The Primordial Record

Chapter 2191  The Screaming Void

The words of Enoch were not just words; they carried power that made even the void outside of Existence scream.

Every word he spoke was defining what Existence would be, and this scream was of the fundamental concepts of creation floating across the void like little motes of dust screaming, as they were being torn apart and stitched back together in patterns that were nothing but madness.

Eos sat upon his throne of truth, the Origin Tree rising behind him like a spine made of worlds, and Enoch stood before him was a cathedral of suffering that had begun to bloom with wounds that wept darkness.

If the core of his being was not truth, then the words of Enoch alone would have been enough to corrupt him and whatever he wanted to create.

The screaming void pressed against the shrinking Existence, and they could not enter. To a lesser immortal, what was happening here would resemble a battle of domains, but it was something far deeper than this.

For a long moment, neither moved. Then Eos raised his hand, and the ten thousand lights of his crown began to spin.

“I have seen what you are,” Eos said, and his voice resonated with every truth that had ever been spoken. “I have seen the hunger that drives you. The loneliness that forged you. The fear that became you.”

Enoch’s featureless face tilted, and the spiral galaxies of End that were his eyes began to accelerate.

“You have seen nothing,” he replied, with vast irritation in his voice, “You have glimpsed the shadow of my shadow and called it understanding. You know nothing of what I am. What I have become.”

Then he attacked, one moment he had been talking, and the next his body tore through the distance like a violation of causality, due to the fact that his movement was shattering both the past and the future, leaving only this moment behind.

Eos would not be able to reach into the past or the future to save him as Enoch’s form folded through dimensions that had no names, through spaces between spaces that even the Luminious had feared to tread, and his hand transformed into a claw of compressed bone and stolen essence to close around Eos’s throat.

This was not a move that could be avoided because the moment it began, it had already ended, and if the target of this attack was not durable enough to bear this blow, they perished.

At the level at which they were battling, even if it appeared as if they were dodging a blow, they were not, since every blow made by either party must connect, and dodging meant shifting a part of their body from one part to another.

The Origin Tree shuddered. Worlds that had been growing on its branches flickered, their light dimming as the weight of Enoch’s presence pressed down on them.

Eos did not struggle. It appeared as if he did not want to fight as he looked at Enoch with his ten thousand eyes, and in each one, Enoch saw a different reflection of himself.

However, this look was the attack.

Using the basis of his crown, Eos reflected what Enoch could have been without the power of End, as he alone was the only one worthy enough to see the path that Origin could take for all beings.

In one Existence, Enoch was a creator, in another a dreamer, a father, a monster, a tree, a king, a beggar…

Every one of these truths was branded into the consciousness of Enoch, and he shuddered before he laughed coldly.

“You cannot kill me with your gaze,” Enoch snarled. “I am beyond such petty…”

“You are afraid,” Eos interrupted, and the words held no accusation, only truth, because Eos, when needed, could speak no lie. “You have always been afraid. From the moment the Great One shattered you, from the moment you were scattered across the void, from the moment you became the end of all things… You have been running. Running from yourself. Running from the truth. Running from the possibility that you were wrong and the thing that you are becoming was not what you truly desired.”

Enoch’s grip tightened on Eos’s throat, and the roots of the Origin Tree began to crack.

“I was not wrong,” he hissed. “I was never wrong. The Great One created me to be the end. The Luminious were shattered so that I could become whole. Everything that has happened, every Existence that has ended, every life that has been consumed… it was all necessary. It was all designed. It was all me.”

Eos smiled, and in his smile, Enoch saw something he had not expected to see.

Pity.

“You believe that,” Eos said. “You have believed it for so long that the belief has become a cage. A prison of your own making. And you have been sitting in that prison, telling yourself that the walls are the only thing keeping you safe.”

He reached up, and his hand closed around Enoch’s wrist.

“But prisons have doors, Enoch. And doors can be opened. I see there is nothing left in you to rescue; you leave me no choice.”

He pulled, and Existence cracked.

From behind Eos, there was a roar, and Existence was shattered, and the battered form of the Ouroboros Serpents emerged, their bodies filled with cracks and blackened by the power of End.

And then that crack began to widen as their bodies bulged; it was as if there were something about to be born from the remnants of their bodies.

Enoch could not even understand how the serpents had survived when the force being exerted by Eos surged exponentially.

There was nothing supernatural about his grip; it was just sheer force that reached a level where it shattered everything.

“Your grip, Enoch,” Eos sighed, “Is a little too soft. You have spent all your life fighting weaklings; now you face an equal.”

Cracks radiated from Enoch’s hand and radiated up his body, and his cry of rage was silenced as his body exploded, blasting him out of the shrinking Existence and into the deep void.

The rage of Enoch and the calm heart of Eos radiated into the void, and their intent to do battle created a battlefield, a canvas upon which two beings who had transcended the limits of Existence were painting with the colors of creation and destruction.

Everything that came before this moment was just a prelude leading to it, and now it was all crashing down.

Eos rose from his throne, and the Origin Tree rose with him. Its roots tore through the fabric of non-existence, anchoring themselves in concepts that had no names. Its branches reached toward the darkness, and where they touched, the darkness remembered what it had been before Enoch had corrupted it, before the Luminious had poisoned it, and before the Great One had broken it.

Enoch saw these changes in the void, and he laughed before his massive form began to unravel and expand at the same time.

Each cell of his being became a Reality of hunger. Each thought became a black hole of need. Each breath became the silence after the last scream of a billion dying Existences.

“You want to see what I am?” Enoch’s voice was the frequency of annihilation, as he was the true father of oblivion. “Then see.”