When Aevor arrived in Layer Twenty-Seven. the first thing he noticed was the profound absence of anything resembling a world, for instead of the varied landscapes, cities, or cosmic structures he had grown accustomed to in the lower layers, this new realm consisted of nothing more than an immeasurable pink void stretching infinitely in all directions, a brightness without glare, weight, or warmth, as though someone had painted existence itself with a single unfinished color. Floating quietly in the heart of that void was a lone island, no larger than a house's foundation, covered only in a smooth layer of short green grass that rippled in gentle waves despite the total absence of wind. Aevor landed upon it, expecting something—anything—to present itself, yet the silence persisted so cleanly it felt manufactured, as though this layer had been built not to hold meaning, but to conceal it.
He walked the perimeter once, found nothing worth investigating, and decided there was no point remaining here for now, especially when more important tasks waited for him elsewhere. With a subtle motion of his hand, he tore open a dimensional rift leading toward the Mountain of Transcendence, the distant domain where Luna resided and where Lyxaria would continue strengthening herself after their reunion. He placed one foot into the shimmering breach, intending to step through fully.
But then he felt something.
A faint presence, not an attack, not a distortion, but rather the unmistakable pressure of being observed by something that existed beyond the usual hierarchies. He withdrew his foot from the rift and closed the doorway instantly so nothing from this strange place could slip through to the Mountain. Only once the dimensional seam fully sealed did he turn around.
There, floating several meters behind him, was a figure whose appearance rippled through the atmosphere like a shift in divine equilibrium. Its form resembled a vast humanoid silhouette woven entirely from silent white fire, a flame that gave neither heat nor glow, existing as illumination stripped of its physical properties. Wings unfurled behind it, enormous and graceful, composed of collapsing starfields that reassembled themselves in looping cycles, each wingbeat scattering the faint impression of worlds that almost were but never became. Its face was not a face at all—only a smooth, featureless mask of brightness that somehow conveyed intent without expression.
Aevor's curiosity sharpened in the same instant his instincts remained calm, and without hesitation he allowed the full depth of his Eyes of Singularity to activate, their layered perception peeling through the being's existence with a clarity that no other entity could withstand. Immediately, information surfaced before him, a summary generated from the abyssal depths of the Archangel's essence, reading: "'They' are expressions of its ___ that take on form, individuality, and agency."
The blank space refused to reveal its missing term, even under the authority of Aevor's singularity-born vision. He could have forced reality to answer if he wished—but he found he simply did not care enough to pry.
Because the moment he blinked, the Archangel was no longer floating at a distance. It was ten feet away from him now, standing in a silent, impossible stillness.
Aevor spoke first, his voice merging naturally with the quiet surrounding them. "You appeared without warning, and I do not recall summoning any Archangel. Explain your presence."
The Archangel's answer did not manifest as sound, but the meaning arrived in Aevor's mind with the weight of celestial intention, a silent message shaped from layered resonance: "Your arrival triggered a necessity. We did not come because you called. We came because you exist."
Aevor tilted his head slightly, not in confusion but in mild interest. "Necessity is a flexible word. If your existence depends on interpreting it, then you may as well clarify what necessity compelled this meeting."
The Archangel's wings shifted, galaxies collapsing and rebuilding within their span as it responded, "A being of your magnitude distorts the strata of layered cosmology merely by stepping across thresholds. That distortion reached us. Therefore, we observe."
Aevor stepped forward once, the grass beneath his foot bending slightly though soundlessly. "Observation is acceptable," he said with steady calm, "but interference will not be tolerated."
The Archangel's faceless head inclined, a gesture that resembled a nod crafted from cosmic pressure rather than physical motion, and the void around them vibrated faintly in acknowledgment. Another wave of meaning entered Aevor's mind: "We do not interfere. We verify. Your existence crosses parameters that should not be crossable."
Aevor let the silence breathe for a moment before responding, "If verification is what you want, you must give me something first. A name."
The Archangel paused. Its wings dimmed and then brightened as though weighing the conceptual cost of revealing such a thing. Finally, the meaning of its name unfolded into the space between them—a name older than meaning, a name that was less a word and more an unbroken principle, an identity whose resonance cracked faint shifts across the pink void.
