The Central Hold, after Abel's Awakening, was utterly obliterated, resulting in the death of all below the Saint rank. Abel's colossal form made it nearly impossible for anyone to avoid looking at him.
Only one individual survived, though they were severely injured.
In the trillions of years that followed, The Central Hold would eventually repair itself and grow once more.
However, due to Brahman's 'restriction,' The Central Hold remained technologically stagnant, though its appearance had changed.
Now it resembled a tower at its core, with structures spreading outward like the spokes of a wheel, placing the tower at the center of a vast circle.
At the topmost floor of the tower was a simple room, overlooking the entirety of The Central Hold. The only thing of value within was an enormous glass window, taking up one-fourth of the room.
Karsus, standing by the window, sighed as he twirled a glass of wine-like liquid in hand, sipping it thoughtfully. His face, over the years, had hardly changed—he still looked like a middle-aged man, albeit with streaks of gray now threading through his hair.
Suddenly, his expression shifted. In an instant, he teleported out of the tower. The other members of The Council, sensing the same presence, also appeared beside him.
"Here we go again," Amaidine muttered with a sigh, as Abel arrived.
As it had happened trillions of years ago, all inhabitants of The Central Hold, except the Saints, went mad and died instantly.
But this time, Abel did not immediately destroy The Central Hold. Instead, it directed it's presence toward The Council.
Suddenly, sparkling fragments appeared before them—shards of a Core. The Council recognized them instantly.
"Apply. Piece. Redo. Take," Abel's voice reverberated, cracking their Soul Realms.
Fortunately, Abel spoke in broken, simple terms. Any more complexity, and their Soul Realms would have been shattered entirely.
As Abel burrowed into The Central Hold, reducing it to ruins once again, Karsus looked down at the fragments, more concerned about the task they were assigned than the destruction. The Hold could be rebuilt in seconds. But the Core fragments—that was another matter.
Cores were the anchors of existence. Once destroyed, the individual's existence was completely erased. Even with fragments, it was impossible to recreate the original being. Reforging a Core would result in something similar, but ultimately different.
Yet now, Abel had tasked them with doing just that—recreating the Core. How could they possibly rebuild an existence that had been erased?
Though not impossible, it would demand an immense amount of power, which they also had to conserve for defending El-Eudo.
But what choice did The Council have?
As these thoughts churned in their minds, El-Eudo began to shimmer. A bluish tint spread across the realm, and within moments, a cyan El-Eudo emerged, growing noticeably thicker.
"This must be the bonus our boss gave us," Rathanor quipped dryly.
Amaidine nodded, and the other Council members followed suit as Karsus gently stroked the Core fragments in his hand.
"I wonder how you knew it," Karsus murmured, as he began reconstructing the Core.
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Inside El-Eudo, the internal structure resembled the tangled chaos of yarn—an infinite number of strings, all jumbled together.
Contrary to what one might expect, being inside such a mass wasn't beautiful.
It was claustrophobic, even for those who had never experienced claustrophobia before.
One might assume these strings remained eternally still, unmoving for all time.
But that was far from the truth.
In fact, the strings were always in motion, though their movements were so uniform that it seemed as if they stood still.
When The Shadow of The Sovereign tore open a rift in El-Eudo, a paradoxical change occurred within its depths.
If Abel hadn't been subtly healing the realm over the course of the trillions of years during their tug of war, an unimaginable catastrophe would have taken place.
Now, as the bluish tint rapidly merged with the green strings, a cyan hue emerged, and an object stuck in one of the strings began to squirm.
It tried desperately to move but couldn't.
The infinite threads left no space in the vast interior of El-Eudo.
Time and time again, it struggled to break free, yet every attempt was futile.
Realizing this, the object changed its approach.
Instead of trying to break free from the threads, it sought to fully merge with the string.
The string, like all others, was infinitely narrow and infinitely long.
Yet the object remained undeterred, even as it was destroyed by the crushing force of the string's infinite nature.
The destroyed particles of the object began to slowly latch onto the inner structure of the string.
They were crushed a hundred more times, but the more they were destroyed, the smaller and more numerous they became.
Thus, the particles were trapped in a continuous cycle of destruction.
At that moment, the bluish tint entered this particular string.
The particles, still caught in their cycle, saw an opportunity and immediately seized it.
Without hesitation, they latched onto the string's interior, exploiting the brief moments when they were on the verge of being destroyed to begin absorbing the bluish tint into their being.
As they absorbed the tint, the particles became supercharged, starting to duplicate infinitely of their own accord.
The duplicated particles then shrank themselves infinitely, matching the scale of the string.
Soon, the infinitely small and countless particles reached the same state as the string and began to converge.
A sublime merging of two forces.
It was art.
It was beauty incarnate.
To a certain individual, it was all the good that would ever be.
So good.
It was terrifying.
It was horrid.
An abomination.
Among other things, of course.
As the particle became fully entangled with the string at a fundamental level, becoming one with it, it gained access to vast amounts of information. Information that El-Eudo had recorded and stored within the string.
Yet, to its surprise, the data within a single string was limited.
It turned out that the string, or more precisely, the one the particle had merged with, belonged to a lower dimension. An infinite number of these lower-dimensional strings made up a single string of the actual El-Eudo.
The true strings of El-Eudo were finite, but they seemed to contain something. Something that itself was infinitely divided into lower-dimensional strings.
This wasn't the only revelation.
There were even more lower-dimensional infected strings like the particle!
As they wibbled and wobbled, these similar strings couldn't help but feel as though they were all one.
All of them sought a single thing now.
Reunification