NOVGO.NET Chapter 3770 Fold Dwellers III
Chapter 3770 Fold Dwellers III
I moved.
Another Sigil Fragment slipped into my grasp.
Time and collapse hummed faintly under my fingers.
But my mind, my mind moved elsewhere.
The story Thauron had told still echoed in me.
The Fable of a Prisoner.
A being dangerous enough to be jailed. Too dangerous to be free. A being whose very existence was... adjusted.
Imprisoned by those who moved beyond Fold Dwellers.
By the Foldless Ones.
The ones who oversaw all paradoxes.
The ones whose names could not be spoken.
The ones Velmior, in his final moments, had hinted at.
I closed my eyes briefly.
Recalling the words of the Time Sentinel.
"The ones who oversee all paradoxes are not named. Not because they hide. But because their names are Unspoken."
Velmior had warned me and Romulus.
Not with threats.
With inevitabilities.
Back then, when he stood against Romulus and me on the Dead Wheel, he spoke not of pride.
He spoke of fear.
Fear of those greater than even Primarchs.
Greater than the Chronosect.
Greater than the Fold Dwellers, the glorious kings and queens of regional ruins of Wheels of Existence.
He spoke of beings who had carved laws into paradox before paradox even had shape.
Who made Thrones from impossible conflicts.
Who fashioned Absolutes not bound by the ten known Resistances, but of their own making.
Entities that were not Living.
Not Dead.
But something more.
Something folded.
Paradox made flesh.
Living Paradoxes, the Foldless Ones!
And now, Thauron, the Null Monarch himself, a creature steeped in Finality and Collapse, spoke of them too.
But his tone was different.
Not fearful.
Not reverent.
Merely resigned.
As if he had brushed against their veils once, and still wore the scars.
The Prisoner he spoke of, this Existence stripped of memory and sealed within the Folds, had been let free.
Or perhaps loosened the chains enough to breathe again.
And Thauron, whether knowingly or not, had left just enough hints.
The way his Null Form moved.
The way his words curled around certain truths and left others to rot.
The Prisoner was not some distant myth.
No.
I was walking beside him.
I opened my eyes.
Another Sigil Fragment pulsed in my hand.
My smile was faint as I thought of everything.
Dangerous.
Calculated.
The Nullvein Gravewake Folds were vast.
The Foldless Ones waited.
Watching.
Judging.
Weighing.
Velmior had spoken of them with a trembling tongue.
Thauron spoke of them with a weary amusement.
But me?
I did not fear them.
I did not revere them.
I understood one truth.
A truth of infinite possibilities, infinite paths one could take, and proof that anything was possible.
Proof that even among the bound, even among the imprisoned, power still moved.
I would remember that.
Because one day, they would very likely look at me. I knew this. I expected this.
They would look, and they would weigh me.
Measure me.
Judge me.
But they would not find a prisoner.
Nor a Fold Dweller.
Nor a child swinging keys he did not understand.
No.
They would find something else.
Something they had not yet accounted for.
I folded the fragment into my existence.
And I moved again.
Toward Votharion's jagged obsidian stretches.
Toward paradox.
Toward inevitability.
Thauron walked nearby as he continued.
"Such a Prisoner…who was stripped of his memories and power and even what his own self-identity truly was, what do you think such a Prisoner would do? Would have been doing? What would his aim now be?"
Thauron's question still hung in the heavy, drenched air of the Null Cradle, whispered like a ghost carried by the howling winds of paradox.
What would the Prisoner be doing now?
What would his aim be?
I did not rush to answer.
I moved instead.
One footfall. Another.
My hand stretched out as I claimed another fragment, the etched remains of a True Source that had once sought to define time, now collapsed into a singular shard of meaning.
And then, with the weight of inevitability behind my words, I spoke.
"Maybe," I said slowly, "the Prisoner still dreams of the prison he was in."
Another fragment.
The Sigil blossomed more clearly in my grasp, like the incomplete whisper of a melody yet to be finished.
"Maybe," I continued, "he has never truly been freed."
I did not look at Thauron.
I did not need to.
I could feel the Null Monarch's ancient gaze on me as I traced the shape of truths not yet spoken.
"If he cannot remember all things," I murmured, "then he is still shackled by the past. Bound not by chains of collapse, but by chains of ignorance."
I slipped the fragment into my existence.
