Veneri found himself in a vast white space wearing a white robe and for a while he did not move at all.
There was nothing here. There was no floor worth naming, no ceiling or horizon in any meaningful sense. It was just an endless, consuming white, It was the same kind of place he had once stood in when he died on Earth, the same empty space that had received him when he first crossed into this strange chain of fate. Back then, he had been calmer than he had any right to be. He had been dead yes, but the soul was quieter than the body ever was, and in that quiet he had seen her for the first time.
Now he was seeing her again.
Thyrexxa sat on a white chair carved from the same void, exactly as she had before. Her long teal hair fell over her shoulders. Her skin was as white as the space around her it almost seemed to glow against the absence of color. Her emerald-green eyes shone with that same intensity he remembered. The long white dress she wore was exactly what it had been the first time.
She gave him the same expression too.
"You've come far. Guess souls are calmer than most physical beings."
The words hit him hard. They were the exact first words she had ever said to him.
It made his chest ache in a way he did not know how to name at first.
He scoffed.
"So uh... who are you exactly?"
Thyrexxa did not even blink.
"I'm Time."
He frowned. "What?"
"I'm Time. Well, more like the chosen one for it. But yeah, I'm Time."
He stared.
"What?"
"What's so hard to get? Yes, I'm Time. Past, present, future. That Time."
It was all coming back so clearly now that he could almost hear the younger version of himself standing in the same spot with the same disbelief, trying to understand how such a beautiful woman could casually claim to be one of the oldest principles in existence. Thyrexxa yawned lazily, repeating the same expression she had made then, as though she were bored by the universe but willing to humor him anyway.
"Oh and um... you're calm because you're dead. Souls tend to have their emotions toned down. Keeps things less messy."
"Oh."
He was shocked that he remembered it so well.
"And we're am I?"
"Earth."
His eyes widened just as they had before.
"Earth?!"
"Relax. This is Earth as it was meant to be. Though I doubt you'd grasp the mechanics. You're too young to understand. Now then! Let's get to the fun part. Congratulations, Veneri-with-no-second-name. You've been chosen by me to save your universe!"
That line hit differently now.
Back then, he had not known enough to be frightened by it. Now he knew too much. He knew what it had cost. He knew what the line had become. He knew what "chosen" meant when said by someone like Thyrexxa.
"Could you repeat that?"
"Nope. You heard me. Now, the question is, are you in or not?"
"In or out?! You're Time itself. Why would you need me to save the universe? I'm human! I've read enough stories to know where this is going. You're some manipulating Deity using me as a pawn, aren't you?"
At that, the memory and the present finally overlapped.
Thyrexxa's expression changed before both of them laughed.
Thyrexxa smiled faintly as the laughter faded. Her face changed into that same familiar smile he remembered from the first time they had spoken. It was the same expression that made him realize she was not going to give him a neat answer.
"It's been 298 years since that first encounter. Who knew that time passes so fast?"
He gave a small, nostalgic smile.
"It really is."
He felt the weight of all those years settle inside his heart. It was almost three hundred years since the first time he had stood here dead and confused, looking at a woman who claimed to be Time itself. It was almost three hundred years since she had told him that Earth was not what he thought it was. Almost three hundred years shave passed since the universe had begun to drag him by the collar into things he could not have imagined as a mortal boy.
Now he understood what she had meant.
'This is Earth as it was meant to be,' she had said. 'Though I doubt you'd grasp the mechanics. You're too young to understand.'
Back then, he had not understood what she meant. Now he did.
He looked around the white space and finally asked the question that had haunted the back of his mind since the emerald stone had brought him here.
"This void... it's the Timeless Realm, isn't it? Or better yet, the Seventh Iteration that was erased and now exists in the Timeless Realm, right?"
Thyrexxa's face changed.
The laziness faded. The amusement dulled. In its place came was a sad look. She looked at him as if he had finally grown into the shape of the answer. The growth itself was a little painful to watch.
"You really have grown up. You're not young anymore or foolish enough to misunderstand it, huh?"
"..."
"Yes. This is the Seventh Iteration that was destroyed by the nuclear weapons on Earth in that iteration. The Timeless Realm also records worlds that have been destroyed."
The white he had been seeing, the emptiness, the strange sense of being outside ordinary time, it all clicked into place. It was not an abstract dreamscape. It was a preserved ruin. It was Earth, but only the version that existed at the moment of annihilation. It was a world recorded by the Timeless Realm because that was what the Timeless Realm did. It held what time could not keep. It remembered the final frames of worlds that had been erased.
"Right now, we're on Earth. Better yet, the Earth of the Seventh Iteration. Since nukes have that white light when they detonate that humans and cameras see, that's how it's portrayed here."
"This is the same place I ended up in the Timeless Realm after my death. It's where I met you."
He looked at her and felt the old memory and the present version of himself align, like two versions of the same soul recognizing that they had both survived long enough to return to the point where it all began.
He was not the same person who had first stood here. He was older. He had endured wars, loneliness, separation, sacrifice and the long bruising passage of time itself. He had become something the universe had apparently been grooming all along.
A Timeless.
But standing here, in this white emptiness with Thyrexxa seated in the same white chair she had occupied the first time they met, he felt something else too.
