Chapter 735 - The Root of Existence

Everything was nothing.

Zeke existed, and yet, he ceased to be. 

The silence was deafening, the nothingness blinding in its lack.  There were no thoughts.  No senses.  No stimuli of any kind.  Even the threads were gone. 

It might have lasted for an eternity or a second, but suddenly, it all came rushing back.  Zeke felt himself being ripped to pieces, unraveling in a way he’d never experienced before.  Even Hell, where he’d been torn apart by carrion birds, over and over again until he’d gone practically insane, could not compare. 

He tried to scream, to plead for someone to help.  But no sounds came from his destroyed throat.  He merely was, though any sense of agency he’d once possessed had been snatched away.  He could only endure. 

And for the first time, he failed.

His threads were scattered in a million different directions, joining other threads and merging with them to create a host of other things.  Zeke was everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time. 

Another eternity later, he managed to fight through the agony of his fractured existence, only to discover a new level of pain.  He fought through that, too.  And a hundred other layers of torment until he found himself capable of rational thought.  Even then, it was like grasping at the wind, and just as effective as that implied. 

But Zeke’s stubborn nature, such as it could be expressed, once again rose above the pain to force him to forge ahead.  It took him longer than he could comprehend to bring two strings together.  Then three.  Four.  His labor was eternal, and yet, without context, it might’ve been no more than an instant’s worth of work.

That did not matter.

It literally couldn’t.  Zeke only had two options.  Give in and embrace the nothingness.  There was a chance that the pain would end if he followed that route.  In his splintered mind, he believed that was probably.

He rejected it outright.

Any thought of surrender met an impregnable wall of persistence.  It couldn’t be characterized as resistance.  Rather, the mettle from which it was made ascended well past that mark, becoming something far stronger than a human ideal.  It was a transcendent concept, too powerful to be categorized. 

It was more like a universal law.

Gravity.  The speed of light.  And Zeke’s stubborn refusal to lose, even when the very nature of reality was his adversary. 

With that driving him, the result was always inevitable.  With every step forward, he joined one string to another.  Eventually, he began to experience reality in a more familiar way.  And at the core of his efforts was a glowing string, not unlike the one he’d just severed. 

Was that his soul?  Was that the unique bit of reality that constituted him?  That was the implication when it came to Aja, so that explanation only made sense.  However, where hers merely glowed, his was blinding in its luminescence.  It was thicker, as well.  The trunk of an oak tree next to a thin reed.

And as much as the world battered against it, it held strong. 

Zeke rallied those other threads to his cause, slowly rebuilding himself.  The first were his eyes, so he could see.  Then, his brain, so he could understand those sights.  A skeletal system.  Muscles.  Nerves.  Organs.  He reassembled his body, bit by tiny bit, until, at last, he was remade. 

But he was different, too. 

So, so very different.

Where before he’d been a primordial, probably one of many that had existed since the dawn of reality, now he was something wholly unique.  Zeke wasn’t certain how he knew that, and when he tried to access his status, there was no response.  He was disconnected from the Framework. 

“That is not wholly accurate,” came a voice.

Zeke whipped around, and space flexed with the movement.  He saw a figure rocketing away, but with a flick of his will, he brought it rushing back.  Soon enough, it resolved into one of the Waymaster’s drones.  This one was the size of a planet, though. 

By contrast, Zeke was less than an ant.

And yet, he knew that it would only take a thought to completely dismantle the thing. 

“What are you talking about?” Zeke asked, his voice shaking the heavens.  He swallowed hard, clamping down with his will.  He needed control.  “What happened?”

“You violated the rules of this reality,” the giant metal creature intoned.  “There are consequences for such actions.”

“I see.”

“You do not.  You should not be.  You should have been wholly obliterated.  That you were not is…troubling.”

That was as Zeke had expected.  He felt it down to the core of his very being that he’d done something wrong.  Or maybe that was a bad characterization.  Maybe it would have been better to say that he’d done something unprecedented.  Either way, the Framework, as well as reality itself, had been ill-equipped to handle it. 

“What did you mean that I wasn’t wholly accurate with my assessment?  And can you hear my thoughts?” Zeke demanded.  He’d worked hard to shore up his mental defenses, and he didn’t like the idea that they might have been breached.

“Everyone in this galaxy can hear your thoughts.  Most perished the second you cried out,” the drone stated.  “Even my master felt it through my senses.”

Zeke focused, putting his thoughts in a vice.  He was well-acquainted with mental control, especially after his experiences with Eveline, so he had no issues making it work. 

“Thank you,” said the drone.  “That is…better.”

“How many?” he asked, referring to the previous claim that his uncontrolled thoughts had killed most of the galaxy.

“Billions,” it answered.  “You are lucky it only hosted a pair of habitable worlds.”

Zeke turned away and gazed out into space.  Even without trying, he could see all the strings that comprised reality.  In some ways, no one every truly died.  They just became a part of something else.  But that wasn’t as comforting a thought as he’d hoped it would be.  Instead, it came with a pang of nihilism that threatened to overwhelm him.  If it was all just threads, then what did any of it really matter?