A hum of resonance. A near-completed note.
"Maybe," I said, "he seeks a Key."
Another fragment claimed.
Kalysta trailed nearby, her steps light, cautious, a shadow following giants.
"A Key to open doors long sealed," I said. "Paradoxically...maybe he seeks to do again what he did before."
Another fragment shimmered.
"Maybe," I said, my voice lowering to a whisper, "he dreams of the unthinkable."
A pause.
Then, quietly:
"Revenge…against those many cannot even think of."
WAA!
Thauron chuckled at that, a low rumble that carried far more than simple amusement.
The ground itself seemed to listen.
I moved again, slow, steady.
Fragment by fragment.
In the distance, Thauron reached down, his massive hand folding gently around a final fragment.
The air shifted.
A vibration, subtle but sharp.
And then it bloomed.
In Thauron's hands.
A Completed True Source Sigil, brilliant, heavy with impossible complexity, spiraled into existence around him.
...!
Even I, steady as I was, narrowed my eyes faintly.
Kalysta flinched, stepping back instinctively as the Completed Sigil hovered with slow, crushing majesty.
I had begun collecting Fragments first as he started after, and yet he now held a Completed True Source Sigil.
Faster than me!
And Thauron barely glanced at it.
He simply smiled, a serene expression carved from inevitability.
His voice came next, slow, patient, filled with the weight of countless forgotten cycles.
"I cannot say much about the Living Paradoxes," Thauron said, his gaze distant as if remembering things too heavy to name.
"But if one wishes to understand how deep their reach stretches into the Folds…"
He trailed a finger through the air, carving invisible weavings.
"One simply needs to look at the Fold Dwellers."
I listened.
Carefully.
"The many Fold Dwellers you see here," Thauron murmured, "the powerful ones. Some are ignorant."
He gestured subtly, a wave that encompassed the distant figures of Monads, of Primarchs, of other monumental beings moving in the Folds.
"They move freely. Proud. Blind."
He smiled wider, his teeth flashing like fractured moonlight.
"But others…"
Another fragment slipped into my palm.
"…others know."
I fitted it in place, the fifth Sigil blooming into completion around me.
A Fifth Completed True Source Sigil spun silently, grand and merciless, but a step later than Thauron.
Its presence pressed down on the platform like a whispered judgment.
And Thauron, Thauron watched it all with eyes unseen.
"Those who know," he said softly, "have long since bent the knee."
...!
His words fell into the space between us like monoliths dropped from the height of forgotten Megalos.
Kalysta inhaled sharply behind me, but I ignored her.
I turned instead.
Facing the Null Monarch fully.
Facing inevitability itself.
"Since you have long since known," I said, voice calm, eyes burning, "have you also bent the knee?"
BOOM!
The words were simple.
But they struck with the weight of collapsing weaves.
Thauron laughed.
Not a cruel sound.
Not mocking.
It was the laugh of an emperor who had long since understood the futility of rebellion, and reveled in the fact.
"Does that even need to be asked?"
He waved a massive hand lazily.
And then, he leaned forward.
Closer.
Scrutinizing me.
His next words were slow, deliberate.
"Whatever that Prisoner's aim may be…" Thauron said, his voice carrying the chill of dead suns, "he has been searching."
A beat.
"He has found...some things. But not it."
His unseen gaze burned.
And my smile, faint, tyrannical, remained.
"Thus," Thauron said, "he becomes unimaginably curious."
He leaned back, looking up at the infinite sky of the Null Cradle.
"When there appears something...resembling what he would be looking for."
Thauron's voice lowered.
Heavy.
Certain.
"And the Prisoner would do anything, anything, to obtain it."
A pause.
"Maybe."
"Maybe not."
"There are many paradoxical possibilities out there."
The Null Monarch turned back toward me.
His expression unreadable.
"After all…"
He smiled coldly.
"Aren't we all the same?"
He lifted a massive clawed hand, gesturing broadly, to the Middle Wheel Platform, to the Folds, to existence itself.
"Little tiny fish swimming in a big pond we cannot fully understand."
The Primarchs and Monads that watched from afar, those brave enough to linger, could not hear.
But they could feel.
The weight.
The pressure.
The inevitability.
And still, Thauron's voice, colder now, sharper, cut through it all.
"Among such weaklings like them…"
He let the words dangle.
