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[Ragnarök-Womb], born of peeking behind the universal curtain to stare at God while He lay indolent on the couch with crumbs on His flabby chest, bound the entirety of my existence to its anathema, to the shadow you cannot touch.
As such, when I reached my apogee, the universe could not recognize me anymore.
It was blind to me and so when the final battle of Armageddon had run its course, the [Termina] thought it had ended in a draw, reseeding the timestream from the eclipse that started the Apoc.
I had attempted everything possible: not reaching apogee-class made me too weak to contribute in any meaningful way, no other paradox-idol—even those of [Golgotha] that bound me tighter to my own home reality—could shed enough scales from the moon’s eyes. When I cultivated another victor in my place, the [Termina] would not accept, inciting us to fight to the death or reseed from the eclipse.
Even suicide did not let me escape from limbo’s grasp as my paradoxical state did not let me die a true death. My being, afterall, could experience dissolution while still staying somehow whole—it was deserving of the moniker of paradox, all right.
In my desperation, I ended up not participating for God knows how long.
Eons had become my seconds and kalpas my minutes.
I had been alive longer than the lifespans of universes.
I desperately wanted rest.
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I stayed still in the fetal position at the M.I.T. parking lot, waiting until the world ended for the umpteenth time.
Heat-deaths ago I had learned how to apply minor uses of paradox to make reality forget that I needed food—there simply wasn’t any enjoyment in it, not any more and not for a long time.
My flesh was in stasis like a sarcophagus floating in the ether.
When the [Termina] chose the victor, the observer, everything that ever was and would be unraveled into void. I stood once again before [Anathema], one of my ancient enemies and my oldest friend.
As the abyss stared back into me, it asked me a question, having retained all memories of past iterations of Year Zero.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“[Why do you persist? Sapience is subject to entropy and yearns to return to equilibrium like all closed systems. Why do you persist?]”
As an [Omniglot], I could understand the nothing-thing’s horrid voice, each dissonant syllable sending stabbing pains through my ears and scraping against my soul. It felt familiar in a way I couldn’t quite parse.
“[Because I have no choice.]” I said back in the Outsider’s own tongue.
Maybe it was because of my affinity for the sphera of [Lethea], or maybe it was a spark of humanity found even in the most inhuman non-being possible. But what happened next surprised me for the first time in a quettasecond.
The darkness extended a hand and in its grasp was an idol—it was in the rough shape of a humanoid, wrought of stone that had the texture of desiccated flesh. Horns abutted from its eyes as if a piercing of the septum. It had no legs but instead a loop whose innermost side was embedded with teeth. A single eye stared back from the heart of the idol, spasming and rotating to witness everything possible.
I laughed in unbelieving insanity: an olive branch extended from something I had maimed and killed an infinite number of times.
I took the idol and then the black-alabaster lightning of paradox, caused by the friction of two conflicting realities, took root in my soul.
The moon saw the eater of worlds but it did not see me.
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[Reseeding from time of conception.]
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I awoke like the child of two colliding particles; the formless energy derived from their mutual-annihilation, heartburn in my throat.
When my ancient, unfeeling mind synchronized with that of a comparatively simple twenty-nine year-old, I began to laugh hysterically once again.
The people that milled about in the underground parking lot gave me a wide berth, incorrectly assuming that I was just another undergrad breaking under the pressure.
I was, in fact, breaking under pressure but of a different sort.
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Entity: [Omniglot//Nothing-Thing]
Sphera: [Lethea], [Luna], [Golgotha]
Para-class: [Red-Apogee]
Reliquary: [Ragnarök-Womb], [Zeroth], [Stygia]
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Entity: [Paradox//Idol]
Sphera: [Golgotha], [Luna], [Lethea]
Para-class: [Aphelion-Apogee]
Esoterica: [Zeroth]
Hubris: [Babel]
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Esoterica: [Zeroth]
Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Zeroth} derives from the Sphera of {Luna} and {Lethea}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of touch to the platonic ideals of annulment and usurpation.]
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Hubris: [Babel]
Ignosis: [The hubris of {Babel} derives from the sphera of {Golgotha} and {Luna}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of {Omniglot} to the platonic ideal of {Year-Zero}.]
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This was it.
The last run of Year Zero.
Should I lose, I would become [Anathema] itself.
In a recursive fashion, I already had.
I recognized its voice under all the layers of soul-scraping dissonance.
It was my own.
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