Chapter 316. Initial Contact with the Eternals (Part 1)
BOOM!
A final, earth-shattering explosion tore through the silence of the mountain peak. By now, any observer would have lost count of the thunderous detonations that had rocked this desolate height, but this one was different. It carried a primordial weight, a deep, resonant shudder that vibrated through the very bedrock of the forest below.
The impact birthed a colossal shockwave, an invisible titan's hand that swept across the landscape. It struck the deep snow with such violence that a massive white wall erupted from the earth—a man-made avalanche that surged outward in a perfect, deadly circle.
The ancient trees of the surrounding forest groaned in protest, their trunks bowing under the pressure. Needles and frost were stripped from their branches in an instant, joining the swirling white chaos. The tallest pines swayed precariously, their roots clutching the soil as if terrified of being uprooted by the sheer audacity of the force released above.
The local wildlife had long since fled, driven by an instinctual terror that warned them of a power beyond nature. Even the Deviants—creatures born of malice and hunger—who had previously been clawing their way up the cliffside, had slunk back into the shadows of the ravines. Though their minds were twisted and primitive, they possessed enough cunning to recognize the presence of an apex predator whose very footsteps shattered the world.
At the center of the devastation lay a smoking crater, a jagged scar in the earth that looked like the landing site of a fallen star. But it was no celestial stone that rested in the pit. The ground was webbed with glowing fissures, radiating outward from a central point where a lone man lay broken and still.
Noah descended from the sky with the slow, predatory grace of a god returning to earth. As his boots touched the rim of the crater, he felt the heat radiating through his soles. The soil wasn't just warm; it had been baked, the very moisture hissed out of it by the violence of the impact. Thin ribbons of acrid black smoke curled up from the dirt—the final sighs of organic matter and microorganisms charred into nothingness. The air was thick with the sharp, metallic tang of ozone and the sickening stench of scorched earth, a smell that forced Noah to wrinkle his nose in distaste.
He looked down at Ikaris. The Eternal lay sprawled in the heart of the pit, his regal armor cracked and dulled. After enduring the full, brutal sequence of Noah's QWER assault, he looked less like a god and more like a discarded doll. However, a faint, rhythmic shuddering of his chest betrayed the spark of life still flickering within. He was shattered, unconscious, and hovering at the precipice of death, but he lived.
That he had survived such a systematic dismantling—a beating that would have turned a main battle tank into confetti—was a testament to the staggering resilience of Eternal physiology.
Yet, the primary reason Ikaris still breathed was far simpler: Noah had stayed his hand. He had calibrated his strikes to ruin, but not to extinguish. As he sensed a presence approaching, he turned his gaze toward Ajak, whose golden-clad figure was sprinting toward them from across the ridge. It was for her, or rather for what she represented, that he had allowed Ikaris to survive.
Regardless of their current conflict, Ikaris was a pillar of the Eternals. These beings had walked the earth together for seven millennia; they were a family forged in the fires of history. To execute him now would turn a potential alliance into a blood feud, making any future cooperation an impossibility.
But Noah's mercy wasn't purely diplomatic. There was another, more calculated reason. While Ikaris currently presented himself as the most fanatical of the Celestials' servants, Noah knew from the fractured memories of the future—from the "movie" of their lives—that even the most rigid metal could be bent.
The tragedy of the Eternals was one of systemic deception. Since their inception in the World Forge, they were nothing more than biological tools, sent to planets like Earth to shepherd sentient life. They were the gardeners of a harvest they were never meant to share. Their purpose was to ensure the population reached a critical mass, providing the vast intellectual and emotional energy required for the birth of a new Celestial from the planet's core—an event called the Emergence, which would inevitably consume the host world.
To keep his tools sharp and obedient, Arishem the Judge would wipe their memories at the end of every cycle, resetting them to their "factory settings" before sending them to the next world. Only the Prime Eternal—the leader, like Ajak—was permitted to remember.
Ajak had lived for millions of years. She carried the weight of a thousand genocides, watching her family live, love, and die across countless worlds, only to see their souls scrubbed clean every few thousand years.
Noah recalled the dark irony of the Deviants. They, too, were Celestial creations, originally designed to cull apex predators so that sentient life could flourish. But the Deviants had evolved, becoming the very predators they were meant to destroy. To correct this "error," the Celestials created the Eternals: beings of fixed design, incapable of evolution or independent change.
The memory wipes served a dual purpose: they prevented the accumulation of "errors"—like empathy, doubt, or rebellion—and allowed the Celestials to study why their previous creations had deviated. It was a cold, cosmic laboratory, and the Eternals were the white mice.
This was the truth Ikaris had been forced to shoulder. When Ajak had finally shared the secret of the Emergence with him, the weight had nearly crushed him. To learn that your entire existence is a lie, and that everyone you love is destined to be a sacrificial offering, is a burden that can drive a man to madness.
Ikaris had tried to find solace. He had followed Ajak's advice to live a "human" life, falling in love with Sersi and marrying her. But the truth acted like a slow-acting poison. Every smile from Sersi, every moment of happiness, was shadowed by the knowledge that it would all be erased. He couldn't bear to see her suffer under the same shadow, so he kept the secret locked away, a wall of silence that eventually forced him to abandon her over a century ago.
Ajak had trusted him with the truth because she saw him as her successor, the next Prime. She hadn't anticipated that the pressure would warp him, turning his loyalty to Arishem into a desperate, fanatical shield against his own guilt.
She hadn't expected that her chosen heir would one day decide that the only way to fulfill his purpose was to kill his mother and lay the blame on the very monsters they were born to hunt.
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