Then finished, quietly:
"It does not always have to be conflict."
"There is always…"
A beat.
A whisper.
"…a choice."
The final word echoed.
Carrying more weight than all the worlds that had crumbled before it.
I tilted my head slightly.
A faint smile curling my lips.
Choice.
A dangerous thing.
Even more dangerous than Paradox itself.
I said nothing.
There was no need.
The next move, after all, was already mine.
And Thauron, old, terrible, weary Thauron, knew it.
He simply stood there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Neither of us moved.
Not yet.
The storm of inevitability had not yet broken.
But it would.
It always did.
Thauron lifted his hand, and the Completed True Source Sigil, a radiant, impossibly complex lattice of paradox and time, collapse and finality, hovered above his palm.
Silent.
Radiant.
It spun slowly, the weavings of its existence folding and unfolding in an endless spiral.
And then…
He grasped it.
Firmly.
…!
I watched, calm, as his massive clawed fingers pressed inward.
The Sigil pulsed, resisting at first, an indomitable existence in itself.
But Thauron's grip did not relent.
Cracks.
Thin, hairline fractures splintered across its surface.
The Sigil trembled, its existence rippling under the pressure.
Kalysta, standing not too far behind me, inhaled sharply, her Null Form shimmering with quiet astonishment.
And then…
Thauron spoke.
Calm.
Measured.
Mysterious.
"The use of force…"
Cracks deepened across the Sigil as he spoke, his voice resonant, patient.
"…was always what many went with first."
A slight tightening of his grip, and the Sigil shivered under the weight.
"And force, most of the time…"
A small smile touched the corners of Thauron's unseen lips.
"…worked great."
CRACK!
The Sigil fractured fully, split into dozens of gleaming shards that scattered into the air, dissolving into motes of forgotten light.
Gone.
Erased.
An existence snuffed out as if it were nothing.
Thauron lowered his hand, as if he had simply brushed aside dust.
The silence that followed was profound, thick, heavy with the reverberations of unseen truths.
"But…"
Thauron continued, his voice softer, more intimate, a whisper threading through the folds of collapse itself.
"When it comes to complex paradoxes…"
His unseen gaze bore into me, a weight that would have flattened lesser beings.
"I have found…"
He tilted his head ever so slightly, as if listening to the unspoken symphony of inevitability around us.
"…and seen in the past…"
He smiled, a slow, cold smile.
"…that even when one side is more powerful…"
He spread his arms wide, as if embracing the paradox of it all.
"…the use of force is not always the correct route."
The air around him trembled faintly, not from power, but from the weight of choices yet made.
"There are other ways."
He lowered his hand now, empty, but heavy with implications.
"And I want to take such a route now."
He paused.
The folds around us seemed to lean closer, listening.
"There is the Choice."
HUUM!
A whisper.
A thunderclap.
He took a step closer to me, not aggressive, not imposing, but inevitable.
"As a lover of Finality and Paradox," Thauron said, voice deepening, "I always enjoy looking at possibilities."
His Null Form, that colossal monument to endings, shimmered faintly, as if folding reality around it.
"Like…"
He gestured lightly, a simple flick of his fingers.
"What of the possibility…"
A beat.
A whisper drawn from the bones of collapsed existences.
"…of being able to enter a Prison."
The air grew colder, denser.
A Prison.
A word that carried the weight of countless silences.
"A Prison where terrifying entities throw those they deem to have gone against their rulings."
His voice was soft, but it carried.
"To be imprisoned by them is to be erased from Fable, from time, from existence."
He turned his unseen gaze skyward, to the endless, broken heavens of the Folds.
"A Prison…"
His voice was almost reverent now.
"…that is actually the foremost Wonder of the Nullvein Gravewake Folds. Even greater than the Null Cradle of Fold-Breaking Ascension."
Kalysta stiffened behind me, her form rigid with tension she did not yet understand.
The other Primarchs and Monads that lingered at the edges of this unfolding storm?
They shifted further away, silent witnesses to a conversation none of them could hear. Even Bob in the distance had a complex expression as he did not move!
A conversation not meant for them.
Only for me.
And Thauron.
The Null Monarch smiled faintly, a whisper of inevitability curling at the edges of his existence.
And I?
I listened.
Carefully.
Because whatever came next…
Would matter.
In ways even Thauron himself might not fully grasp.