Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 3770

I moved.

Another Sigil Fragment slipped into my grasp.

Time and collapse hummed faintly under my fingers.

But my mind, my mind moved elsewhere.

The story Thauron had told still echoed in me.

The Fable of a Prisoner.

A being dangerous enough to be jailed. Too dangerous to be free. A being whose very existence was... adjusted.

Imprisoned by those who moved beyond Fold Dwellers.

By the Foldless Ones.

The ones who oversaw all paradoxes.

The ones whose names could not be spoken.

The ones Velmior, in his final moments, had hinted at.

I closed my eyes briefly.

Recalling the words of the Time Sentinel.

"The ones who oversee all paradoxes are not named. Not because they hide. But because their names are Unspoken."

Velmior had warned me and Romulus.

Not with threats.

With inevitabilities.

Back then, when he stood against Romulus and me on the Dead Wheel, he spoke not of pride.

He spoke of fear.

Fear of those greater than even Primarchs.

Greater than the Chronosect.

Greater than the Fold Dwellers, the glorious kings and queens of regional ruins of Wheels of Existence.

He spoke of beings who had carved laws into paradox before paradox even had shape.

Who made Thrones from impossible conflicts.

Who fashioned Absolutes not bound by the ten known Resistances, but of their own making.

Entities that were not Living.

Not Dead.

But something more.

Something folded.

Paradox made flesh.

Living Paradoxes, the Foldless Ones!

And now, Thauron, the Null Monarch himself, a creature steeped in Finality and Collapse, spoke of them too.

But his tone was different.

Not fearful.

Not reverent.

Merely resigned.

As if he had brushed against their veils once, and still wore the scars.

The Prisoner he spoke of, this Existence stripped of memory and sealed within the Folds, had been let free.

Or perhaps loosened the chains enough to breathe again.

And Thauron, whether knowingly or not, had left just enough hints.

The way his Null Form moved.

The way his words curled around certain truths and left others to rot.

The Prisoner was not some distant myth.

No.

I was walking beside him.

I opened my eyes.

Another Sigil Fragment pulsed in my hand.

My smile was faint as I thought of everything.

Dangerous. _{freewёbn૦νeɭ.com}

Calculated.

The Nullvein Gravewake Folds were vast.

The Foldless Ones waited.

Watching.

Judging.

Weighing.

Velmior had spoken of them with a trembling tongue.

Thauron spoke of them with a weary amusement.

But me?

I did not fear them.

I did not revere them.

I understood one truth.

A truth of infinite possibilities, infinite paths one could take, and proof that anything was possible.

Proof that even among the bound, even among the imprisoned, power still moved.

I would remember that.

Because one day, they would very likely look at me. I knew this. I expected this.

They would look, and they would weigh me.

Measure me.

Judge me.

But they would not find a prisoner.

Nor a Fold Dweller.

Nor a child swinging keys he did not understand.

No.

They would find something else.

Something they had not yet accounted for.

I folded the fragment into my existence.

And I moved again.

Toward Votharion's jagged obsidian stretches.

Toward paradox.

Toward inevitability.

Thauron walked nearby as he continued.

"Such a Prisoner…who was stripped of his memories and power and even what his own self-identity truly was, what do you think such a Prisoner would do? Would have been doing? What would his aim now be?"

Thauron's question still hung in the heavy, drenched air of the Null Cradle, whispered like a ghost carried by the howling winds of paradox.

What would the Prisoner be doing now?

What would his aim be?

I did not rush to answer.

I moved instead.

One footfall. Another.

My hand stretched out as I claimed another fragment, the etched remains of a True Source that had once sought to define time, now collapsed into a singular shard of meaning.

And then, with the weight of inevitability behind my words, I spoke.

"Maybe," I said slowly, "the Prisoner still dreams of the prison he was in."

Another fragment.

The Sigil blossomed more clearly in my grasp, like the incomplete whisper of a melody yet to be finished.

"Maybe," I continued, "he has never truly been freed."

I did not look at Thauron.

I did not need to.

I could feel the Null Monarch's ancient gaze on me as I traced the shape of truths not yet spoken.

"If he cannot remember all things," I murmured, "then he is still shackled by the past. Bound not by chains of collapse, but by chains of ignorance."

I slipped the fragment into my existence.

A hum of resonance. A near-completed note.

"Maybe," I said, "he seeks a Key."

Another fragment claimed.

Kalysta trailed nearby, her steps light, cautious, a shadow following giants.

"A Key to open doors long sealed," I said. "Paradoxically...maybe he seeks to do again what he did before."

Another fragment shimmered.

"Maybe," I said, my voice lowering to a whisper, "he dreams of the unthinkable."

A pause.

Then, quietly:

"Revenge…against those many cannot even think of."

WAA!

Thauron chuckled at that, a low rumble that carried far more than simple amusement.

The ground itself seemed to listen.

I moved again, slow, steady.

Fragment by fragment.

In the distance, Thauron reached down, his massive hand folding gently around a final fragment.

The air shifted.

A vibration, subtle but sharp.

And then it bloomed.

In Thauron's hands.

A Completed True Source Sigil, brilliant, heavy with impossible complexity, spiraled into existence around him.

...!

Even I, steady as I was, narrowed my eyes faintly.

Kalysta flinched, stepping back instinctively as the Completed Sigil hovered with slow, crushing majesty.

I had begun collecting Fragments first as he started after, and yet he now held a Completed True Source Sigil.

Faster than me!

And Thauron barely glanced at it.

He simply smiled, a serene expression carved from inevitability.

His voice came next, slow, patient, filled with the weight of countless forgotten cycles.

"I cannot say much about the Living Paradoxes," Thauron said, his gaze distant as if remembering things too heavy to name.

"But if one wishes to understand how deep their reach stretches into the Folds…"

He trailed a finger through the air, carving invisible weavings.

"One simply needs to look at the Fold Dwellers."

I listened.

Carefully.

"The many Fold Dwellers you see here," Thauron murmured, "the powerful ones. Some are ignorant."

He gestured subtly, a wave that encompassed the distant figures of Monads, of Primarchs, of other monumental beings moving in the Folds.

"They move freely. Proud. Blind."

He smiled wider, his teeth flashing like fractured moonlight.

"But others…"

Another fragment slipped into my palm.

"…others know."

I fitted it in place, the fifth Sigil blooming into completion around me.

A Fifth Completed True Source Sigil spun silently, grand and merciless, but a step later than Thauron.

Its presence pressed down on the platform like a whispered judgment.

And Thauron, Thauron watched it all with eyes unseen.

"Those who know," he said softly, "have long since bent the knee."

...!

His words fell into the space between us like monoliths dropped from the height of forgotten Megalos.

Kalysta inhaled sharply behind me, but I ignored her.

I turned instead.

Facing the Null Monarch fully.

Facing inevitability itself.

"Since you have long since known," I said, voice calm, eyes burning, "have you also bent the knee?"

BOOM!