Nostalgia.
He looked at her and smiled again. Of course the universe would return him to the exact origin of the thing he had spent nearly three centuries becoming.
-----
The white void gave way to the belvedere they had sat in the first time, complete with the same tea set, the same cookies and the same still ocean as the ground with the blue sky and golden sun.
Thyrexxa was already seated when he arrived. She poured the tea for him without a word.
He accepted the cup, stared at it for a second and then took a sip. The taste hit instantly. He let out a breath he did not know he had been holding and gave her a smile.
"Your tea is still the best in the universe."
Thyrexxa's mouth twitched.
"You always stole my cookies."
He glanced down at the plate beside the cup. They were perfectly arranged, as if they had not spent the last three centuries being the subject of his ongoing, entirely unreasonable war of trying to bring them to the universe.
"Too bad they're too powerful to end up in the universe. No matter how many times you stole them, they just got erased."
He said nothing because suddenly, he was crying.
Thyrexxa's expression changed immediately. The amusement faded, replaced by alarm and confusion so quickly it was almost funny. She blinked at him, clearly unsure whether this was something she should handle with cosmic authority or gentle decency.
A handkerchief appeared in midair.
She took it and knelt closer to him, carefully wiping the tears from his face with the same tenderness she had used the first time she'd realized he was not as calm as he looked.
"I'm sorry for making you live such a horrible life so don't cry okay?"
He shook his head before she could say anything else. He smiled at her through the tears.
"No. I don't regret it."
Thyrexxa looked at him carefully, still worried and still trying to make sense of his expression.
"If you wanted me to repeat it all again, I'd make the same decisions. Well. Maybe I'd make sure I didn't lose my arms and heart this time."
That made her look at him for a second before she laughed softly. He wiped at his own face and looked away for a moment, regaining enough control to speak properly again.
"As far as cosmic dimensional beings go, you're by far the kindest."
"You don't have to butter me up."
"I'm not."
"You are."
He looked back at the tea, then out into the white space beyond the belvedere.
"I was thinking about how far I came. Back then, I was just a human being torn to pieces by the police, dying while counting down to ease the pain as nuclear weapons destroyed Earth."
The memory was still ugly but now it sat beside everything else he had lived through instead of standing alone as the only thing he could point to.
"Now, not even a nuclear weapon can harm me. I'm too powerful now. I've got beloveds... well, I had beloveds. I have daughters. I have a civilization to rule. I've got an adventure in a realm of forgotten things. If I died now, I wouldn't have any regrets."
He looked at her more directly now. The tears were finally gone from his eyes.
"Ever since I was transmigrated two hundred and ninety-eight years ago, I've never once regretted an action I took. If I die, I'll die fulfilled with no regrets."
Thyrexxa returned to her seat slowly and folded her hands in front of herself.
"Your life really is better than the other seven transmigrators before you."
"Oh. The other seven?"
"Yes."
That answer alone was enough to make him sigh. He forgot about them.
"You got six beloveds, five daughters, five very powerful subordinates, and a Dynasty. You've achieved a lot to get here. Even Sunshine, the Destiny Primordial, has officially accepted your suffering."
That made him look up. Thyrexxa didn't elaborate, which meant that statement was probably more significant than it sounded. He filed it away immediately. He didn't like her after the Sirithiele incident.
She smiled, this time more openly.
"You've passed the Time Trial. You'll be a Timeless now. There's no deal this time or agreement. It may be some time before we meet again. Maybe when you're a Primordial Deity, I'll call you back here and we can have tea together."
That pulled a smile out of him again. He asked the question that had been hanging in his mind ever since Ednil had said the word with such certainty.
"What does being a Timeless really mean?"
Thyrexxa rested one cheek lightly against the back of her hand and answered.
"There are a lot of benefits. First, resistance to time-altering magic or mysticism Loops. Temporal manipulations. Time powers, you become immune to them. Second, absolute immunity to aging."
That part was obvious enough to almost sound simple, but he knew it would matter more as time passed.
"Third, you can access the Chronolum. It's a realm only you can access and see. It contains past, present, and future histories."
"Future histories?"
"Yes, but you should avoid the future parts. Messing with time is not something even I do lightly."
That sounded like a warning worth respecting.
"Fourth, you can use Primal Energy. Specifically Temporal Energy. From now on, you won't be able to use any other energy form apart from Temporal Energy and Soul Energy. But your Pinnacle Tether, Omniphage, can convert Divine Energy and other forms into Temporal Energy if needed. That's why I gave it to you. The amount required is immense, though. Don't think that makes it cheap."
She went on to the deeper changes.
"Your body will become a Timeless body. With the Stellar Body you already possess, it will now be called the Timeless Stellar Body. Your soul will become a Timeless Aeterium Soul. You're the first and only Timeless in all eight Iterations."
Thyrexxa did not let it become melodramatic. She simply said it as a fact.
"You still won't be a Primordial Deity yet, though. Not from this alone. Since you chose the path of becoming a Primordial Deity first, you'll become much more powerful once you reach it. For now, you're neither a Seventh Enlightenment Divine nor a Primordial Deity but a pseudo-deity. But you will be a Deity soon."