Existence was a unique thing.
It held everything, and it held it strangely, and no two pieces of it were quite alike. But there was a thing more unique than existence itself, and Achilles had built his whole life on it. The capability to assimilate it. To take a piece of existence into yourself, whatever it was, whoever it had belonged to, and make it a part of what you were.
He had assimilated a great many things across his life. Powers, weavings, authorities, the cores of enemies and the gifts of friends, whole systems of existence swallowed and woven into his own. Most of it had settled. Some of it had fought. None of it had ever been as problematic as the monstrous weavings he had assimilated weeks ago, and none of it had ever kept him awake the way those did now.
The trees nearby did not care about any of that.