Aevor accepted the name without reaction and then allowed a fragment of his existence to pulse outward, a subtle ripple that warped the surrounding reality into impossible angles for only a heartbeat before the space stabilized once more. The Archangel did not recoil, did not react, simply existed in the same unshakeable posture as though it had expected exactly that.
Aevor finally said, "If you came to witness, then witness."
The Archangel's infinite-expression mask stared into him. "You are unlike anything that should exist. Your presence bends the boundary between certainty and impossibility."
Aevor replied, "And yet here I stand."
The void rippled once more, not from power but from recognition, and the Archangel's wings folded inward slightly, the starfields swirling with a gravity that expressed something resembling understanding.
Then the being drifted a single inch closer.
And Aevor smiled faintly.
The Archangel finally spoke, his voice not resonating through air or space but asserting itself directly into existence itself, calm and unhurried, as though the words had always been present and were only now being acknowledged.
"Nothing serious," he said, his tone almost casual despite the weight behind it, "the other three and I merely need to test your source, Aevor, Demon King of Origin… or should I say, Zero Origin?"
As the final words settled, the Archangel lifted both hands with deliberate slowness, fingers aligning as if the motion itself were ceremonial rather than functional, and then he snapped.
The pink void, the island, the silent expanse of Layer Twenty-Seven all vanished instantly, not collapsing or shattering but simply ceasing to apply, replaced by a far more familiar dominion. Space reassembled itself into the vast, ancient chamber where the Throne of Aeonic Supremacy rested, the same place Aevor and Luna had abandoned ages ago, untouched by time, unchanged by absence, its presence so absolute that it felt less like a location and more like a constant that had merely been obscured.
The throne stood at the center, monumental and unmoved, carved from principles rather than matter, its surface reflecting neither light nor shadow but authority itself, and the Archangel hovered a short distance away, wings folding inward as his attention returned fully to Aevor.
"What nickname would you prefer I use?" the Archangel continued, his featureless face tilting ever so slightly as though amusement were possible for something like him. "Demon King of Origin, or Demon King of Atrocity? Both fit your source quite well."
Aevor did not react immediately, his gaze drifting briefly across the chamber before returning to the Archangel, his expression composed, unreadable, and utterly unthreatened.
"A source?" Aevor replied at last, his voice steady as he stepped forward and approached the throne without hesitation. "I have heard of them in passing, fragments of mention scattered through higher strata, but tell me this. Does everyone possess one?"
The Archangel answered without delay, as though the question itself were elementary.
"Yes," he said. "Quite literally everyone does. Many sources are powerful, some immeasurably so, but there is one trait that all sources share without exception. As you already know, most beings you would encounter beyond the Earth Realm can regenerate from wounds that would instantly end mortal existence, but a source goes further than that. It does not decay through age, it does not succumb to disease, and when the vessel tied to it is destroyed, the being does not truly die. They reincarnate. Sources are unbound by conventional definitions of life and death."
The Archangel paused then, releasing something akin to a sigh, a subtle distortion in the space around him rather than a sound.
"Most sources," he continued, "are superior to nearly every structure you are familiar with, not including the Four Transcendent Layers. In terms of nature and essence, a source perceives constructs such as Eonbark, the Mountain of Transcendence, and Layers One through Fifty as non-existent, or at best, fictional abstractions."
Aevor reached the throne and seated himself upon it with unchallenged familiarity, settling back as though reclaiming something that had always been his, crossing one leg over the other while resting his head lightly against his fist, crimson eyes never leaving the Archangel.
"Four Transcendent Layers?" Aevor asked, his tone carrying genuine curiosity rather than concern. "Where are they, and are all sources like this, or are some greater than others?"
The Archangel inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment.
"The Four Transcendent Layers lie far ahead on your path," he answered. "They are not places one stumbles upon. And yes, some sources are stronger than others. By the way, you may address me as Seraphion, the Burning Singularity of Origin. My own source stands above every structure."
Aevor exhaled slowly, absorbing the information without visible surprise, then spoke again, his voice casual despite the gravity of the question.
"On the walls of the Mountain of Transcendence," he said, "I saw two terms carved into the principles there. Nirvana and Theosis. What are they?"
