The massive tear remained open.
Worse, it began to expand.
The edges grew with the steady certainty of infection spreading, each moment allowing more of that terminal space to bleed into the Elemental Folds.
Who knew when it would be discovered by those with authority to act? How many more Dead Existences would step through before someone noticed? What would emerge when the tear grew large enough to accommodate things bigger than cat-shaped endings?
The glacial Wheels far, far away continued their spinning, unaware that their number had been reduced, unable to comprehend that death had learned to walk and had found their cold refreshing.
Somewhere, someone should have been monitoring such things.
Someone should have noticed reality tearing. Someone should have sounded alarms!
But everyone was preparing for the Kleos Concordat, and tears in existence would have to wait their turn for attention.
In these very same Transcendent Elemental Folds, countless distances from where death had torn through reality, lay the Heart of Elementals...a region where the fundamental forces of existence converged in displays of power that redefined grandeur.
In a corner of the Heart of Elementals.
The citadel rose from swirling maelstroms of pure element, each force maintaining its identity while contributing to the whole.
Towers of crystallized fire reached toward skies that burned with frozen lightning.
Spires of solid wind sang harmonies with structures built from liquid earth. Water flowed upward in architectural defiance, forming bridges between platforms of condensed light.
The entire structure exceeded Concordia in scale, housing millions of Living Elementals who cultivated amid auroras of authority that painted existence in colors.
Each tower represented mastery over a specific elemental expression. The Tower of Pyroclastic Rage housed those who pursued fire through anger. The Spire of Gentle Erosion taught water through patience. The Pinnacle of Atmospheric Pressure explored air through weight.
Hundreds of such structures created a city that was less built than perpetually becoming.
In the depths of this impossible citadel stood the Tower of Infinite Depths...a structure of water so pure it transcended the liquid state to become the concept of flow itself.
At its peak, in a chamber where every surface was carved from frozen tsunamis that somehow remained fluid, an entity watched the countless Living Elementals below with paternal satisfaction.
The chamber itself defied description...blue-gold thrones carved from crystallized storms, ornaments of captured rain that fell upward, windows that looked out onto oceans that existed in vertical orientation!
The floor was a single piece of water held in permanent stillness, solid enough to stand on yet transparent enough to see through to chambers below.
Duke Aquarius the Depth-Drinker stood at the chamber’s edge, his form shifting between states of water like an argument about what liquidity meant.
His distinction among Elemental Dukes came from having consumed more varieties of water than any other being...from the tears of dying stars to the first rain that fell on worlds being born.
"Do you look fondly upon all these Living Elementals? As if they are your own children?"
...!
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, making Duke Aquarius spin with shock that someone could enter his sanctum undetected.
When he turned, power already erupting to address this invasion, he found something that made his liquid form solidify in disbelief.
He did not sense Living Existential Authority, no Paradoxes, not Inevitabilities.
It was...
"Fold Dwellers?!"
The words escaped him as statement, question, and impossibility combined.
Before him stood two figures that shouldn’t exist at this level of power.
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