Chapter 446
"Time to move."
Xavier slowly shook his head, a small motion as though trying to brush away all the unanswered questions, all the unsolved mysteries, all the peculiarities that continued to haunt his thoughts about Ilux Rediona.
He realized that the longer he remained in this throne room, the deeper he would sink into an endless labyrinth of questions, the further he would be dragged into a vortex of mysteries he could never truly understand.
Thus, with his resolve strengthening once more, with the awareness that there were still duties waiting elsewhere, Xavier XVII repeated his action to evolve.
His body, which had long appeared solid and tangible, began to change.
It began to fade.
It began transforming into something lighter, faster, and more abstract.
He repositioned the very nature of his existence to its original state, returning himself to the most fundamental essence of his being, preparing to leave this silent planet and return to the place that had sheltered him all this time.
The process of evolution unfolded smoothly, yet within each stage, within every transformation he experienced, Xavier felt something different from before.
There was a strange sensation tickling his consciousness.
A new awareness was growing within him.
An understanding appeared suddenly, without warning.
That the universe known as the Golden of Box, with its five layers that had long served as his home, as the stage of his life, as the boundary of all his adventures, was now beginning to feel narrow.
Not narrow in a physical sense.
Not narrow in terms of size.
But narrow in relevance.
Narrow in significance.
Narrow in its ability to contain the presence of a being that continued to grow beyond its limits.
The Lowest GOB Layer.
The Lower-to-Middle GOB.
The Middle GOB.
The Middle-to-Upper GOB.
And finally, the Highest GOB.
Those five tiers of reality that had long served as the framework of everything that existed now began to feel like a cage far too small for a bird whose wings continued to grow.
Xavier realized with absolute clarity that his existence had now reached a point where, if even his shadow were to fall upon those five layers of GOB, the entire structure of that universe would collapse in the most complete and devastating way imaginable.
Not collapse because of an attack.
Not collapse because of destruction.
Not collapse because of violence.
But collapse because it simply could not contain him.
Collapse because of overwhelming burden.
Collapse because reality itself had never been designed to withstand the weight of an existence that had surpassed its limits.
And more terrifying still, the inhabitants within those five layers of the universe would never know what had truly happened to their world.
They would vanish in an instant.
Without a chance to scream.
Without a chance to realize.
Without a chance to understand why the sky suddenly collapsed upon their heads.
For them, the destruction would feel like a blink too fast to see.
Like a breath too soft to feel.
Like a dream forgotten the moment consciousness returned.
They would become cosmic dust scattered across the void, with no one knowing they had ever existed.
With no one recording that they had ever lived.
With no one mourning that they had once dreamed and loved, once hoped and died.
"One fragment of Quil-Hasa… is that truly the case?"
The process of evolution unfolded with a grandeur that words could scarcely describe, a transformation that released Xavier from every chain of the world and everything within it, turning him into an entity no longer bound by the chains of causality that had long shackled every creature across the multiverse.
He did not merely free himself from cause and effect.
He shattered it.
He surpassed it.
He turned himself into an eternal exception that could not be explained by any logic.
Causality, which had long been the foundation of every reality, which explained why fire burns and water wets, which gave meaning to why birth is followed by death and meetings are followed by separation, now found no way to interact with Xavier.
He was a riddle with no answer.
Like a formula with no variables.
Like a language with no words.
And all of this he did for a single purpose that had long been his torch in the darkness of his wandering.
One purpose that had carried him through thousands of years of loneliness.
One purpose that had become the reason he never truly surrendered.
He wished to reach the Land of the Gods, the place where he and Myra Astrielle had once held their wedding in a past that now existed only as a memory.
The place where they had given birth to many descendants who later became the very gods now hunting him.
The place where happiness had once resided before everything was destroyed by the suicide decision they had taken together.
Amid the evolutionary process that was still attempting to perfect the nature of his existence, at the moment when his body was no longer entirely within the old reality yet had not fully arrived in the new one, Xavier suddenly felt the urge to pause.
He closed his eyes.
Not physical eyes, for those had long vanished during this transformation.
But the inner eye that had always served as a window toward hidden truths.
And for a moment, for eighty seconds that felt like eternity, he thought of nothing.
He emptied his mind of every burden.
Of every question.
Of every doubt that had haunted him.
He allowed himself to drift within the current of nothingness, within a silence deeper than any silence, within a void that paradoxically became the most fertile ground for new understandings to grow.
Eighty seconds passed in total stillness.
Eighty seconds in which the evolutionary process continued without pause.
Eighty seconds in which Xavier became both witness and participant to the birth of his new self.
When his inner eye opened once more, when his consciousness flowed again like a river finally finding its path after being obstructed for so long, Xavier spoke something within the deepest recesses of his heart.
Not a voice.
Not a murmur.
Not a whisper.
But a vibration of consciousness spreading through dimensions unseen by ordinary beings.
He questioned a hypothesis that had long disturbed his mind.
A suspicion he had never been able to prove, yet could never fully dismiss.
Was it true that Theo Vkytor, someone somehow connected to the chaos unfolding in the Heavenly Land, was actually the strongest fragment of Quil-Hasa?
Quil-Hasa, the God who had once clashed with him and the thirteen Highest Angels during the Second Heavenly Betrayal that occurred in the Heavenly Land at that time.
An entity whose power was nearly unbeatable.
An entity that had become the source of so much destruction and suffering.
If that hypothesis were true, if Theo Vkytor truly was the strongest fragment of Quil-Hasa hiding behind a false identity, then everything happening in Heaven and Hell, every chaos that had struck his descendants, every slaughter carried out by the Gods against his reincarnations, might have roots far deeper and far more horrifying than he had ever imagined.
"Loyal like a shadow, yet not a shadow. And that is not something that can be faked."
Xavier fell silent again after that question emerged from the deepest part of his heart, allowing silence to creep through his entire existence for about three seconds that felt like three centuries.
To be continued…