Bakuzan suddenly realized, with a cold shock that bit his nape, what Erasa's revelation truly implied.
He slowly raised his eyes to the tormented sky.
In this world — in this meta-reality — it was not uncommon for entities to possess their apostles to manifest themselves.
Some descended so brutally, so frequently, that their hosts ended up broken, identity dissolved, reason devoured by the constant erosion of being replaced by something vaster than them.
Erasa, as an apostle of Mü Thanatos, was therefore not only linked to Mü, to Utha, and to Thanatos…
She was also, by ricochet, the apostle of Shad Ruhvaël.
A frightening possibility crossed Bakuzan.
If Shad Ruhvaël decided one day to manifest through Erasa… would she survive?
How could one remain intact under absolute negation, under the very impossibility of being conceptualized?
And yet… it was not entirely impossible.
The Ineffables — the group to which Erasa now belonged — were entities that had negated all conceptualization through their own transcendences.
They had gone beyond the transcendent, then had broken that very notion of transcendence, shattering the concept itself.
This impossible act meant one thing:
that there existed no longer any transcendence to reach after that.
Nothing left to surpass.
Nothing left to overcome. It was the absolute limit of a transcendent.
The Ineffables had become absences, beings who no longer rested on a structure, a logic, or a scaling ascent.
And this absolute absence, paradoxically, made them more compatible with the Origin Gods — of which Shad Ruhvaël was a part.
In other words:
Shad Ruhvaël could very well manifest partially through Erasa.
Not totally — she would be incapable of that — but sufficiently to impose her nature.
And that would mean that Erasa's body would become the puppet, the mask, the vector of an entity that:
has neither form,
nor spirit,
nor thought,
nor intention,
nor voice,
nor even the notion of existing.
A presence made solely of refusal.
A void that moves a living body.
Bakuzan swallowed.
This idea was terrifying.
Then a question imposed itself:
What would be the "intentions" of Shad Ruhvaël during a manifestation?
Did she even have any?
Or would her actions be a sort of automatic movement, an ontological reflex —
guided, indirectly, by Mü Thanatos herself?
It was possible…
And at the same time terribly complex.
Because it is difficult to imagine an intention for something that is not even supposed to be able to have one.
After this cascade of revelations, Bakuzan finally understood the magnitude of what the situation implied.
Erasa could no longer afford the slightest error: as an apostle of Mü Thanatos — and therefore indirectly of Mü, Utha, Thanatos, and even Shad Ruhvaël — the slightest imprecision in the use of their powers could jeopardize the entire world.
Yes… that was surely why she had asked for his support.
Erasa then approached him, her gaze more grave than ever.
— I received a new order from the Goddess…, she said calmly.
Bakuzan frowned.
— A new order?
She nodded slowly.
— You come with me. We have a mission.
He did not hesitate.
Erasa's gaze left no doubt: something very serious had just begun.
Elsewhere.
A step sank into the tall grass of an isolated clearing.
Sakolomeh had just arrived.
He had cut his long hair, regaining his former cut; his bare torso was streaked with black marks that pulsed softly, and he wore only dark pants. Barefoot. The wind glided over his skin as if it knew what it carried.
His gaze was different — firmer, almost resolute.
— Well… I know you're there. Show yourself, he launched in a strong but strangely resonant voice, as if an inner echo spoke with him.
Then, something materialized.
A silhouette. Or rather… a creature.
Entirely white, with long black hair, naked, covered with pale scales that recalled an ancient myth forgotten by the worlds.
She slowly raised her head.
And Sakolomeh saw her eyes.
Two abysses.
Two absolutes of black nothingness, erasing light instead of reflecting it.
— I'm finally glad to see you, she said in a distorted voice, as if a second being spoke over hers.
The creature took a step toward Sakolomeh.
Her appearance should have inspired mistrust, even panic; yet, nothing in her emitted the slightest trace of hostility.
But Sakolomeh perceived something else — something far more disconcerting.
This body was not hers.
This form was only a fragile mask, a simulacrum borrowed from reality.
The abysses that served as her eyes betrayed the obvious: her true essence was not made to be seen, nor even imagined.
— Do you know that you terrified us? said the creature in a jawless voice, without movement, as if the words fell from an inner void.
Sakolomeh frowned.
— I see that you're not hostile. Even your intentions seem… neutral. But then… what exactly are you?
The creature tilted her head slightly.
A gesture too precise and too absent at the same time.
— Normally, I am an existence devoid of intention.
The creatures of the meta-reality — and even those of the Chôrion — cannot understand my actions.
But the fact that you can… reinforces my most terrifying fears.
Sakolomeh widened his eyes.
— The Chôrion? What's that?
The creature advanced further, silent, the grasses bending under her feet as if they bowed more than they bent.
— The Chôrion is not its true name, she replied.
It is an approximate term to designate a non-place, a domain of the unspeakable, of the non-possible — where everything escapes all definition.
The Chôrion is just a word… but it captures nothing of its nature.
It is there that the Anarchetypes "live," if one can use that word, entities that even the dialects of the origin gods cannot grasp.
Sakolomeh remained silent, bewildered.
He had never even heard a rumor about such a domain.
The creature raised her eyes to the sky, or to something beyond the sky.
— In principle, everything that escapes the meta-reality cannot be named.
The meta-reality encompasses, defines, and codifies everything that exists, even impossibles.
You and I… we are only echoes of inconceivable things, for the meta-reality as for the Chôrion.
Sakolomeh lowered his eyes to his hands, stunned.
He was beginning to grasp… finally… what he truly represented in the meta-reality.
What he should never have been: a living anomaly.
He clenched his fists, then planted his gaze into that — or into the absence of eyes — of the creature.
— You still haven't told me what you are. And believe me… I still have thousands of questions.
The creature remained silent.
For a fraction of an instant, golden pupils crossed her ocular abysses, before extinguishing as if they had never existed.
— What I am… I will tell you, she murmured.
She raised her head, and the world seemed to suspend, as if her words redrew the air itself.
— Before the first forms, before even the first impossibilities…
before the notion of "origin" could be thought…
there was only the Metaworld:
a space without space, a Whole without contour,
where nothing was permitted, nothing was refused,
and where even silence did not yet exist.
A perfect immobility.
An existence without the possibility of existing.
— In this mute immensity, she continued, emerged those now called the Bearers of the Whole, or Exentities.
They were not created: they emerged.
Raw resonances of the Metaworld,
without form, without color,
but so dense that they made the nothingness vibrate.
She placed an almost human hand on her own white torso.
— That is what I truly am… but this is only a fragment.
The vibrations of the Bearers generated tensions,
filaments of "empty possible,"
fine fissures in absolute continuity:
pockets where something — anything —
could one day come to pass.
— The Bearers did not want to create, she said.
They existed, and their existence alone deformed the immobility of the Metaworld.
Reality was born only because they disturbed its absence.
She lowered her voice.
— It was then that a more ancient depth stirred.
More ancient than them.
More ancient than the idea of "possible."
In the fissures opened by the Bearers, a dark bottom revealed itself:
the Chôrion.
The true one.
Not the abyss of impossibles that you know today,
but its primal state:
an formless matrix where nameless entities slept,
older than all intention.
— They had no will, no desire, no action.
They were what could not be… and yet was there.
The creature raised her eyes to Sakolomeh, and in her eyes of nothingness shone a silence almost alive.