing in an ancient grammar that predated the founding of modern Legacies. The Gardener’s soft green leaned toward the Tide-Mother’s red-gold; the Unsetting Eye held the Weaver’s restless colors; the Crowned Hunger’s pale light went thin and sharp.

At last, one of them spoke aloud.

|THE Weaver of Unfinished Roads speaks.|

|"How can we find these Epitropoi?"|

The answer came straight from the crown of Vakochev’s head!

The small round obsidian slime rippled once. Then twice. Then its surface split into a thin, wide, delighted mouth!

|Masamuk, THE Dimensional Eater, speaks.|

|"Find out where Immense Ones and others are dying the most,"| it said, in a voice like a pebble dropped into a deep well. |"You will find them."|

The slime’s mouth closed. It settled back down into its round shape and went still.

Every one of them turned to look at the chained Epitropos!

It had been listening. Its scale-eyes had stopped tipping. They hung level now, both pans perfectly still, fixed on Vakochev, and the tally marks glowing through its body burned brighter, cold and blue and hateful!

|THE Assessor of Unpaid Winters burns with hatred.|

Its voice was thin and dry, like the scrape of a blade across a frozen pond.

|"The night is cold and endless, and judgment shall come for all."|

The snow around it began, very slowly, to rise into the air!

|"Regardless of how much karma you accrued across existence... wrongs must be righted. Debts must be paid."|

Its empty hand strained against the obsidian chains, reaching toward Vakochev, and the ice of its fingers smoked and cracked!

|"Existence must extinguish and heal... whether you like it or not."|

...!

Vakochev looked at it.

Only looked, for a long moment, with his dark, calm eyes. On his head, Masamuk rippled once.

Then he lifted one hand, and waved it!

BOOM!

The Primordial Source answered!

It rose out of the obsidian around the Epitropos in rivers. Long black currents, lifting out of the sea, and they were burning. With infinity, rather than fire. Every river blazed with a light that had no end to it, boundless and black and blinding all at once, as if each current carried the whole of everything that had ever been or could be, and it was too much to look at directly. The nine suns dimmed in its glare.

SHIING!

The rivers wound around the Epitropos: around its legs and chest, around the reaching hand, the tally-board, the narrow crowned head. They wound over the obsidian chains and through them and past them, tighter and tighter, until the frozen thing in the snow was wrapped in burning source from its feet to the tips of its icicle crown, and only its scale-eyes showed between the currents, tipping wildly now, back and forth, back and forth!

The snow around it stopped rising, and fell, and burned away before it touched the Source.

|"Existence weighed itself on what I built for a whole Cycle. Every Legacy. Every life. Every debt. And at the end of it, things like you came to tell me what I owe?"|

The burning rivers tightened another turn!

|"Right and wrong live outside every tally. Outside every winter, every seat, every debt carved into ice. They are not existence’s to keep, either."|

His dark eyes held the swinging scales.

|"They belong to the one who stands up and decides them. And I have stood up every Age since I was made, and I will go on standing."|

On his head, Masamuk’s surface curled into something like a sad smile.

|"I will decide for myself what is right and what is wrong. The cold will not decide it. The Night will not decide it. And you will not."|

He turned away from it, toward the nine Ancient suns waiting in the black.

|"Like always,"| Vakochev said, |"I will persevere."|

Behind him, the Assessor of Unpaid Winters hung in its rivers of burning source, bound tighter than any chain could bind, its scale-eyes still swinging, kept.

For now!

---

At this moment, Vakochev paused!

Something had touched the edge of his attention. Far off, in another stretch of the Source, a presence had arrived where only the invited could arrive at all. Two presences.

He turned his head, slightly, toward it. Then he looked back at the nine Ancient suns hanging in the black, and nodded to them, courteously, as a host nods to guests at a table.

|"Please excuse me. I have other guests."|

He glanced once at the Assessor of Unpaid Winters, bound in its burning rivers.

|"You may study the nature of this Epitropos here, and familiarize yourselves with it."|

...!

Then he was gone!

His departure came without a step or a sound. The snow where he had stood was simply empty air! Only the small round obsidian slime remained, hanging in the empty space at the height of his head, untroubled by the loss of its seat. It rippled once, settled, and stayed exactly where it was.

And yet the nine suns could still feel Vakochev.

His presence lay across the whole obsidian sea, vast and calm and patient, pressing on everything. It was in the pulse of the Source, in the burning rivers around the Assessor, in the black itself. He had left, and he was here.

THE Clockless King’s light flickered once in silent appraisal.

—

Elsewhere in THE Primordial Source, far from the heavy snow, the obsidian sea lay calm and still, and two figures stood on it.

The first was a woman wrapped in the light of an endless dusk. Two golden halos turned slowly before her face, one inside the other, hiding it completely. On one hand she wore a ring, a band twisted into a single endless loop, spiked along its curve. Dusk clung to her like a shawl. Where she stood, the black of the Source went faintly amber, as if the light of an endless sunset were leaking out of her into it.

THE REMINISCING WIDOW!

The second figure stood a step behind her, drawn upon the darkness like a blueprint from a draftsman’s pen. Tall, lean, made of fine lines of pale gold, every line precise and measured, every joint and angle exact. Through his chest, faintly, glowed the same twisted loop as the ring on the Widow’s hand. His eyes were two small circles of light, steady as the lenses of an instrument, already studying the foundations around him!

