The Primordial Record

Chapter 1906: The White Child

“The midwives who were responsible for my birth saw the truth of me at once. My Lumina was not gold like theirs or every other Luminous. It was white, blinding, hungry white that drank every color it touched.”

Saying this, Enoch raised his palm as if remembering the sight of his Lumina burning across his fingers, and for a moment, Rowan saw this scene, and the sight of it nearly made him tremble. It was impossible to describe the light of the Lumina, and he knew he was seeing only the barest glimpse of it, from a man who had truly forgotten what the light of Lumina was supposed to be, and yet, even this pale imitation struck a cord inside him that made the invisible flames in his chest rotate faster.

“When I cried, the spire’s crystals dimmed for the first time in history. When I laughed, new stars ignited in the void outside and immediately burned themselves out, as if ashamed of their own novelty.”

Enoch paused and said, “Does this remind you of anyone else?”

Rowan slowly nodded, “It does… my birth.”

Enoch acknowledged his answer with a bow and continued speaking, “I grew faster than light itself. At the age of three cycles, I spoke in equations that rewrote gravity around me. At seven cycles, I built a garden where flowers opened and closed in rhythms no one had ever heard. The elders came to watch, awed and afraid. They had never seen a flower close before, but for me, this should be the typical path of things, the way that existence should behave.

“It is beautiful,” they admitted, “but it will open again tomorrow exactly the same.”

“That is the problem,” I had said.

But they disregarded my words; perhaps it was because I was small then, barely up to their knees, but my voice already carried the weight of endings, yet they were too deaf to hear it.

“By my twentieth cycle, I, Enoch, had surpassed them all. I could unmake a star with a sigh, birth a galaxy with a blink. The Luminous began to call me the White Child, half in reverence, half in warning. They loved me the way one loves an eclipse, something magnificent that should not be stared at too long. I could see their love, and for a long time, it was enough; I was able to quench the hole inside my heart. But it did not last.”

Rowan could barely see the edges of this memory teasing at his consciousness, and suddenly, a small piece of the flame rotating inside his chest broke off and flew into his head, merging with his consciousness, and the memories from Enoch’s word became a bit sharper and more precise. He was able to see the true form of Enoch, who had long white hair and a bewitching beauty, walking down unchanging avenues and feeling that their stillness was like chains.

Enoch’s words continued to add clarity to this vision as more pieces of flame continued to break off and fill Rowan’s consciousness.

“I want surprises,” I told the elders. “I want risk. I want something to happen that has never happened before, and never will again. Why does no one share my vision or see my hunger?”

“Instead, they smiled their perfect, unchanging smiles. “Child, you ask for death.”

“Then give me death,” I answered, my heart beating with anticipation.”

“They refused. And I learned I was the only one whose heartbeat could throb with passion they could never imagine.”

“Knowing I could not remain like this, I, Enoch, went alone to the Edge of All Things, where existence frayed into the Nothing that waited beyond. There, I built a forge of my own, white Lumina, hotter than any star, colder than any void. Into it I fed every law I could steal: the law that light must always travel at the same speed, the law that cause must precede effect, the law that nothing truly new could ever be born.”

Rowan’s breath caught in his throat, and he could see the vision. Enoch had made his form larger than a thousand Realities, rivaling that of Eos, and at the Edge of All things, he had drawn great powers from all corners of existence.

He could see vast streams of power stretching across countless infinities pouring into Enoch’s forge, and he stood at the center, white hair billowing across his body, carried by waves of impossible power, and with his fist, he forged Change.

“I worked for a million billion cycles that felt like one heartbeat, and although the Luminious should have stopped me, their nature prevented them from acting, what will be will be… I hated them, and my hatred fueled my work. Then, my forge was ready, and I stepped inside it. If there can be no change, I would bring it into existence, and with a thrill of fear in my heart that I found intoxicating beyond all measure, I unleashed Change.”

“The explosion was not loud.” Enoch whispered, his eyes deep in the fog of memory, “It was absolute. I had never performed such great works before, and I doubted myself, and I suspected that I used more power than I should have, for Existence cracked along every seam it had never known it possessed. Colors that had no names bled into one another. Time folded, unfolded, tore. The Luminous felt it first, a sudden, terrifying lurch in their immortal hearts. Then their perfect cities melted into rivers of liquid light. Their bodies unraveled into screams that became birds that became ash that became silence.”

Enoch stopped here, allowing the silence to linger, and for a long time, it was almost as if this would be the end of his story, and Rowan was still struggling to see this calmitious explosion of power that shattered all of existence. Such power had transcended all that Rowan possessed, because he could feel that the existence that was shattered was equally as infinite as Limbo, and Enoch was able to possess the power to do such a thing naturally; his birthright gave him a strength that defied all meaning, but it also gave him a heart that craved… chaos.

Enoch’s voice once again shattered the silence, “I walked out of the forge untouched and looked upon the ruin that I had made and saw that it was astonishing. For one glorious instant, everything was new. The sameness that had haunted me was gone, alongside every Luminious, but at this time I had not even begun to comprehend this concept when the newness consumed itself. Something had changed, beyond what I once envisioned, and cracks appeared all over what I could see.”

A sudden rumble shook this strange realm where Rowan found himself. Enoch’s words were resonating with this realm, and Rowan was realizing that perhaps he was seeing the birth of a new existence after the old one had been wiped away.

Enoch looked up from his invisible throne and felt this realm shaking, and he smiled like a ghoul, but he did not stop his story,

“The cracks spread faster than light, faster than thought. Galaxies aged a trillion years in a breath. The last star winked out before it had finished being born. The void rushed in, not dark but blindingly white, my white. When the unraveling reached its end, there was nothing left. Nothing except me and the white of my Lumina. I thought I had finally created an existence where change was able to flourish, but I was wrong.”