She paused, the memory clearly still affecting her despite the eons passed.
"I took it calmly. What else could I do? I asked why- why hunt someone like me? What could THE Living Paradox hope to achieve by erasing something that had existed since existence learned to want?"
Her voice carried bitter amusement.
"It replied with mockery that cut deeper than the cessation it was imposing. ’A creature like you would never understand. What I’m doing is actually mercy- you won’t have to be there for the Fallout.’ As if my erasure was kindness, protecting me from something worse."
WAA!
Noah’s weavings buzzed as he heard this!
What could someone as astonishing as Khor not understand?
And what was meant by...Fallout?!
The weight of ancient exhaustion colored her words.
"At that moment, I just felt so tired. Tired of consuming without satisfaction. Tired of being feared. Tired of existing as appetite without fulfillment. I could have struggled- my nature alone should have made me fight. I could have called upon countless Inevitabilities that owed me their existence. I could have Hungered. I could have made THE Living Paradox work for my cessation."
She sighed, the sound containing regrets that transcended time.
"But I was tired. So I did nothing. I simply sighed and accepted what was coming. After that, all that came was nothing- not even the memory of having been."
Her consciousness fragment pulsed with intensity that hadn’t been there before.
"When I think about that choice now, with this second chance at existence, I regret it profoundly. I wish I hadn’t just done nothing. I wish I had done something. Anything. I wish... I had done Everything."
BOOM!
Her voice suddenly blazed with fierce determination.
"In the face of utter helplessness, will you do nothing, Outsider? Because even in utter helplessness, you still have Everything. Every Everything you haven’t given away, every aspect of your existence that remains. You could fight with Everything you have, even if fighting seems impossible. Even if it is impossible. If you still die...hey, at least you gave it your everything."
BOOM!
The words resonated through Noah’s frozen form with force- heavy force.
He didn’t necessarily need the encouragement- he would always fight regardless of odds. But her words were consoling nonetheless, a reminder that even the impossible had been attempted before.
Even though he couldn’t move his lips or body, he roared within his existence.
He roared against the helplessness that sought to define him.
He roared with Tyranny that refused to acknowledge any authority but its own.
He roared with Quintessence that insisted on the fundamental rightness of his continued existence.
He roared with Infinity that suggested limits were merely suggestions he hadn’t gotten around to ignoring yet.
His entire existence lit up internally like a star being born in slow motion. Every Tower of Osmont blazed with defiance!
His Atlas burned with maps to pasts and futures where he wasn’t suppressed. His heart beat with rhythm that insisted movement was his right, not Lysander’s to grant or deny.
He sought to defy something that couldn’t be defied- the aura, the Haki of something with countless quadrillions of complexity. The mathematical impossibility of it didn’t matter. Mathematics had been wrong about him before.
The Principle of Perpetual Harvest stirred within him, recognizing effort beyond effort, the attempt to move when movement had been forbidden by existence itself.
This was what it meant to be without fear or doubt. Not the absence of danger or uncertainty, but the refusal to let either stop you from trying!
Oh!
Even frozen, even suppressed to complexity of 1, even with his very existence hanging on the whim of a being who could unmake him with a thought- Noah fought!
Because that’s what he did.
That’s who he was.
The Early Creature... who would now attempt impossible resistance.
Noah’s defiance caused his internal existence to buzz with rebellion!
With glorious, quintessential defiance!
Then, an instant later, something that had been dormant stirred to life.
|The slumbering weavings of Cheats have been awoken|
|An unprecedented situation has triggered this slumbering authority|
HUUM!
Cheats.
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