THE Weavers continued, their voices in unison!

"He shall wear no crown, yet command emperors.

He shall be neither king nor beggar.

He will gather the scattered, lost children of a dying existence,

And from the frayed threads of their despair, weave a single, impossible banner.

For only in the desperate, relentless climb toward a dawn they cannot see,

Can the coming, absolute night be weathered.

And a new light will shine, not from a single, sovereign sun,

But from the countless, small fires of a people who chose to stand together against the final dark.

The Light of Civilization."

HUUM!

The Prophecy ended, leaving a profound, echoing silence in its wake. Schrodinger was shocked, dazed, his mind reeling from the sheer, overwhelming weight of the words.

"What is this?" he stammered. "What do you mean? Are you… are you telling me this because I am such a being?"

He asked the grand, desperate question, but as he did, the forms of THE Weavers began to flicker, their bronze robes dissolving into motes of auroral light.

All three tapped out at this moment, their fingers touching Schrodinger's forehead simultaneously as a blinding white line bloomed on his head, his eyes becoming dazed!

"Be a Concept, be a Spirit, be Paradox…be anything you wish. Be a begger, king, or the Herald. Be anything you wish."

HUUM!

Their final, unison words were a fading, cryptic echo.

"We are only here to inform. We can only inform."

And then… they were gone, leaving Schrodinger alone in the verdant-gold grasslands, under a sky of swirling, nascent folds, with a new, terrible, and perhaps, glorious purpose.

—

Far from the Earliest Folds, in the quiet, desolate twilight of the current Era, a different kind of conversation was taking place.

On a certain Desiccated Sleeping Shore, two figures stood gazing out at the impossible continent they had made their sanctuary.

Schrodinger and Leonore Rureaux. They looked upon the thousands of powerful Living Existences and Fold Dwellers, a congregation of the lost and the hopeful, all gathered in this forgotten corner of reality.

At the many Wheels littered at the edges of the Shore that held Sextillions of beings.

Leonore, her form still frail but her crimson eyes now burning with a cold, clear light, broke the silence.

Her voice was a low, melodic thing, yet it carried the sharp edge of a razor.

"You truly gathered them," she said, her gaze sweeping over a distant Duke of Origin who was attempting to coax a flicker of life from the dead soil.

"Living Existences and Fold Dwellers, all huddled together under your wing. Do you truly believe it, that story the bronze-robed ghosts whispered to you? That you are some Herald, a chosen one meant to save everyone? Your methods have not entirely been saving some…"

The question was not just a question; it was a challenge, a test of the very foundation of this grand, desperate gamble.

Schrodinger did not turn to her. He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon, on the tired, gray sky that promised no dawn.

"A man is what he does, Leonore," he replied, his voice a calm, philosophical murmur. "If I build a house, I am a builder. If I write a law, I am a lawgiver. If I do everything the Herald is supposed to do… does the title truly matter? Or is it the actions that define the role? Existence, in its infinite, cruel wisdom, often cares little for what we call ourselves. It is what we do that leaves a mark."

…!

Leonore's lips curved into a faint, almost bitter, smile. "A convenient philosophy. But you forget the words of THE Creature. 'Existence will do what existence does, but in the end… we decide everything.' We are free to make our own choices, Schrodinger. The Prophecy is a map, not a destination. It shows one possible path out of many. Are you choosing to walk it because it is your will, or because you believe you have no other choice?"

He finally turned to her, and in his ancient, weary eyes, she saw a flicker of the man he was, beneath the many masks he wore.

He nodded.

"And this is what I have chosen," he said, his voice firm, unwavering. "Just as I chose to accelerate the opening of The Veil."

He saw the flicker of surprise in her eyes and continued. "It occurred on a scale far vaster than I anticipated. A necessary, if brutal, step to awaken existence that was sleeping on the edge of a cliff. But it has had… consequences. I have received word of something terrible that happened in the Transcendent Elemental Folds. Look at this."

Schrodinger waved his hand, and the air before them shimmered, a window opening into another place, another time.

It showed the silent, burning pyre of Aeternitas Glacies. It showed the ghostly replay of the Justiciar's terrible, efficient slaughter.

Leonore looked at the scene, and her breath caught in her throat. The calm, calculating demeanor she had maintained since her release shattered, replaced by a storm of pure, unadulterated rage.

"They…," she whispered, her voice a low, venomous hiss. "They almost killed me with one of those things, last time. And before that, they had only been present in the Earliest Folds. For them to make their appearance now…"

Her gaze snapped to him, her crimson eyes blazing with a new, terrible urgency. "Is everything truly moving that fast? Will you…?"

She took a step closer, her frail form now radiating a power that made the very air tremble.

"Will you be awakening your other bodies now?" she asked, her voice a low, dangerous demand. "You told me. You told me when the Justiciars and the Arbiters began to appear, you would unleash yourself again. Paradox… was always your weakest form."

The words were a terrifying revelation, a hint of a power so vast that his current, reality-bending form was but a pale shadow of it!

Schrodinger smiled, but it was a smile filled with the weight of billions of years and a pain that was just as old.

He nodded. "Yes," he said, his voice a quiet, solemn promise. "It is time. Time to hunt Justiciars. Time to wait for the Arbiters. Wherever they are coming from… that is our answer. That is our solution."

"And hey, Paradox is not my weakest form…after all, I'm trying to nurture THE Living Chaos with it!"

WAA!

At his words, Leonore breathed out, a slow, shuddering exhalation.

Her body, once so frail, began to burn with a power that now easily reached into the hundreds of Quadrillions, her crimson robes swirling around her like a storm of resurrected might.

Her voice, no longer a whisper, but a clear, resonant note that seemed to carry across the entire Desiccated Shore, echoed out, as if she were remembering something grand and terrible.

"For only in the desperate, relentless climb toward a dawn they cannot see,

Can the coming, absolute night be weathered.

And a new light will shine, not from a single, sovereign sun,

But from the countless, small fires of a people who chose to stand together against the final dark."

She paused, the final, unwritten line of the prophecy hanging in the air between them.

"The Light of Civilization."

She repeated the words, her voice now a firm, unshakeable vow. "The Light of Civilization."

She turned to him, her eyes burning with a new, terrible purpose. She bowed, a gesture of profound, ancient respect from one primordial power to another.

"Okay," she said. "Let us save Civilization. O Herald… how can this Lost Child help?"

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