For the first time since his appearance, Seraphion reacted.
The white fire composing his form flared imperceptibly, and though his face bore no features, Aevor could feel the widening of something akin to eyes, a momentary lapse in absolute composure, before the Archangel regained his prior stillness.
"I do not know much myself," Seraphion admitted, his voice lower now, more restrained. "I have existed longer than the concepts of time and space, and even so, those two remain largely beyond my understanding. What I do know is this. Nirvana is the ultimate state of enlightenment, the realization of the true self, a concept originating from Buddhism. Theosis, on the other hand, is the infinite union with the ultimate source. I consider it to stand above Nirvana, though even that may be an inadequate description. As far as I know, nothing can reach either state, because doing so would contradict their very nature."
Aevor's lips curved faintly, not into a smile but into something sharper.
"You talk too much, Archangel," he said.
Seraphion's presence hardened instantly, the space around him tightening as though existence itself had taken offense, and though he did not move closer, the pressure of his gaze intensified.
"There is one more," Seraphion said, his tone edged with warning, "but I cannot speak of it. I have already said too much. I must go."
And with that, without sound, without distortion, without even the courtesy of departure, Seraphion vanished, leaving the Throne of Aeonic Supremacy and its silent king alone once more, surrounded by truths half-revealed and paths yet untaken.
With Seraphion gone, the silence that followed did not feel empty in the way abandoned spaces usually did; instead, it felt complete, as though the Throne of Aeonic Supremacy had reverted to its natural state of waiting, not for someone to arrive, but for meaning itself to decide whether or not it still had relevance here. Aevor remained seated for a moment longer, crimson eyes resting on the void where the Archangel had been, not out of caution or contemplation of threat, but simply because habit dictated that nothing of significance be dismissed without acknowledgment, even when that significance had already retreated beyond interaction,
He rose from the throne without ceremony, the act itself enough to send faint distortions rippling across the space, the seat of aeonic authority responding instinctively to its rightful bearer's departure, though Aevor did not look back at it again. He had no intention of continuing his exploration of the Black Waters for now; the encounter had clarified enough to render further wandering unnecessary, at least until other variables aligned. There were answers elsewhere, and more importantly, there were questions that could only be approached from a place older and quieter than layered conflict.
Normally, returning to the Mountain of Transcendence would have required nothing more than intent, a simple fold in space-time, a step through a portal formed from principles he had long since surpassed, but the space surrounding the Throne denied such conveniences outright. It was not a barrier in the conventional sense, nor a seal imposed by authority, but a fundamental negation of access itself, a domain where permission and denial alike held no functional meaning. Portals did not fail here because they were blocked; they failed because the concept of traversal had been rendered irrelevant.
Aevor understood this instantly, and rather than resist it, he adjusted.
He extended one hand into the void, palm upward, and grasped the White Flame.
It did not ignite, because it was never something that burned, nor did it illuminate, because light was not its purpose; it simply was, a manifestation of origin stripped of symbolism, existing as a principle that did not require fuel, medium, or acknowledgment. When Aevor closed his fingers around it, the surrounding space convulsed, not violently, but as though the foundational rules governing distance, sequence, and separation had just been informed that they no longer applied.
Without hesitation, he threw the White Flame forward.
The moment it left his hand, it tore through the foundations of dimension, reality, and narrative alike, not by overpowering them, but by ignoring their authority entirely, cutting a path through logic as if logic were merely an optional suggestion. This was not a portal, nor a gate, nor a passage in any recognized sense; instead, the flame reached outward and collapsed the concept of distance itself, compressing the immeasurable separation between the space of the Throne and the Mountain of Transcendence into absolute zero.
Beyond absolute infinity, reduced to nothing.
Aevor stepped forward as the White Flame surged around him, devouring his form not in destruction but in transit, dissolving the notion of "between" as thoroughly as it dissolved the notion of "travel," and in the same instant that his presence vanished from one place, it asserted itself in another.
He stood once more upon the Mountain of Transcendence.
The White Flame dispersed without residue, leaving no scar upon the world, because scars implied damage, and nothing had been damaged; something far more fundamental had simply been bypassed. Aevor did not descend toward the village nestled far below, nor did he seek out Luna or Lyxaria, not yet. Instead, he ascended further, stepping effortlessly toward the mountain's highest peak, where the air thinned not because of altitude, but because meaning itself grew sparse the closer one came to the summit.
