The Primordial Record novel Chapter 1790

Chapter 1790: Past Memories and Shared Vision

Soul clutched the hand of Time with both of hers, her form seeming to glow with the intensity of her conviction.

“Together, we could achieve this. Your sacrifice would not be an end. It would be the greatest act of defiance ever conceived. It would give meaning to all of this! To every life that we have taken, every star consumed, every tear ever shed on our unholy names! It would reveal the reason! It would be the final, beautiful note to the song of all creation!”

The sweet moment of shared wonder at a new life curdled into the bitter scheming for an ancient death. Time did not know when Soul had become insane. Perhaps he suspected that he also was insane, but in this body of a mortal, he saw truths that his main body had forgotten.

He looked from her fervent, beloved face to the innocent, pulsing light of Eos. He did not see a key. He saw a child. He did not see a bridge. He saw a living thing, sacred in its own right, not a tool to be used and broken.

His love for his sister was a fundamental force. But in that moment, another force, older and even more fundamental, rose within him: the principle of guardianship.

The duty to protect the flow, to safeguard the new, to honor the natural order. To use this child as a weapon and himself as ammunition was the deepest perversion of that duty imaginable.

The love in his heart for her twisted into a knot of agony, but his voice, when it came, was calm. It was the calm of a river that has decided its course, no matter what stands in its way.

“No,” he said. The word was simple and final. It contained no anger, only a profound, unshakeable resolution. It was the sound of a door closing for all time. “I will not be your sacrifice. And I will not let you pervert him.”

The glorious light in her eyes did not just dim; it shattered. It was replaced by a cold, steely resolve that was more terrifying than any fury. The love was still there—he could see it, trapped and screaming behind the cold bars of her ambition—but it was twisted into something else: a furious, desperate need that brooked no opposition. She had seen the summit of the only mountain that mattered to her, and he had refused to be her ladder.

Her hands released his. The warmth vanished, leaving a coldness on his skin that felt eternal.

“Then you leave me no choice,” she said. Her voice was no longer a symphony. It was the flat, dead sound of a final verdict. “The truth will be known. With you, or without you.”

®

The memory shattered, and Rowan blinked, for that barest moment, he had been Primordial Time, and he had seen the heart of this Primordial before he had become corrupted by Evil. In another life, Rowan might have been sympathetic, but such times had passed.

The present crashed back in with the force of a supernova. The roar of his own power, the seething presence of the five Primordial, the cold, hard reality of his vengeance—it all returned.

But he was changed.

Rowan still felt the ghost of Primordial Soul’s hand in his, the echo of her final, cold words in his ears. He looked at the Primordials before him—Vorthas, Xylos, Elgorath, Xyris—and he saw them with new, devastating clarity through the eyes of Primordial Time, because for a moment he had been the Primordial, and the effect still lingered. Rowan allowed himself to become Primordial Time for a moment longer as new truths were revealed to him.

He saw not just the beings who had killed him and this Reality. He saw the deeper, older failure. His sister’s sublime, terrible plan did not die with her dissent. Soul’s ambition, her hunger for that ultimate truth, had festered. It had leaked from her, a psychic plague, and infected the others.

They had imprisoned her, but Time knew that even that was under her cruel calculations.

However, they had lacked her vision, her understanding of the delicate, sacrificial mechanics required. They had sought to harness Eos by brute force, to tear the secrets from his living heart rather than build the elegant, tragic bridge Soul had envisioned.

Their clumsy, violent attempt to force Eos to reveal the secrets of the Layer Beyond Origin had been an abomination. It had been what sparked his rebellion.

Their failure to comprehend what his sister had instinctively understood led to their catastrophic, ham-fisted assault… which led to his war against them… which led to the deaths of all those who sided with him, his chosen family.

Primordial Time fully understood Rowan; he understood his vengeance was not just for his murdered family. It was for the sublime, beautiful, terrifying future his sister had thrown away for a selfish dream.

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