Crossing the gateway felt like walking through the heart of something still breathing.
Weavings of Origin flickered all around them, light and shadow weaving with too much volatility, like threads spun by trembling hands.
Noah stepped forward silently, his gaze watching the shifting patterns with curiosity and calculation. He watched them shift again. Once, twice. Then he frowned.
They were... changing.
Next to him, Sigrid’s brow furrowed deeply, the sharpness in her irises deepening. "They’re not being subtle anymore," she said, voice burning with quiet disdain. "They’re converging paths and trying to push everyone together to ensure I don’t have that much time here..."
Noah nodded, coldness blooming behind his eyes. "Let them. It won’t change too much."
The words came as a whisper, but they felt heavy enough to ground even the most stubborn of forces.
And then, the light around them broke.
In the next moment, they were no longer within the thin corridors of the Labyrinth. They stood at the heart of something vast- something immense.
A dome. Tens of thousands of miles in diameter, sealed with translucent membranes of frozen white and Origin light.
It was cold.
Even for Primarchs, it would be cold!
Snow storms danced in the silence. Frost blanketed everything with stillness. Peaceful, at a glance. Suffocating, if one stared too long.
Four great Trees of Yggdrasil, thick as mountains, emerged from the circular edges of the realm. Their roots coiled like ancient serpents beneath the glacial floor, and their trunks rose upward, spiraling inwards, meeting and tangling into one another at the center.
Their leaves shimmered in hues of white and gold, dropping light that clung to the wind like slow-falling embers.
Thousands of golems hovered across the cold skyspace. Statues at first glance- until they moved. Crimson-gold light radiated from within them, their forms humanoid and scaled, their arms ending in gleaming axes of crystal frost. Sentinels.
And beneath them...
Wriggling.
Twisting. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖
Resting.
Were more than a dozen massive forms.
Colored wrong. Shaped wrong. Moved wrong.
Imitation Mutated Inevitabilities.
Their tendrils coiled around themselves like silk wrapped too tightly, pulsating with low hunger. They hadn’t stirred yet. But the air knew they would soon enough.
And when they did, a bloodbath would unfold!
Because others had already begun to arrive.
The stillness was a lie. There was noise buried beneath the quiet.
Noah turned, and Sigrid turned with him.
In the far distance, along the high branch of one of the Yggdrasil Trees, the clash of Archetypes could be felt like thunder beneath skin.
And there- bloody gold and shivering white, they saw something unfolding.
A battle.
A massacre.
Master Etheopa stood at the front, her Garden of Gold spread open behind her like a field of blooming stars. Her arm shook as she held a great sigil-covered blade. Her other arm...gone. Her face, half-caved in. Blood ran down from her temple like ink over marble.
An illusion of a Tower of Origin amidst a Garden of Origin flashed unstably around her!
Behind her were 15 Primarchs. Shaking. Furious. Shocked. Bleeding. One already missing a leg.
Across from her, on the curved branch of the tree, stood monsters.
Master Hannibal. His golden cloak fluttered like shadows set aflame. In one hand, he held the writhing figure of Kalysta, her arms clawing weakly, her head dangling from his grip.
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