Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 156: Primordial Dance

He was used to appearing in weird voids of all kinds against his will.

Whether it be Heart Realms, Mind Palaces, or the true Void itself, Uriel was used to it.

The issue, this time, was that it didn’t make sense.

All his uniqueness had done was slow his perception of time so much that it might as well have stopped time and space entirely.

So, realistically, his body, in the midst of imploding, should’ve still been in the desert.

A logical conclusion might have been that his perception had simply reached a level where even photons stilled, stopping him from being able to see light as a whole, thus plunging him into a void of sensory darkness.

But if that was the case...why was he perceiving himself as a spectral figure of flames?

And beyond that, usually when he pushed his Uniqueness to its limits, only his mind remained mobile while his body was frozen in place. So why could he move here?

’Did I get pushed into another trap?’ He thought for a moment before scratching the idea. ’Maybe I did something wrong.’

’Am I actually dead?’ He looked down at his spectral form. ’Is this...my soul?’

He found it hard to believe. His memories of it were faint, but he’d briefly seen his soul during the death advent and...it didn’t look like what he currently looked like.

Through Ophanis’ gaze, he had seen it.

[’A small, trembling brazier of gold and white, corrupted by malicious streaks of crimson.’]

So he was confused. Especially considering he didn’t feel his mind being any different, or any sharper.

’...’

Uriel forcefully shut his mind off, taking a deep breath and exhaling all chaos from his form, calming himself and reaching a state of deep tranquility.

’I am so tired.’ His shoulders dropped, his back slouching as he released a deep sigh.

Closing his eyes, he let himself fall, his back softly impacting the darkness again, the latter as solid as earth yet somehow soft nonetheless.

Sprawled on the ground with his eyes closed, he let silence fill the gaps. A light breeze swept through the void, softly caressing his skin and soothing his mind.

He wasn’t sure if it was actually air brushing against him or something beyond his comprehension, but he didn’t care either way.

It made him feel calm.

For some reason, Uriel found himself focusing more and more on the wind as the seconds passed.

The way it glided across the surface of his flame-borne body. The way it wrapped around him. The way it cooled the hottest parts of his soul and warmed the most frigid parts of it.

It was thick, yet incredibly light and ephemeral, ever-changing yet a constant that anchored itself in the void itself, in nothing.

’...an ever-changing constant anchored in nothing...’

HUM!

A deep melody suddenly rose to fill the void, like reverberating percussions beneath rising violin strains, woven with harp-like notes and a soft choral harmony that seemed to embody the essence of light itself.

Uriel didn’t even realize when he began to hum alongside the tune echoing across the void, nor did he notice his body suddenly swaying alongside the push and pull of the winds, like a blade of grass entranced by the morning breeze.

SHAH!

A force slowly pulled Uriel up to his feet, and his body suddenly became one with the winds, his steps gliding across the void ground in precise choreography and fine finesse, akin to the most accomplished of ballet dancers.

He swung his arms with the flows and retreated with its gusts, all the while humming the deep melody, his body entirely attuned to the two mysterious forces.

Without any inhibition, he began to dance across the void.

And as he did so, a shocking change occurred.

...

The Void was not Nothing. And Nothing was not Void.

Nothing was ’absence’, but the Void simply ’was not.’

Nothing was constant.

The Void, though, was never changing because it ’was not,’ yet it was also ever-changing because it ’was not.’

It was a contradiction that gave it meaning.

The Void and Nothing were reflections of one another.

[’...an ever-changing constant anchored in nothing...’]

WHOOOOSH!

The stretching expanse of darkness of the void was silent, empty, and dark.

But suddenly, light sparkled, faintly illuminating the dark infinite.

The Void shook, then suddenly its fabric tore, and from the depths of Nothing, blood gushed out, the void itself bleeding.

Its blood was of a radiant white-gold, flooding the darkness to form an endless river that flowed with no end in all directions.

The river of white-gold was chaos incarnate—life, change, will, thought, freedom, defiance, myriad, and all else.

And yet, from it, life bloomed, laws rising alongside it, reflected across the river’s waters, a surface filled with endless possibilities and worlds.

But then the Void shook once more, Nothing shaking alongside it, this time finding itself torn and bleeding, blood gushing from beyond even Nothing and the Void.

Nothing’s blood was of a somber amethyst-crimson, flooding out into the void with no restraint. With it, rot and ash followed.

The dark purple-red river was order incarnate—death, constance, nature, truth, limit, obedience, and all else.

It came with destruction, death, all of it reflected deeply in its waters.

"..."

The two rivers fiercely opposed one another in essence, yet rather than clashing, the two harmonized, chaos and order bridging to become one.

They danced.

Across the dark void, their radiance rose, their flows intertwining to then separate, fusing to then sever, and clashing to then mend.

It was a beautiful dance.

And in their wake, the void tore further, droplets of multicolored light spilling from the gashes, standing as a third force to join the entrancing primordial dance.

And suddenly, the void became a canvas for the three forces.

BOOOOM! BOOOOM! BOOOOM! BOOOOM!

The three rivers played and fought, rupturing the fabric of the void without care, letting its fragments fall to become rain in their ancient dance.

And from these shards of the void...meaning arose.

From nothing, meaning was born—runes.

From these shards, runes formed and collapsed in cycles that refused to end, and in what felt like a blink, an uncountable amount of runes had formed.

They formed a gigantic formation spanning the entire infinite void.

It formed a runic net that trapped the three forces and subdued them.

And then suddenly, the runes gained a source, their past bleak dark luster gone, replaced by radiant emeralds, born of the union of the three rivers.

The void blinked, and suddenly it was no more.

Space and Time had risen.

They blinked, and suddenly they were no more.

Space and Time had bridged to form Spacetime.

A dimension was born.

WHOOOOOOOSH!

The dimension was empty.

But not for long.

PAH! PAH! PAH! PAH!

Grains of sand began to form.