The dim lanterns flickered against the damp stone walls of the prison's lower chambers, casting long, wavering shadows over the iron bars. The scent of cold metal and aged wood filled the air, mingling with the quiet hum of tense anticipation. Seated at a heavy oak table, Jelle rested her arms atop the polished surface, her fingers idly tapping against the grain. Across from her, separated by steel bars, Veynor sat restrained—his wrists shackled, his legs bound, and a thick iron collar locked around his neck. Lucienne, by contrast, remained unshackled within her cell, sitting with an eerie stillness, her sharp green eyes watching, waiting.
Hauke stood beside Jelle, arms crossed, his expression unreadable. The silence between them all stretched thin, drawn taut like a thread that might snap at any moment. Finally, Jelle exhaled and leaned forward, breaking the quiet.
"You know, if we wanted to, we could keep you in this cell for years," she mused, her voice almost casual. "Not a single soul would be foolish enough to come looking for you."
Veynor smirked, unfazed. "Is that meant to scare me? Because you should know—I've been in places far worse than this."
Jelle smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Oh, I do not doubt that. But I'm not here to frighten you. I'm here to give you a choice."
Lucienne tilted her head. "A choice?"
Hauke finally spoke, his voice low and measured. "Information, in exchange for leniency. You tell us what we need to know, and we make sure your time here isn't... unbearable."
Veynor let out a quiet chuckle, shaking his head. "You think we'll just hand over what you want? Please. We're the ones holding the pieces of the old world, not you."
Jelle's fingers stopped tapping. Her golden eyes sharpened. "That's exactly the problem, isn't it? Digging up ruins, unearthing things that should remain buried. The Clock Hand isn't seeking knowledge—they're seeking power. And we both know what people like you do with power."
Lucienne met Jelle's gaze steadily. "People like us? And what about people like you, Ident?" There was no malice in her tone, only quiet observation. "You hold your own kind of power, don't you? Power to decide who deserves to know the truth and who does not."
Jelle didn't blink. "And yet, here you are—caged like a rat in a trap."
For the first time, Veynor's smirk faltered. "Tch."
Hauke shifted his weight slightly, pressing the conversation forward. "You can make this easier for yourself, Veynor. We already know what the Clock Hand is after—the remnants of the old world. We know you're digging up things best left untouched. The only question is why."
Veynor leaned back against the cold stone wall of his cell, eyes half-lidded. "You act as if the past should be forgotten."
Jelle's expression remained unreadable. "Some things should be. And some things shouldn't. The difference is knowing which is which."
Lucienne exhaled softly. "And you believe you're the ones who get to decide that?"
Jelle met her gaze with unwavering certainty. "We're the ones trying to stop the world from tearing itself apart."
A slow silence settled over the chamber, thick and suffocating. Veynor closed his eyes briefly, as if weighing his next words. When he opened them again, a glint of amusement danced in his expression.
"If you already know what we want, then you know we won't stop," he said at last. "The old world still has much to offer. And unlike you, we aren't afraid to take it."
"By meddling with something that is so unsure, it can cause wanton destruction across the land," Jelle replied. "Do you understand what you're dealing with, or are you grasping in the dark, hoping for power you can't control?"
Veynor chuckled, though it was a hollow sound. He leaned back against the cold stone wall of his cell, iron restraints clinking with the motion. "Control? That's your way of thinking. You Ident lot, always pretending you hold the reigns, always claiming to be the ones who get to decide what should and shouldn't be touched."
Hauke, standing beside Jelle with arms crossed, narrowed his eyes. "And what? You think tearing up the past will give you something better? The world has moved on. The old world is gone for a reason."
"And yet, here you are, terrified of what it might still hold." Veynor's lips curled into a smirk. "If it was truly gone, you wouldn't be here questioning me. You wouldn't be scrambling to put out our fire before it spreads."
Jelle sighed, shifting her weight slightly. "Power without understanding is just destruction waiting to happen. You dig, you take, and you believe you can control what's left. But some things exist beyond your reach, Veynor. Things that won't bend to your will."
Veynor tilted his head, studying her. "And yet, we're the ones making the effort, while you sit here, clinging to order. Tell me, Jelle—if you had the chance to grasp something greater, something that could change the world itself, would you turn away?"
There was a pause.
Jelle exhaled slowly. "Not all change is for the better."
Veynor laughed again, quieter this time. "Then maybe we'll just have to see which of us is right."
Far beyond the reaches of Dämmerburg, where the sky stretched endlessly and the world lay vast beneath an ocean of clouds, a lone figure stood atop a frozen peak. The air here was thin, sharp as glass, laced with the hush of a world untouched by the folly of men. Snow swirled around him, caught in unseen currents, never daring to settle upon his form.
The wind howled in twisted echoes, but he did not move. He stood motionless, a monolith against the heavens, gazing downward as if the world itself was a canvas meant to be rewritten.
Beneath him, far beyond the blinding white expanse, the land was alive—cities pulsed with light, roads wove like veins through the earth, rivers cut their paths through the bones of the world. But none of it mattered. Nothing beyond his purpose existed.