Atlas!

Vakochev arrived in front of them as if he had always been standing there!

He looked at them both, calmly, and waited.

|THE REMINISCING WIDOW greets THE Maker of Scales.|

Her voice was quiet and even.

|"You sent a message to those who have or had weavings tightly wound to THE SLEEPLESS FIEND and the others of THE Keepers of Existence."|

The halos before her face turned.

|"I bring you an Engineer they killed long ago."|

Vakochev’s dark eyes moved from her to the figure of gold lines behind her. Then back to her.

They stayed on her.

|"You also stem from THE Keepers."|

His voice stayed level and cold as deep stone, and the obsidian sea beneath the Widow’s feet shuddered under sudden strain!

|"I could split you in half right here."|

BOOM!

The Source answered his words before he finished them! The black around the Widow tightened, the dusk-light leaking out of her suddenly pressed back into her skin, and for one long breath the whole stretch of obsidian sea held perfectly still, waiting to see whether he meant it.

Still, the Widow held her ground.

Behind her halos, something in the shape of her face changed. A frown, perhaps.

|"You can try,"| she said evenly. |"You are still an injured old thing."|

The dusk around her flared, once, against the pressing black!

|"I have since distanced myself from THE Keepers. And now..."|

She left the rest unsaid.

The figure of gold lines stepped forward, past her shoulder, into the space between them.

|Atlas, THE Great Engineer, seeks to calm things down.|

His voice was dry and precise, and very tired.

|"The young ones have done a lot."|

He looked at Vakochev with his steady, measuring eyes.

|"Leave the rest of it to me. I bring knowledge, and information. I had wanted to do everything myself. But things are moving much faster than I anticipated. So..."|

The lines of his body shifted slightly, as if recalculating.

|"I used to walk among all of those who split your Immensity and nearly collapsed you. I knew their halls. I knew their names. I knew which of them hated which. But now, things are murky. There are many more factions involved. Many more groups. More than there were when I died."|

Vakochev waved one hand, dismissively.

|"If you came to tell me that THE Keepers and other Legacies have made alliances with forces of THE Long Night, I already suspect it."|

The black of the Source eased, slightly, around the Widow.

|"Existence is vast. Anything is possible. THE Long Night has been corrupted with every kind of ideal, and where there are ideals, there are agreements to be made. None of it surprises me."|

He looked from Atlas to the Widow, and back again.

|"I agreed to meet you for another reason. THE SLEEPLESS FIEND, yes. Information on the others, yes. But also..."|

For the first time since he had risen from his coffin, something moved behind his calm.

|"Riven. THE Sealed One."|

WAA!

The Source went still around all three of them!

|"Why am I hearing whispers of that thing more and more, all across existence? What project are THE Keepers running with him? He should not have been...so important."|

His dark eyes held Atlas’s lenses.

|"That is what I want to know most. Tell me that, and then we can talk about any other plans."|

...!

For a long moment, Atlas stayed silent.

The fine gold lines of his body held perfectly still. Then, slowly, they began to shift, angles adjusting.

|"To answer that, I have to go further back than Riven. Further back than THE Keepers. Further back than me."|

His lens-eyes turned from Vakochev to the black of the Source around them.

|"You know the story of the first hand."|

The Widow’s halos stopped turning!

|"Before there were Legacies. Before there were Cycles worth counting. Before I was born, and long before I died, IT was already there. And one being reached out and took hold of IT. The first hand. The first to hold the pen."|

The lines of his face sharpened.

|"It stood at the edge of everything. Absolute authorship. A sky without a ceiling. Everything open to its pen. It had won completely. More than any of us ever will."|

|"It looked at what it held. Once."|

A pause.

|"And then it gouged out its own trueness. Its own origin. Tore them out of itself with its own hand, and ended, in the very moment it had won."|

The obsidian sea pulsed beneath them, slow and deep.

|"Everyone who tells that story stops there. A cautionary tale. The greatest victory in existence, thrown away in a breath, for reasons beyond anyone’s understanding."|

Atlas’s lens-eyes came back to Vakochev, steady and brigth!

|"I spent a long time asking a different question. Less why it did it, and more what happened to what it tore out."|

The black went very quiet!

|"A trueness lingers, Maker of Scales. So does an origin. Especially one that held IT. They fell somewhere. And they are still there. A trueness with no one inside it. An origin that belongs to nothing."|

He let that settle.

|"THE Keepers have been looking for them since before I was born."|

Then his voice dropped, dry and precise and very tired.

|"And now you ask me why whispers of Riven are spreading across existence. Why they would build a project around a thing like him."|

|"Riven was split from the start. Empty in his center. They...may have gotten lucky and found a sliver of an unfathomable legend to fit inside him. The rest is a mystery."|

The gold lines of Atlas’s body locked into absolute stillness once more.

Beside him, the Widow stood utterly still. But the dusk around her had gone dim, and the amber it bled into the Source faded to a pale thread.

Vakochev stood upon the black sea without moving a muscle!

For the second time since he had risen from his coffin, something moved behind his calm. This time it stayed a breath longer before it was gone.

Atlas continued.

|"I wanted to confirm it myself as at this time, I am actually looking at a body of Riven, protected by 5 Immense Ones. The Widow and are are holding them back with THE MATRIARCH OF INK as if you want to have more straight answers, do you want to intervene?"

...!

Around the three of them, the Primordial Source pulsed once!