Why was he so adamant about saving it?  Even if the adversary managed to break through the Framework and devour everything, what was truly lost? 

“You still don’t understand.”

“What?” Zeke asked, shifting his eyes to the drone.

“People.  You don’t understand what makes them special.”

“Nothing, from what I can see.  They’re all just threads.”

“So ignorant.”

“Then enlighten me,” Zeke ordered the drone.  “Tell me what I’m missing.”

“That thread you destroyed, it glowed in your perception, didn’t it?” asked the giant metal humanoid. 

Zeke nodded.  “It did.”

“What do you think made it different from all the other threads?”

Zeke shrugged and admitted he didn’t know.  “I guess it was Aja’s soul.”

“If that is what you wish to call it,” the drone agreed.  “But it is more than that.  It is the seed from which existence stems.  Your sapience, your sense of individuality – it is contained in a similar thread.  I am certain you felt it.”

Zeke nodded.

The drone went on, “It is from that which all other threads extend.”  It gestured toward space.  “Each of those threads represent the ripple of someone’s actions.  In many cases, the originator was the Creator, but you have created many yourself.  That is what the adversary craves.  That is what it threatens to consume.  You liken it to destroying reality, but that is not completely accurate.  The threat is that it will consume the very idea of reality.  Nothing will remain.”

“I would.”

“Perhaps.  Unlikely, but you have surprised us before.  Even if that was the case, what sort of existence would that be?  Alone among the nothingness.  No context.  No time.  No space.  Just a vague awareness that you are something.  A truer hell cannot be imagined.”

Zeke frowned.  That description was indeed horrifying, and it highlighted precisely why his struggle was so important.  The problem was that it didn’t really change anything.  He wanted to work harder, to do better, but he just wasn’t capable of doing any more than he was already doing. 

To characterize it as frustrating was an understatement of the highest degree. 

“How long has it been?” Zeke asked.  “Are my…”

He couldn’t finish the question because he feared that his companions were gone, just like everything else in his vicinity. 

“They thrive.”

That simple statement was like removing a weight for his chest.  “And how long?”

“Three hundred years.”

Zeke just stared at the drone, too shocked to even make an expression.  In some ways, he’d expected much worse.  Thousands of years, perhaps.  That it had only been a few centuries was a relief.  Yet, even though he’d bypassed the normal timescale of human existence, he still found himself anchored by it. 

And three centuries was a long, long time.

So much could have changed.  People could have died.  Or moved on.  Or simply evolved into different people.  That he’d missed so much was enough to tighten his chest. 

But he also felt oddly detached from it all. 

Perhaps because he knew that he existed in an entirely different realm than the rest of his companions.  He’d been drifting away from them for some time – since before his descent into Hell – and he’d only grown more distant in the years since.  None of them could truly relate to his experiences.  Or to what he had become.

Which reminded him of his original question.

“What did you mean when you said that my assertion that I’d disconnected from the Framework wasn’t wholly accurate?” he asked.

“You have transcended the Framework.”

“What does that mean?  Am I going to be whisked away to a new realm?  To The End?”

“No one in this reality can force you to do anything you do not wish to do,” the drone stated.  “You are in control.  There are only two people remaining in this realm who could, perhaps, challenge you.  One of them is my master, who, I assure you, does not wish to do so.”

“The other?”

“I believe you know the answer to that question,” the drone answered.

“Shar Maelaine.”

“Indeed.  She has spent the past three centuries preparing for your attack,” it said.  “Eradicating Aja’s existence sent shockwaves throughout this realm.  Other greater gods have risen, but they are young and weak.  They do not have the power to hold their new positions.  She uses them.  Manipulating them to do her bidding, she has taken multiple territories.  Some of your friends have risen to oppose her as greater gods themselves.”

“They…they have?” Zeke asked.

“Of course.  They were close.  They had the personal power.  They only needed to gain a following.  Talia has found that in a detached population of undead,” the drone explained.  “Pudge has brought many beastkin into the fold.  They have been fighting Shar Maelaine’s forces since shortly after your disappearance.”

“I see.  And the others?”

“As I said – thriving.”

Zeke frowned.  “What does it mean then?  That I’ve transcended the Framework?”

“You no longer need its assistance,” it stated.  “You will no longer use skills.  You only need to manipulate the threads, and they will respond to your will.  That will take time.  Effort.  You need to master it before you reach The End.”

“I intend to,” Zeke said.  “So, what now?”

The drone shrugged, taking on an oddly human demeanor.  “That is up to you.  I am authorized to take you back to the Ways, but beyond that, you are on your own,” it answered. 

Zeke shook his head.  “I’m not ready to return.  When the time comes, I’ll make my own way back.”

“Are you certain?” the drone asked.

“I am,” he said.  “Thank you for the information.”

It was a clear dismissal, and one the drone couldn’t mistake for anything else.  As Zeke closed his eyes, he felt the thing disappear.  That left him all alone, with only the threads for company.  That was exactly what he wanted.  He’d made a lot of progress manipulating those pieces of reality, but he needed to take this opportunity to master it.  So, he settled in to do just that.