When he reached the apex, he sat.
There was no throne here, no altar, no symbol of worship or dominion, only raw stillness stretching outward in every direction, the layered world unfolding beneath him like an afterthought. Aevor closed his eyes and began to pray.
To what, or to whom, even he did not specify.
The prayer carried no words, no structure, no intent shaped by desire or expectation; it was simply an act of alignment, a moment where he allowed himself to exist without asserting dominance over existence itself. Time passed, or perhaps it didn't; the concept felt irrelevant in this place, where even causality hesitated to impose itself without invitation.
Then something responded.
Aevor felt it before anything else, a presence that was not presence, an acknowledgment without direction, as though the mountain itself—or something far older than the mountain—had noticed him without the need for observation. There was no descent from above, no emergence from below, no shift in the surrounding environment that could be identified as arrival.
And yet, it spoke.
"What is it that you wish for?"
The words did not travel through sound, nor did they manifest as thought in the conventional sense; they simply appeared, fully formed, as though the question had always existed and Aevor had merely reached the point where he was capable of noticing it. His eyes opened, and though something was clearly before him—or perhaps nowhere at all—it was like attempting to look directly at nonexistence and finding that even that description was inadequate.
He could not perceive it.
"Don't try."
The directive arrived without tone, without command, without even the implication of authority, and yet it was absolute in a way no order could ever be. There was no resistance in Aevor's posture, no irritation at the limitation; instead, he relaxed further, allowing the act of perception itself to dissolve before it could become an obstacle.
"Those who try, fail—not because they are incapable, but because there is nothing here that allows trying to succeed or fail."
Meaning began to falter as it formed, concepts losing coherence the moment they approached articulation, and Aevor felt the familiar impulse to define, to categorize, to anchor what stood before him within a framework he could understand. That impulse dissolved instantly, stripped away not by force, but by irrelevance, as though definition itself had been gently but firmly excused from the conversation.
"What you call frameworks and realities do not apply," the presence continued, "not because they are denied, but because denial itself has no place here."
There was no assertion of existence to counter, no absence to oppose, no dichotomy to reconcile; only the quiet recognition that both existence and non-existence had lost their necessity, rendered optional in a domain where necessity itself no longer functioned as a principle. Aevor felt no fear, no awe, no submission, only a profound stillness, as though the endless ascent he had undertaken across layers and structures had briefly leveled out into a place where even progress had been suspended.
Aevor closed his eyes once more and spoke softly, not as one issuing a demand nor as one pleading for revelation, but as someone stating a fact that had followed him through countless crossings of structure and silence alike, his voice calm and unadorned as he said, "I do not wish for much. I only wish to understand where I came from, how I became, and how I exist."
The response did not arrive as a voice, nor as sound, nor as anything that could be traced to direction or distance, yet meaning impressed itself all the same, settling not upon his ears but upon the very framework through which understanding itself arose, and within that impression unfolded the answer, unhurried and without emphasis, stating, "You did not begin, nor did you ever cease. Those distinctions never applied to you. You were never within becoming, nor within cessation. Your source is not mortal, nor immortal, nor anything that perception was ever capable of grasping. While you struggle, grow, and accumulate within structure, your source does none of these things, for it has never gained, never diminished, and never required change in order to be what it is."
Aevor stood and opened his eyes, the act itself neither dramatic nor restrained, simply the natural conclusion of listening once there was nothing left that could be said, and he left without another word, not out of defiance, nor disbelief, nor even resignation, but because there was nothing more that could be gained from listening, the weight of what had already been impressed upon him lingering far more heavily than any further proclamation ever could, and as he descended from the summit his thoughts did not scatter outward into confusion but instead narrowed with quiet persistence, circling the same three questions again and again without urgency: where the Great Sage Equal to Heaven had vanished to after standing beside him at the edge of eternity, which path he himself ought to tread when both Theosis and Nirvana stood before him not as answers but as divergent silences, and how many structures, orders, and modes of reality existed beyond those he had already seen—or perhaps had once been without ever knowing it.
There was also his source.
