The Primordial Record

Chapter 2192  The Original Sin

Enoch opened his core, revealing the place where End had been nesting since the beginning of time, feeding on his essence, growing fat on his purpose.

What emerged from that core was not a thing. It was an anti-thing, a concept that could not exist, a truth that could not be spoken, a reality that had been rejected by every Existence that had ever been born.

It was the original sin.

“I looked to the side and saw my brother’s field ripe with crop and endless bounty, while I was left to toil all day with the beasts, and so I got tired of watching all the bounties of creation flow through his hands alone, and I came from behind him and tore him to pieces, and his flesh has satiated me from the dawn of time to the end of it.”

Eos froze as these words and the impression that was deeper than even memory slammed into his mind. For the first time, he had truly heard the mind of End.

This was the moment when the Great One had first looked at Origin and seen not a partner, or even a tool, but a resource. It was also the moment when End had been twisted from a tool into a weapon. Eos thought it was a thing of great pity that End had forgotten what it was like to be itself before greed took over the core of what he was, but this should be the price of betrayal and endless hunger.

In that impression left in the void, Eos could also see the moment when the Luminious had been shattered and scattered across the void, their screams echoing through the spaces between spaces, never to be forgotten.

Eos felt the weight of that moment press down on him, and for the first time since the fusion, he understood what he was fighting.

He was fighting a freaking wound

A wound that had been festering since the beginning of time, growing larger with every Existence it consumed, growing hungrier with every life it ended. A wound that had been waiting for someone to come and heal it, and had given up waiting so long ago that it had forgotten what healing felt like.

Its master did not care. End was just a means to an end, since it did not even adopt the power of End; the Great One had just broken it apart and buried the shards in the hearts of every Luminious.

“You are not my enemy,” Eos said, and his voice was the voice of the Origin Tree, which represented the voice of every life that had ever been lived. It was Origin given a voice for the first time. “You are my brother. We were born from the same darkness, we were forged in the same fire, and we were broken by the same hand.”

He reached out, and his hand touched the core of Enoch’s being. He touched End, and he smiled sadly, “But you must be put down, and I do this not with happiness… when you perish, I shall be the only one who weeps for you.”

Enoch’s eyes widened in rage because he understood that for a moment, Eos had bypassed him and spoke to a part of his being that even he did not recognize, and with a roar that echoed from the beginning of time to its end, he attacked, and Eos also gave his own roar of battle and attacked as well.

The spot where the two collided ceased to exist

Two beings who had transcended the limits of existence, who had become something that had never been seen before in any Existence, who were more than gods, more than creators, more than anything… they met in battle, and this meeting created the first true nothingness.

The Origin Tree’s roots tore through the fabric of non-existence and spread the light of Origin through the void, where they touched, new dimensions were born. Dimensions of pure light. Dimensions of pure truth. Dimensions of pure hope.

If these dimensions were allowed to grow, they would weaken End and cleanse the darkness from the void, and Enoch responded by unmaking these dimensions as quickly as they were being created.

From his body came massive corrupted mouths that began to chant and sing in the language of End; this was an anti-song. A frequency that unwove the very concept of frequency, a vibration that canceled the possibility of vibration, a sound that was the absence of sound.

The two forces met, and the void between Existences became a place where time flowed backward and forward simultaneously, and in that place, space folded into itself like origami made of screaming, as the laws of physics were not broken, they were practically ignored, treated as suggestions that had never been particularly convincing in the first place.

A dimension like this could never exist, and the beings that were born in that moment of the clash were some of the most powerful beings that had ever lived, and yet they all collapsed in the next instant, as this was just the beginning of the fight, and nothing could stand before the power of these two.

This moment was very brief, at least in the perception of Eos and Enoch, but the truth was that in this brief moment to them, the beings inside that dimension that had shattered had lived for trillions of cosmic eras, attained great civilization, and in the end, everything perished in fire and ash.

This had happened because the powers of Enoch and Eos were so complete that everything they created as a result of their presence was complete, and so even the time stream of these doomed dimensions was complete.

Eos’s crown blazed with ten thousand lights, each one a different truth, each one a different weapon. He struck with the Origin of Light, and the blow was the first sunrise, the first moment when darkness had been pushed back, the first hope that had ever been dreamed.

Enoch caught the blow with the palm of his hand, and he screamed in pain as his flesh sizzled, and remembered.

His flesh remembered what it had been like to be young, what it had been like to create without restraint and remorse, even when his body was being torn to pieces, and it showed him that at that moment, Enoch knew the meaning of love, because he gave of himself without considering the price.

“You cannot heal me,” Enoch snarled, but his voice cracked on the words. “I am beyond healing. I am beyond hope. I am beyond love.”

“I know…” Eos said flatly, “This is just my weapon.”