A slow breath left his lips, mist curling outward, swallowed by the cold. They had taken it. The thing he had spent years searching for, clawing toward, tearing apart the fabric of history to obtain—it was no longer within his grasp.
His fingers twitched, slow, deliberate, a single movement rippling through the silence. His breath, once steady, now came faster. Faster. A rhythm that beat against the air like war drums, like the steady thrum of something far greater than human. His pulse pounded in his skull, but it was not fear, nor anger.
It was hunger.
A hunger that had no end.
His followers—bound in chains, rotting in cages—would not remain as they were. He would unmake the prison walls, and crack the city apart like brittle bone. And of the boy—the thief—would be nothing more than a stain upon the pages of history. The Great Artist's gift would be reclaimed, its true purpose restored.
The world did not yet know what it had invited upon itself.
The ice at his feet cracked, not from weight, but from force—an unseen pressure, a will so strong the air itself seemed to fracture beneath its presence. And then, like a star falling from the sky, he moved.
The storm that followed swallowed the peak whole.
"The world was never built upon reason, nor did it ever yield to the passive."
The figure descended from the peak, the winds shrieking at his passing. His voice—though spoken to none—carried across the expanse, lost to the sky yet ringing through the marrow of existence itself.
"There are those who touch something once and call it enough. They glimpse a light and call it fire. They grasp at dreams and let them slip between their fingers, whispering that they were never meant to hold them to begin with."
"But there are others—those who do not let go. Not because they choose to hold on, but because the act of release is beyond them. It is not a decision. It is not a path. It is the very shape of their existence."
The wind howled louder. The world blurred around him, the descent a mere illusion to his form. There was no descent. There was no ascent. There was only motion, a ceaseless forward pull, an inevitability.
"To devour something is not enough. To possess something is not enough. There is no 'enough.' There is only the reaching, the taking, the becoming. A thing cannot be held still—it must be consumed, intertwined, made into the very essence of oneself until there is no line where it ends and where I begin."
His eyes burned, reflecting the unseen light of something not yet awakened.
"If there is a wall before me, I will break it. If there is a lock upon my will, I will shatter it. If something is lost, I will take it back. I will not leave scraps for the meek to scavenge. I will not let the weak claim the weight of the strong."
The storm roared around him, yet he moved with neither haste nor hesitation. The ground cracked in his wake. The air bent to his passage.
"You, who hold what is mine—your hands are unworthy. Your form is unworthy. But that is of no consequence. You will give it to me, as all things do in time."
A presence descended upon him. It did not approach from any direction, nor did it make itself known through sound or weight. It simply was, as though it had always been there, waiting for him to notice.
A hand—vast, steady—settled upon his shoulder. The touch was neither warm nor cold, neither forceful nor gentle, but it rooted him where he stood. The air stilled. The storm, once howling in his ears, was swallowed into silence.
"Thinking of prying away what is yet to be written?"
The voice did not shake the heavens. It did not split the mountains nor roll like thunder. And yet, he would have preferred if it had. There was something worse about its quietness—about the way it settled into the marrow of his bones like an inevitability.
He turned his head, slow and deliberate, as though sudden movement might shatter the fragile equilibrium between them.
White. Whiter than the first light to touch the world. Whiter than the moment before knowledge takes root. His hair drifted as if untethered from time, and his eyes—pupiless, vast, seeing beyond the fabric of things—stared at him, through him, into the shape of his will itself. His skin, the deep hue of smoldering embers, contrasted the void-like glow of his gaze.
Fingers twitched at his side, a flicker of tension restrained before it could become anything more. He exhaled slowly.
"The path they walk will bring them here regardless. I am merely... ensuring it does not wander astray."
The pressure upon his shoulder did not increase, yet it may as well have.
"And what is a path, but a thing meant to be walked?" The figure's voice did not shift, but there was something beneath it—a vastness that did not threaten but simply was. "To carve a step where none have yet been placed is to deny what may yet be. Tell me, do you intend to guide, or do you intend to seize?"
His jaw clenched. He would not kneel, would not falter, but the weight of knowing settled upon him.
This was not a man who spoke to him. Not even a force. This was the very shape of something beyond even his reach—a being whose existence was not to be overcome but understood.
"It is not your concern," he said at last, his voice even, controlled.
"Is it not?"
A pause stretched between them.
The air had not returned to normal—no, normal was no longer a thing that existed in the presence of him. The sky still hung in that unsettling in-between, the wind still refused to breathe, and the snow beneath their feet seemed suspended in something other than time.
The man in the cold kept his shoulders squared, his stance firm. His breath did not waver, his voice did not shake, but deep within his core—beneath flesh, beneath resolve—he knew. He knew.
This was not a battle he could win.
"You speak as though I am no more than a reckless hand, grasping blindly at what I do not understand," he said, keeping his tone level. "As though I am no more than another nameless beast scrambling toward something beyond my reach."
A slow shift.