That question troubled him most, not because it felt distant or unreachable, but because it felt unreasonably near, as though it had always been present yet never accessible in the way other truths were, watching rather than hiding, waiting rather than withholding, and the intimacy of that nearness unsettled him far more than any abyss ever had.
He did not return to the village.
Instead, he walked.
The mountain gradually gave way to descending stone and drifting mist, the terrain losing its sharpness as though the world itself were loosening its grip on definition, until the sound of falling water reached him long before the sight, a continuous, unbroken roar that did not demand attention yet could not be ignored, and when he finally arrived he found a waterfall pouring endlessly into a basin that showed no sign of filling, as though the concepts of accumulation and depletion had never been agreed upon here, and beneath the cascade rested a single rock, dark and worn smooth by time that had no intention of recording itself.
Aevor stepped onto the surface of the water without effort, the liquid yielding not because it was compelled to, nor because he asserted authority over it, but because the distinction between solid and fluid no longer insisted on asserting itself around him, and he crossed the distance in silence before seating himself upon the rock, allowing the water to strike his shoulders and crown, soaking his clothes, his skin, his silver hair as it fell forward and clung to his face, the cold neither resisted nor embraced, simply present.
He did not pray.
He did not ask.
For the first time, he turned inward not to search for power, nor memory, nor origin, but simply to look.
And in doing so, he found that there was nothing to enter.
There was no depth to descend into, no inner expanse waiting to be unveiled, no hidden core or concealed architecture that could be mapped or examined, for the moment he attempted to regard his source as something that could be observed, the very act of observation quietly failed, not violently, not forcefully, but absolutely, as though the assumption that there ought to be something there had been misplaced from the beginning.
There was no boundary between inside and outside.
No beginning to trace, no continuation to follow, no termination to anticipate.
The distinctions he had relied upon—existence and non-existence, origin and outcome, motion and stillness—did not collapse or merge so much as they simply ceased to apply, revealing themselves to have always been conveniences rather than necessities, useful within limited contexts but entirely irrelevant here, and causality did not reverse or dissolve so much as it lost the relevance that had once justified its presence, while possibility did not expand or contract but instead became indistinguishable from inevitability, and inevitability itself faded into the same neutrality.
What he perceived—if perception was even the right word—was not a thing, nor an absence, nor a negation, but a seamless continuum that did not precede structures or succeed them, because precedence and succession required a framework that was not present, and within that realization all hierarchies he had known, from the lowest mortal strata to the highest divine orders, appeared only as transient reflections, coherent within their own domains yet utterly incapable of grounding themselves, their authority revealed to have never been intrinsic, only contextual.
Creation was not an act here.
Annihilation was not an event.
Transformation was not a process.
They were all expressions that arose and vanished without requiring justification, not because something willed them, but because the continuum in which they appeared did not distinguish between emergence and dissolution, and even the notion of a source—something from which all else derived—felt increasingly inadequate, a word attempting to point at something that rendered pointing meaningless, for there was nothing that could be said to originate from this, just as there was nothing that could be said to stand outside it.
It was not above, nor below, nor beyond, for those relations depended on spatial and conceptual orientations that had no foothold here.
Aevor realized then that nothing he had encountered before—no throne, no sovereign structure, no supreme synthesis—had ever truly approached this, not because they were insufficient, but because approach itself presupposed separation, and separation was absent, and whatever this was could not be reached, influenced, resisted, or comprehended, not as a limitation imposed upon others, but because such interactions assumed a framework that simply did not obtain.
And yet, it was not alien.
It did not observe him, nor ignore him, nor acknowledge him in any manner that could be named, but its relation to him—if relation could still be spoken of—was not that of ruler to subject, nor creator to creation, but something far quieter and far more unsettling: the recognition that what he called himself had never been outside this continuum to begin with.
When he opened his eyes beneath the falling water, the world returned exactly as it had been, the sound of the waterfall unchanged, the mountain unmoved, the sky indifferent, yet the questions he carried no longer pressed against the boundaries of his understanding in the same way, not because they had been answered, but because they had been rendered provisional.
And in that silence, Aevor remained seated for a long while, unmoving, as the water continued to fall around him, indifferent to beginnings, endings, and everything that once demanded to stand between them.