Chapter 4074: The Weight of Endless Service! III

Noah’s hand made contact with the Memory Stone’s surface, and immediately the three Early Living Existential Seed Glyphs on his body erupted with recognition.

The green-gold light they cast was acknowledgment of effort about to be transformed into something unprecedented!

|Grand Record Reconstruction Triggered|

|Effort to understand the past recognized by Principle of Perpetual Harvest|

|Memory experience enhanced beyond normal parameters|

|Warning: Consciousness immersion will exceed standard observation|

|Preparing for temporal-existential displacement…|

Before Noah could fully process these prompts, he felt his consciousness being pulled with the inexorable force of gravity asserting itself.

The world around him didn’t fade so much as become suddenly irrelevant, his awareness narrowing to a single point before exploding outward into something else entirely.

His eyes fluttered as sensation returned, but the sensation was wrong. Everything was wrong in the most fascinating way!

He stood in sunlight that felt younger, air that tasted of possibilities not yet foreclosed, on ground that hummed with vitality instead of age.

As his vision cleared, he found himself looking out across a grand Early Veiled Shore…but not his Shore, and not through his eyes.

The body he inhabited thrummed with power that dwarfed his current complexity.

Muscles that had been trained through millennia responded to thoughts that weren’t his. Hearts…multiple hearts, he realized with a start, beat in a rhythm that spoke of redundancy through paranoia. This was Kelgar’s body, but Kelgar as he had been, not the remnant they had encountered.

The blade in his hand caught his attention immediately. Where the Kelgar they had fought wielded a tattered thing that had forgotten its purpose, this weapon gleamed with intent that could cut concepts as easily as flesh.

The metal…if it could be called metal, seemed to exist in multiple states simultaneously, each edge representing a different possibility of severance.

This wasn’t just observing a memory. Through the power of the Seed of the Principle of Perpetual Harvest recognizing his effort to understand, Noah was experiencing the past as if he truly stood within it!

Around him, the Early Veiled Shore stretched in magnificence that made his own Shore seem quaint by comparison.

Golden sands that weren’t just golden but contained within each grain the potential for entire worlds. Trees that bore fruits capable of elevating not just existence but the very concept of what existence meant.

Yet despite this grandeur, an atmosphere of anxiety permeated everything. Dozens of Fold Dwellers moved about with the careful steps of those expecting catastrophe.

Some tended to plants with the desperate attention of those who knew this might be the last harvest. Others simply stood together in small groups, their expressions carrying the weight of impending loss.

Two Early Creatures stood near the Shore’s edge, and even from a distance, Noah could feel their power pressing against reality like hands against glass, ready to shatter through if needed. They spoke in low tones that carried despite their volume, their words creating ripples in space itself.

“Another seventeen Shores went dark yesterday,” one said, its form shifting between states as if unable to decide which dimension to primarily exist in.

“Twenty-three the day before,” the other replied, this one more stable but surrounded by an aura that suggested stability was a choice that could be revoked. “The pattern is accelerating.”

…!

Kelgar’s body moved without Noah’s input, drawn by purpose that transcended conscious decision. Each step carried him toward an Abode that made Noah’s breath catch…or would have if he controlled the breathing.

Where his Abode of the Early Creature was grand in its purposeful construction, this structure seemed to have grown rather than been built.

Walls that might have been crystallized time curved upward into towees that pierced clouds that existed specifically to be pierced. Windows opened onto views that shouldn’t have been possible from their positions, showing other Shores, other times, other possibilities.

Kelgar entered without hesitation, his body knowing every turn, every threshold, every dimensional fold that needed to be navigated.

The interior was even more impressive…spaces that existed within spaces, rooms that were bigger inside than the building that contained them, a library that somehow contained books that hadn’t been written yet.

And at the center of it all, in a chamber that felt like the heart of existence itself, stood Early Creature Morathis.

Noah, through Kelgar’s eyes, saw her fully for the first time, and understood immediately why this being had commanded such loyalty that her servant would continue serving even after death.

Her crimson hair resembled flames and the concept of combustion given keratin form, moving with its own light and heat that warmed without burning!

Her golden eyes contained depths that had seen the birth of ideas and the death of certainties. The feline ears that crowned her head twitched with awareness that transcended simple sound, hearing existence’s whispers directly.

But it was the nine fox-like tails spreading behind her that truly proclaimed her nature. Each one moved independently, weaving patterns in the air that might have been communication, might have been magic, might have been the fundamental code that reality ran on.

Yet for all her terrible beauty and regal bearing, she looked somber. Melancholy wrapped around her like a cloak she couldn’t remove.

“Master,” Kelgar’s voice emerged without Noah’s control, carrying emotion that made the word more than simple acknowledgment. “What troubles you?”

Morathis turned to face her Last Disciple fully, and her expression softened with affection that transcended the master-servant relationship.

“Tell me, Kelgar,” she began, “what do you think of THE Living Existences? THE Living Paradox, THE Living Concept, THE Living Dimensional, and all the others who wear THE as a crown?”

Kelgar’s body shifted, and Noah felt the thoughts forming…not his thoughts but the memory of thoughts, preserved in crystal and now replayed.

“It is… complex, Master.” Kelgar’s voice carried the careful consideration of someone who knew their words mattered.

“Early Creatures view them as necessary tyrants…beings whose power maintains the structure that allows us to exist, even as their whims could unmake us. We…you, respect them as one respects a storm: acknowledgment of power without affection.”

He paused, organizing thoughts that felt ancient despite being memory.

“Fold Dwellers see them differently. To most, THE Living Existences are myths made manifest, so far beyond comprehension that worship and terror become indistinguishable. They are the tyrants that actually answer, though their answers often reshape the question into tragedy.”

Another pause, longer this time.

“As for Living Existences themselves…the regular ones, not those who wear THE, they see their titled kin as either aspiration or impossibility. Something to strive toward while knowing the striving itself might destroy them. They are siblings separated by chasms of power that no bridge could span.”

…!

5/5 Keep the Magic Castles and Golden Tickets coming!