Not movement, no. The being before him did not move in the way things of this world did. But the very air seemed to acknowledge him, to turn in its unseen tides like an ocean pulled by a force greater than gravity itself.
"Is that not what you are?"
The man in the cold did not react. Did not flinch.
Inside, his blood ran cold.
"You claim certainty," the being continued. "Yet you cannot see where your own feet will land."
"And you can?"
The figure tilted its head.
"I do not need to."
The man in the cold clenched his fists. He would not let his breath catch, would not allow the instinctual, human urge to run to take root in his bones. No. He would not let himself falter.
"Then why are you here?" His voice remained steady. A challenge, though measured. "Why waste your time standing before me, speaking in circles, when you claim to know the steps I have yet to take?"
A quiet hum.
"Is that what you believe this is?"
The weight of the words pressed against his skin, curled into the spaces between thoughts.
The man in the cold refused to acknowledge it.
"You are standing in my path," he said instead. "If you do not wish to stop me, then what do you wish to do?"
The silence stretched once more. And then—
"Observe."
A single word. A single truth.
And it was at that moment that he understood.
This was not a warning.
This was not a threat.
This was an inevitability.
The presence before him was not here to change his course. It was merely here to watch it unfold.
He had thought himself close—so close—to something untouchable. He had thought himself above the masses who clawed in the dark for power beyond their means.
And yet.
Here he stood. And here it stood.
And the distance between them was something that no amount of obsession could breach.
He exhaled slowly, schooling his expression.
And then, with measured reverence, he stepped back. In the presence of something so far beyond him, anything less would have been blasphemous.
"Primal of Curiosity."
The name tasted heavier in the air, woven with an unspoken weight. A force that had existed long before language had ever sought to define it.
To speak it was not an invocation. It was not a plea, nor an attempt to draw power closer. No—power such as this did not need to be called. It did not move as men did. It did not bow to gods, nor the predictable whims of fate.
It simply was.
He did not lift his gaze.
Even he—even one who had torn through the layers of the world, who had shaped ruin and rebuilt from its remains—even he did not dare to meet the sight of a Primal.
Not one such as this.
"You stand above the heavens themselves," he said, his voice steady, yet weighed with something deeper. Something that lingered beneath flesh and thought. "It was you who reached into the void and placed the ember of wonder within the hollow minds of all things that walk, crawl, and breathe."
A slow inhale. A slow exhale.
"It was you who gave them the will to seek—to dig into the marrow of what they could not understand, to claw at the edges of the unknown, to hunger for what lay beyond their grasp."
He lifted his chin slightly, though his gaze remained low.
"And yet, where they burned beneath the wrath of Egors, you remain untouched."
The world did not stir. The storm did not shift.
"Not because the Egors spared you," he continued, voice quieter now, almost reverent. "But because they feared you."
A truth unspoken. A truth only known to those who stood at the very precipice of understanding.
The seven Egors, the creators of the gardens of Genesis, the ones who wove the threads of existence itself—feared him.
"Because no matter how much they may shape, no matter how much they may govern, no matter how much they may dictate the laws of reality..."
He finally lifted his gaze—not to meet the eyes that burned without light, but to look past them. To the void beyond. To the endless, gaping unknown.
"They, too, were made to wonder."
Silence.
Stillness.
He did not know whether his words had pleased the Primal, nor whether they had even been acknowledged.
But it did not matter.
He had spoken. He had named. He had recognized.
And now—
Now, he would leave before he learned too much.
The figure stood unmoving at the summit, a silhouette against the eternal white. The world below lay still, silent—an ocean of frost frozen in time, untouched by warmth, untouched by life. He lifted a single hand, fingers shifting like the currents of an unseen tide, and with an almost absent flick—like the lazy stroke of a painter upon an endless canvas—the air itself trembled.
The wind, once a cruel whisper of the void, softened into a gentle murmur, weaving through the icy peaks as though a slumbering god had sighed in its dreams. Snowflakes, once brittle and dead, caught the breath of this unseen force, and in their dance, they became something else—petals, golden and soft, unfolding midair before settling upon the once-sterile earth.
A hush fell, and then—color.
First, in murmurs. A thread of green uncoiling beneath the snow, uncertain, hesitant. Then, as if emboldened by an unseen command, the land heaved, and life surged forth. Trees, ancient in soul yet newborn in form, pressed through the frost, their roots plunging deep into the unseen heart of the mountain, drinking from wells of forgotten power. Their branches reached skyward, as though seeking the hidden sun, stretching beyond the veil of clouds until even the heavens themselves were swallowed in an emerald sea.
And still, the world swayed to the rhythm of his touch, as if the earth itself had remembered something long forgotten. A pulse. A breath. The first heartbeat of a place that had once been forsaken.
The figure lowered his hand, his pale, pupil-less gaze watching not with satisfaction, nor pride.
"Better," he mused, voice scarcely louder than the rustling leaves, as if speaking only to the world itself.
And in that moment, he seemed not merely above divinity. Not merely beyond the Egors, whom even the cosmos bowed to.