The voyage was not across space. Across significance. The Angel of Death guided, a mark of conclusion, amid the whirling void of all else. Cassiathon trailed behind sensing the boundaries of his identity start to stretch. Here life did not exist,. Death, no disorder, no structure. Solely the deep expectant stillness that came before the initial cosmic utterance was made.
It wasn't void. It brimmed with promise. Cassiathon sensed it closing around him—the burden of all tales every unlived life all chances that had condensed into the single slender line of reality known as existence. It felt immense, frightening and oddly magnificent.
This is the clay the Angels voice echoed into his core as there was no noise. Prior, to being molded. I am the hand that delineates one boundary of the form. You carry a fragment of that definition and a fragment of the clays untamed possibility.
Cassiathon attempted to communicate yet lacked a mouth and a voice. He shaped the inquiry through his intent: How can I carry more?
You do not possess. You transmit. The Angels essence evolved, transforming from a guide into a pivot point. At the Apex no struggles exist. Only. Is-Not are present. Your struggle occurs because you belong to the formed world. To expand your ability you must master standing at the origin allowing both currents to pass through you without forcing them to merge. You need to be the channel, not the vessel of trial.
A picture created within the non-space: a tube containing two pathways passing through it never intersecting both moving unimpeded.
They resonate within me. They respond.
Since you choose to be a place become a pathway instead.
It marked a change in outlook. He had consistently viewed himself as the battlefield, the fusion. The Angel was instructing him to become the link, the path, along which both forces advanced, distinct yet concurrent.
He made an effort. He relinquished the weaving, the delicate equilibrium. It resembled loosening a hand he'd gripped throughout his entire existence. The ashen cold of death and the purple tempest of disorder freed from their imposed union seemed ready to burst to annihilate him in their raw unblended forms.
Do not fight it. Allow them to go by. You are not their endpoint. You serve as their pathway.
It represented a demonstration of trust. Of self-denial. He ceased striving to become something. Concentrated solely on permitting.
The death-energy coursed within him chilling and grave and immense like an iceberg. It didn't immobilize him; it passed through him destined for its essential engagements, beyond.
The chaos-energy trailed behind a tumult of birth and ruin, potential and frenzy. It didn't consume him; it flowed within him a stream destined to form and deform innumerable realms.
He was not their master. He was their aperture.
Within that condition of conduction he experienced a third sensation. It wasn't a force. A clearance. The Silent Apex itself recognizing his part. He was an anomaly. An essential contradiction embedded in the game's regulations. The cosmos via this quiet permitted his being because he fulfilled a purpose: he acted as a safety valve a merging spot that stopped the tension, between total order and total chaos from ripping reality asunder.
He was not a mistake. He was a feature.
The discovery was both. Uplifting. His suffering his turmoil, his tormented life… it had meaning. He was the living scar bridging two powers and his fight was what prevented the injury from breaking open again.
The Angels presence declared, grasp the price. To channel is to be drained. Each passage imprints a mark. You will carry the wear of forever. This is the burden of becoming the way.
Cassiathon perceived it at that moment—not agony, but a profound persistent fatigue ingrained in the essence of his existence. Peace would forever elude him. He was destined to remain the path over which armies advanced. Yet he held the power to determine the course. He could decide which armies had priority passage.
His intent was not, on halting the current. On directing it. He envisioned the Mountain, his anchors, the Ghost Web. He imagined the death-energy moving beyond them circling them keeping them safe as it solemnly passed. He pictured the chaos-energy being steered toward the Queen's creations to disrupt, to challenge, to inject messy exquisite life.
He was unable to manage the rivers. However he was capable of constructing the levees and canals.
That suffices the Angel declared. You have grasped it. Now we go back. Your journey is required.
The Silent Apex freed them. The burden of possibility. Cassiathon crashed back into his form within the deep cavern inhaling sharply as though he had been underwater. He dropped to his knees. Sensed a change. The inner conflict remained,. It was no longer a civil strife within a stronghold. Instead it was like two rivers running parallel, through a gorge he had shaped. The strain was still vast. It was foundational not intimate.
He observed his hands. They didn't emit any light. They simply existed.. He was completely sure that he could now access reservoirs of strength that would have annihilated him previously.. He understood the cost: each use would act like a torrent wearing away the canyon cliffs. He had boundaries. He was not eternal.
He had a measure of his own ending.