Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 3864: Glyph! I

In the Paradoxical Prison, the silence was always a horror.

The coffins had been torn wide open, their bindings unraveled, and the entities once trapped within were nothing more than vapor and digesting resonance. Mighty beings, some marked by the gleam of Primarchy, others holding the flickering grandeur of Originus Venerant distinction- all gone. Consumed!

What remained of them pulsed like distant echoes clinging to the moist walls, and at the center of the room, it writhed.

The Inevitability.

A mass of ever-churning tentacles, multicolored and immense, pulsing with the vibrant horror of finality.

It shifted with slow hunger, each limb glowing in impossible hues, feeding upon the residue of power it had been given- scraps of titanic existences torn from their chains and devoured as if they were nothing more than broth.

Through the broken arch of the Prison’s gateway, Thauron entered.

His eyes sparkled with wild delight, dark robes tattered and dusted with particles of golden matter. He floated lazily forward, his mouth stretching into a smile as he approached the wriggling mass.

”Miss me?” he asked, voice light, almost fond. He extended a hand toward the throbbing surface of the Inevitability, fingers glowing with a faint obsidian light of Finality.

But...

The reaction was immediate.

BOOM!

A light blazed from the Inevitability, pure and monstrous, and in the next instant, thousands of tentacles erupted. They wrapped around Thauron like lovers lost in longing, like a creature reclaiming its own.

His expression turned to stone, but his lips still moved in cool brilliance!

From within the mass came a voice. Low. Steady.

”Yes,” it said, ”It has missed you greatly.”

The words were soaked in layered meaning. Each syllable crawled like worms over flesh.

”So much so,” the voice continued, ”that from now on, you will never be separated again.”

HUUM!

Thauron stilled.

Then, slowly, he turned his head and narrowed his eyes. ”...Little Bobby?”

At the center of the Inevitability, something began to rise. A silhouette formed in the heart of the tentacles, light and shadow coalescing.

A figure emerged, stepping out of the wriggling heart.

Bob.

Bob!

His form now shimmered in stellar obsidian. A celestial presence cloaked in restrained sorrow. Behind him, wings of shadow and starlight unfolded- four pairs, black and white, stretching with the dignity of glory. Halos hovered, dense and quiet, orbiting his head like ancient judgments.

”You shouldn’t be aware,” Thauron muttered with a sense of confusion.”You shouldn’t be this.”

Bob’s voice was soft, yet it carried like a glorious hymn. ”You’re right. I shouldn’t.”

He turned, fully revealing himself as the one who had forced the exchange- switching places with Thauron, who now found himself being pulled deeper into the core of the Inevitability.

”But I discovered something.”

He paused, eyes simmering with weary wrath.

”Inevitabilities crave Living Existential Authority more than anything else.”

Thauron’s face twitched. For the first time, true surprise glimmered there.

”That’s impossible,” he said flatly, sharply. ”You had no pathway, no weavings left. There’s no way you could have attained any possible authority, much less Living Existential Authority! That approaches Foldless Ones! You cannot just have randomly gained a power I have been chasing long before you were born!”

WAA!

A sense lividity now burned in Thauron!

Bob stood calmly. ”I didn’t obtain. Not the normal way.”

He turned his gaze back toward the Inevitability, its tentacles now tightening around the writhing Thauron, the mass quivering with delight.

”You used to speak about little fish and big fish, Thauron.”

His voice cut sharper now.

”But there was one fish you and I both misunderstood. One that didn’t belong in your web of definitions. One that paced the path freely... and left something behind.”

Thauron opened his mouth, but the words were swallowed by the rising sound of the Inevitability’s hunger, its roar vibrating through the walls of the prison.

”You don’t know,” Bob whispered with venom, ”how many sleepless moments I spent looking for a way. For her. For my Liora.”

His feet moved with purpose, passing the writhing cocoon of the Inevitability, his steps echoing on cracked stone.

At the far end of the Inevitability, resting within ruins, it lay.

A Wheel.

Obsidian. Massive. Faint and flickering.

A Dead Wheel of Existence.

Bob approached it with reverent silence, kneeling slowly before its immense bulk. His fingers, glowing faintly now, traced the invisible lines etched across the Wheel’s dark surface. Every ridge was familiar. Every fracture carved into his soul.

He stared into its center- into the void where a soul once danced.

Liora.

His light.

Broken. Gone. Dead!

And yet, he could feel her now.

He had kept the Wheel hidden. Even as the Inevitability devoured all else, he had preserved this. And now, he had what he needed.

His hands rose.

Living Origin Authority pulsed out.

It radiated with warm desperation and boundless power, flowing into the Wheel’s dormant core. A golden hue surged where the black had once ruled. Within the stillness, something stirred.

The remnants of his daughter’s soul, for so long unreachable, flickered.

Her broken self trembled in the wake of the Authority washing over her. Bob didn’t dare breathe. He only let it pour out- his power, his love, his hope.

Living Existential Authority.

When it came to Dead Things, the only thing that could give them life...was that which was truly living!

He was always looking for a solution as he thought Noah Osmont would have the key to it. And while he was not led to the Loom or anything that terrifying, he was given Living Existential Authority through him.

Through his entanglement!

So at the end of the day, he truly did have the key!

A second passed.

Then another.

And slowly... softly... the soul began to shine.

Her Existence began to return!

Tiny sparks glimmered like stars behind clouds, and Bob saw her face forming, no longer a memory or a phantom. A budding spark of real presence, waking to the warmth of his Authority.

He let out a breath, knees hitting the floor.

Tears spilled from his eyes and streamed down the sides of his cheeks. His shoulders shook, and a laugh broke free, quiet and broken, but real.

”Finally,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with reverence.

”Finally...”

He leaned his forehead against the edge of the Wheel, tears dripping onto its surface, evaporating in golden light.

”I can save you, little light.”

His voice trembled again.

”I can save you, my daughter.”

The Inevitability roared louder behind him, its tendrils tightening around Thauron in ecstasy, as if in exchange for the flood of power it now craved.

But Bob... Bob didn’t look back. His eyes never left the forming light at the heart of the Wheel.