The Primordial Record

Chapter 1904: The Last of The Firsts

The final words from Enoch hit Rowan like a brick in the face, and he could not help but flinch. The truth was that the answers were there if he took the time to access everything that he had been given to work with, but slight changes in the narrative and his inherent bias always worked against him… Even if all the hints were in place, how could Rowan have ever imagined that he was the Primordial Record?

Still, Rowan had been playing this game for so long that he could not be thrown off by the words of Enoch so easily. However, his body resonated with the words of Enoch so closely that he understood that this was the truth being spoken to him, but he needed more assurances, and so he challenged Enoch.

“Why should I believe your words, Enoch? Everything you have been doing from the moment I entered this place was to undermine me just enough that I would perish. Why should I listen to you now?”

“Stop playing the fool, Rowan, it does not suit you, not in this place, and not when I have seen the way your mind works. I am giving you the answer to everything because you know it serves me better to tell you the truth than to lie to you.”

Enoch waved his hand in irritation and sat down in midair as if an invisible throne had appeared behind him, “Let us put aside our differences in this moment and speak our truths, because I am willing to give the truth, and trust me, Rowan, apart from me, you cannot get this truth anywhere else… You will search till the ends of infinity, if there were ever such a place, and you will find nothing. I am the Last of the Firsts.”

Rowan cocked his head to the side, “This is the second time you are telling me terms that I know nothing about, and I am assuming there is a reason for this? Everything you do or say has a purpose, Enoch, and when you say certain things, it is almost as if you are expecting responses that I cannot give.”

This was the second time Enoch suddenly threw out strange phrases; the first time, in a supposed fit of anger, he had rebuked Rowan by saying, “Have you seen the Light of the Lumina or heard the sound of the Abhima?” and now he called himself the Last of the Firsts. Rowan would only draw more suspicion to himself if he disregarded those words as nothing, they were clearly important, at least to Enoch that he would interject them in the middle of such a frightening revelation that Rowan was the Singularity, Primordial Record, and his actions in the future had altered the past and the present, even before he made them in the present he had just left behind.

It was fortunate that Rowan was a higher-dimensional being who could perceive time more fluidly than mortals or immortals; otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to grasp the events revealed to him.

Enoch, on his invisible throne, was silent for a while, and then he shook his head in a manner that was hard to describe, almost like a short and sharp jerk to the side. It was both interesting to see this personal mannerism from such an enigmatic being, but it was also quite strange. “There are things that you are able to do that are impossible, Rowan, and maybe you are not aware of it, and so I say these words to figure out if you are truly what you say you are.”

“And are you satisfied with what you have seen?” Rowan asked.

“Never,” Enoch whispered, “I am never satisfied.”

Rowan paused. That sounded a bit wrong, but he decided to go with the flow and see where the ultimate answers lay. For so long, he had been climbing a mountain whose peak was retreating from his sight the higher he rose, and now that the end of that mountain was so close in his sight, it was all he could do to keep his head straight and not fail that conviction that had held him in place for so long.

Rowan nodded, “I will accept your terms for sharing truths, but you should know that I will not tell you the secrets that I hold close to my heart. If they concern the ones that I care about, then I would rather perish in my ignorance than reveal what would have the chance to harm them in the slightest.”

Enoch grinned, “No, Rowan, this exchange we are going to make will profit you as well as it profits me. We are enemies, and that will never change; it is because our ultimate beliefs will inevitably clash, and there is no way to alter that. Still, if we are going to kill each other in the end, then there need to be certain ground rules; otherwise, our battles would be meaningless. Besides, I have told you this before, it will profit me better for you to know the truth than if you do not, and you do need this truth, even though that would show you your inevitable end, at least it would give you the choice to pick the right side.”

“Pick a side?” Rowan frowned, “And here I had always thought my position was always with me.”

Enoch shrugged, “You are an anomaly in this game Rowan. For so long I had been searching for the ghost in the machine, the one thing I missed that shattered my vision for existence, and now I know it is you. Wielding the power of End is… difficult, and you are among the few ever in all of existence who can understand what I mean by this. The anomaly in my creation seemed to emerge from nowhere, and in the blink of an eye, it had broken all that I worked so hard to achieve, and no matter how much I looked for the flaws in my code, and try to piece together how my work had been shattered in this manner, I could not find it, but the answer was not in the moment with me… the answer had not yet been born, and I would have to wait for sixty five million eras into the future for the anomaly that woud change my work in the past to appear.”

“Was that the reason you tried to stop me from consuming all of these lives when I got here?” Rowan asked.

“Yes.” Enoch directly replied, “After unleashing the power of End, an ability that you should not have come across until you reached the ninth dimensional level, I saw the path to the future, and the ghost in my machine. At first, I did not know how to deal with you, but to allow you to perish in this place, but the power of End is absolute, and I needed to state the condition of your actions to you before they can be fully completed… If I did not, then there would be a severe backlash to my foundation, and the unknown code from your power that corrupted my essence would have fully taken root.”

Now, Enoch smiled, “In a manner, it was you who saved me from this fate. I was stubborn enough not to contact you, and if you had not found me, perhaps both of us might have collapsed in this place, and they would have won, and I don’t know about you, but no one here wants the Primordials to win.”