The Primordial Record-Chapter 2167: I Am The Master of Transformation

THE HOLLOW.

With the death of two Ancient Primordials in such a drastic manner, the silence that followed Eos’s words was like the silence of Existence itself holding its breath, watching to see what would emerge from the wreckage of everything it had known.

Dying was what everything else did, not the Ancient Primordials. They were here from the beginning, and they would remain when everything ended... How could they fall here? How could they be killed... by him?!

A howl as if emerging from a dying animal emerged from Xyris, the Ancient Primordial of Time as he moved forward and backward at the same time.

His Primordial body stretched until it became a serpentine horror of rusting brass and shattered glass that coiled into itself like a serpent.

The hourglasses embedded in his flesh that had always been hidden because it was a direct window to his core began to spin backward as he attempted to reverse time around Eos, to undo the transformations and unmake the deaths the deaths that had just occurred.

Xyris, in an act of sacrifice that was alien to the minds of most Ancient Primordial, here attempted to pull Memory and Chaos back from the abyss they had fallen into.

Eos watched him with the thousand eyes that now bloomed across his crown, each one a window into a different truth.

Of all the Ancient Primordials, Xyris had always seemed special to him because he was the one who held on to his sanity the most, even if holding on brought him nothing but pain and madness.

Eos knew of the mental anguish that the Incarnation of Xyris had endured inside Eosah’s Reality, and now he saw that the roots of that anguish was not fake like many things he had been shown, but Eos did not feel any pity for this creature, instead there was more of anger at the cowardice of the Primordial.

At this moment, he knew that Xyris was not attempting to bring back his brothers because he cared for their lives; he was only doing this because the loss of his siblings hurt him personally.

In a manner, he saw his siblings as his property, and trying to get them back was a selfish instinct to always keep close the things that he was familiar with.

Xyris did not care if all of Existence burned, as long as his brothers were with him, then he was satisfied.

"You think time can undo what I have made?" Eos’s voice was no longer a voice, but everyone here could hear him. Even though the sound that came out of his lips was the sound of reality being rewritten, each word a new law imposed on existence. "Time is a river, Xyris. I have become the ocean. You cannot turn back what flows into me."

He reached out with his new arm, the arm that existed and did not exist.

Inside Eosah’s Reality, he had hidden what he was becoming, and now his true body no longer hides its nature, and his arm that was a question that Existence could not answer grasped at the screaming Primordial who was attempting to reverse time around his body.

Xyris’s form, which should have been untouchable, as it existed in every moment simultaneously, and could slip between seconds like a fish between stones, was held by Eos, bypassing all of his Primordial defenses.

The fight between Eos, Xyris, and Memory was not a waste. He had suffered grievous injuries wearing his fleshy skin, but he had learned how to take apart Xyris’s defenses in an instant.

Perhaps if the Ancient Primordial had waited for another few billion years and properly refined his strength, then this would be a challenge for Eos, but the hunger of Nyxara was their downfall, and Eos would always give more rope to a foolish enemy in order for them to hang themselves.

"You—" Xyris’s voice cracked across a thousand timelines at once, each one a scream in a different key, "—you are not possible. You cannot hold what exists in all moments. I am every when. I am—"

"You’re here," Eos whispered. "And ’here’ is a place. And places have now."

Eos could feel small points across his body where his essence was being drawn by the Archai to fuel the war that would have most likely broken out in the Origin Realms above, and he thought they were taking too little, making him a bit irritated.... What was the use of infinite essence if the conduits for his power could only take tiny sips?

’This is how you do it.’ He whispered in his head as he poured power into the hand that held Xyris, and he squeezed even as he pulled.

The core of a Primordial was so complex that even Eos admitted that it would take a very long time for him to fully decipher its mysteries.

But as it was with everything in life, it was many times easier to create than to destroy, and when you have one of the strongest fists in all of Existence, then destruction comes easy.

Xyris came apart like a clock struck by lightning. The hourglasses embedded in his flesh shattered, and the stolen lifespans within them poured out in a waterfall of years, a trillion lifetimes, a billion deaths, a million births, all of them spilling into the void and being drawn inexorably toward Eos’s open chest.

"NO!" Xyris’s scream was the sound of a universe being born and dying in the same instant. "You cannot consume time! Time consumes ALL! I am the measure! I am the boundary! Without me, existence cannot last!"

Eos’s chest opened wider, and the Maw That Crafts revealed itself as something far more terrible than what had just crafted the essence of Chaos or Memory into itself.

It was a moment of pure becoming, a singularity of transformation that took everything that was and made it something else.

This was not strange when you consider that the Omniversal Titan had duplicated lots of its abilities from glimpsing the bloodline of Black Zenith and consuming the memory imprint of Enoch.

In many ways, Eos had stolen a portion of the Origin of Transformation from Enoch, and the maw in his body was almost the answer that Enoch would have used to unravel his cursed children.

"Time doesn’t consume," Eos said, and there was something almost gentle in his voice. "Time transforms. And I am transformation’s master now."

Perhaps Eos knew the ramifications of his words, or maybe he did not, however, it was always a foolish bet to go against him, after all, every word he spoke came from a place of deep contemplation and calculation.

Xyris’s form collapsed inward, his serpentine body folding into itself like a dying star. The brass and glass that had composed him melted into something new that had never existed before in any Existence under the transformation light of Eos.

From the Maw, a silver seed emerged. It was the color of frozen moments and endless possibility, and it pulsed with a rhythm that was not quite a heartbeat or a clock, having a unique charm of a thing that has never existed before, and Eos could feel the power of Origin cheering all around him.