The Primordial Record

Chapter 1745: The Worldviews That Define Ages

Fifty thousand years went by, a blink of an eye for Rowan, but for mortals, this was a very long time. Many generations of the Elythrii had gone by, and Rowan was watching the fascinating process by which many of his children, who were strong of will, were beginning to find themselves after they had died and returned multiple times.

Transformation was difficult, and for his children to become Origin Lifeforms, they would have to sacrifice something of themselves to reach this level, and there were remarkably few individuals who could keep their previous lives through the cycle of death and rebirth.

Rowan had expected that only when these new Origin Lifeforms attained true immortality at a higher-dimensional realm would they be able to reconcile all the memories of their past, and this would be what was needed for them to finally seize their fate and attain their destiny, and if they were lucky and tenacious, touch the ninth-dimensional realm.

Still, it showed that with the seeds of potential inside of them, even Rowan could be wrong, because some of the Elythrii were already beginning to recall their past, although in a much more limited manner.

Rowan thought he could recognize multiple Elythrii that were building closer connections to their past, but he did not interfere or try to discern who they were; he allowed everything to proceed as it should.

After fifty thousand years, the Elythrii civilization has advanced. Tribes have become city-states, then nations. They have mastered agriculture, metallurgy, and early machinery. The instinctual magic of the past is now a formalized practice, though still more art than science.

They had fully conquered a single continent, and probes were being sent to the other four continents, but it would take a long time for their society to gather the strength to conquer the entire five continents.

A million years ago, the Archai had chosen to weaken the creatures on the continent from which the Elythrii arose due to time constraints. If they did not do this, then the developmental period of the Elythrii would not be measured in tens of thousands of years, but in hundreds of millions.

Some of the beasts on the other continents had the power to wipe out entire nations in a single breath, and so to ensure a relatively stable societal growth period, beasts on the chosen continents were restricted to having powers that could be measured at the fifth-dimensional level.

However, this showed the profound depths of the Origin Land because these beasts with the power of fifth-dimensional immortals were not even higher-dimensional creatures, and the Elythrii that fought and conquered them were still mortals who hardly lived beyond a few centuries.

Rowan could not say anything about other Realities and the power of their mortal beings, but in Eosah’s Reality, even at the height of her power, when she opened her Essence to her children, they could never reach this level.

Rowan had intentionally made the Elythriin out of clay and did not give them any advantage, but that of potential and growth, and they had not failed his expectations.

After fifty thousand years, the Elythrii are now a race of philosophers, engineers, and mages. The Fragment of Potential drives them not just to survive, but to question. The great mystery of their existence is the dichotomy between the logical, predictable world of cause and effect and the seemingly illogical, will-driven world of magic.

Why did nature follow specific rules, yet with the force of will, they could bend these rules to their advantage?

Many such similar queries fueled the fires of advancement and innovation, creating sparks of wisdom and growth that were truly fascinating to witness.

Yet, Rowan knew that this would inevitably lead to conflicts as these two paths were not necessarily mutually exclusive, and he was right.

It was not long before two great thought processes began to divide the Elythrii, which led to the first great split in their society.

This great split was between “magic” and “science.”

The Elythrii society, which adopted the mindset of magic, created the Thaumaturgic Academies to explore this path.

They sought to codify magic. They study the old rituals, map the ley lines of Aether that flow across the planet, and categorize types of magical effect. They develop a system of Glyphs—symbols that help focus the mind and shape the Aether with greater precision.

A trained Glyph-Weaver can now reliably create a shield of force or light a fire with a gesture and a word. But they hit a wall. The power is still limited by the wielder’s innate strength of will and the local density of Aether. It is a personal, subjective science.

Rowan found it fascinating that many of the leaders of these academies were usually lower-dimensional immortals in their past lives.

The second group called themselves the Natural Philosophers. They rejected the “superstition” of magic, thinking that everything could he explained as a natural law of reality.

They begin to uncover the fundamental laws of their universe through observation, experimentation, and mathematics. They discover gravity, thermodynamics, and the atomic nature of matter. They built steam engines, telescopes, and microscopes.

They see a realm that runs like a perfect, predictable clockwork and believe that only by digging deeper would they understand all the mysteries of life.

But they, too, hit a wall. Their equations are beautiful, but they cannot explain the well-documented effects of thaumaturgy. Ether is a measurable energy field that permeates everything but doesn’t obey the known laws of physics.

The conflict between these two worldviews defines the age. The Potential drives them forward, creating a tension that demands resolution. Rowan could see this coming from a thousand miles away; it was inevitable that these two separate thought processes would have to clash, and something greater would arise from the ashes.

Centuries passed, and the schism only seemed to grow wider until two young Elythrii, whose background came from the two fields of thought, came together to explore a path forward. These two believed that they were looking at the same truths but were using two different lenses.

A genius natural philosopher, Kaelen, and a rogue Glyph-Weaver, Lyra, and it did not take long for them to be ostracized from their respective fields for proposing heresy.

Looking at Kaelen, Rowan thought he saw the shadows of Andar inside him, but he shook his head sadly, knowing it was impossible, his son that should have been here was gone, and he deliberately chose not to know the details of any of the Elythrii’s past, knowing that ultimately it was the most significant expression of the freedom he had given them to define who they were at the end.

Kaelen and Lyra came together and, in a hidden laboratory, they combined their knowledge. Lyra inscribes incredibly complex, three-dimensional glyphs onto a chamber made of crystallized Ether-conductive rock. Kaelen designs a system to contain and measure the energy output. Their experiment took decades, but they eventually succeeded.

They found a way not just to draw on ambient Ether; they create a reaction that generates it, tapping into the potential of the quantum vacuum itself.

Watching the reactor hum to life, providing limitless clean energy, these two, already in their old age, held themselves close. Their time together did not just create something new; they also found peace in each other.

Before they passed away and contributed their findings to society, they discovered that the glyphs used in this reactor had evolved. They did not just focus on will; they are a technology that interfaces with the substratum of reality itself.