“In the beginning,” said the avatar of Frost, “there was the Void. The cold, dark, empty Void. An existence of infinite power, and endless hunger, with a singular, fundamental purpose.”

Glacial white eyes met stubborn, black ones.

“To invade into every aspect of Creation, and absorb it into itself. To take the Infinity of Forms and coalesce it back into Formless Infinity. The End of Potential itself.”

Lukas watched with unraptured attention at Tanya, doing his best to ignore the arctic tundra around him. Every word she spoke carried a thrum of power as if the truth behind her statement was resonating with the world she had created around her. If what he had understood about the laws of Territory Creation was real, it was akin to a world where the caster defined and limited the applicability of the Rules. The stronger the caster was, the greater his or her control over the territory. For someone like Tanya who carried a Truth within her, she might as well be a God in this Domain.

And he was sitting inside it.

Speaking to her.

It broke every rule of common sense and self-preservation in the book, and yet—

Where is your sense of adventure?

Lukas smiled, remembering Inanna’s words. Guess she has really rubbed off him in a bad way.

Still, her words took him back to Inanna’s own description. The Formless Infinity and the Infinity of Forms, and the line that separated the two. She had described the former as the In-Between, which he supposed, was the Void, according to the being in front of him. And then it only made sense that the latter was—

“The Infinity of Forms,” Lukas whispered, “What is it?”

“The absolute zenith of all potential. The realization of all Truths. Whatever, whenever they are. The complete actualization of everything that can be, in this vast universe.”

Not the Origin then, Lukas mused, but the finalization of everything the Origin stands for.

“Sounds like a hypothetical possibility,” He replied, keeping his tone as skeptical as possible. Nearly a year ago, such skepticism would have come naturally to him.

Being exposed to a Goddess had really changed him.

“It is,” Tanya replied, her lips twisted in grim distaste, “a nastily bright future. And on the other end, is cold, untainted, raw darkness. The End of everything. Where Potential comes to die. The Void.”

The In-Between.

“These two powers have always existed. The Great Progenitor, the Mother of Creation— has always existed, and will always do. Just as the Void. An eternal metamorphosis between Creation and Destruction, and Life hanging in the balance.”

“And where does Everfrost come into this?” He asked.

Frankly, he had always considered these things like Truths to be metaphors, terms used to vaguely describe something beyond description. He still remembered the way Inanna had first presented the definition to him.

“Tell me, mortal, how do you describe sweetness to someone that has never tasted it?”

He had scrunched his face in all angles and torn his hair apart in an attempt to come up with a proper answer but found nothing. Absolutely nothing. One might as well try to define a new color. One that did not exist before. A Truth, in Inanna’s words, was like a doorway that didn’t exist. One had to actualize this non-existent thing and travel along with it. Construct a staircase, so to say. Climb it up, and once you reached the zenith, you would gain the ability to wield it.

Actualize it into Reality.

Add it to the World System.

Become a God.

But the more he tried to wrap his head around the impossibility that was Tanya, the more his own theories felt convoluted and incomplete. Like there was a piece in the puzzle that was missing. Something that when added would make this seemingly gibberish content into definite, comprehensible knowledge.

Tanya squinted her eyes. “Impatience does not suit you, Outsider. My own existence, like any other Truths, is irrevocably tied to this eternal dance between the Two.”

She shifted her body to turn towards him completely. “You were right. Truths are Rules that add to the World System, and as such, the World would absorb any Truth after the demise of its Holder.”

She met his eyes.

“Here’s where you are wrong. Truths are Rules that apply to the World. The World does not birth them. It does not shape them. It does not have authority over them. Which is why, in certain cases, the World does not even want them.”

“I—”

The avatar of frost tilted her head. “Don’t understand? It’s really easy. Tell me, would you want to consume something knowing it will bring about your destruction?”

That brought him to a pause.

“...Destruction?”

“Destruction.” Tanya asserted. “Some Truths, like my own, are embodiments of Rules that fit the Void. The Destroyer.”

“Not the Creator,” Lukas clarified.

“Precisely.”

“...Who are you?” Lukas asked, his voice wavering a little too much for his comfort. A sense of deja-vu overwhelmed him. It was like being back in the Crypt, standing above the burning carcass of the khorkhoi, utterly shocked and awed by the power of the deity that revealed her identity before him.

“...What are you really?”

Tanya’s lips twisted into a predatory grin. “What am… I?”

A cold wind blew.

“I am the Deepness, the Frigid Plains of Hell, the Cruelest Winter…

Eternal Glacier, Wrath of the End, Anomaly Slayer, Everfrost….”

The voice that came sounded like a peal of thunder, ragged with inhuman malice, buffeting him with its rolling depth. Thick spears of frost began to form on the surface and yet, none of them came remotely close to where he was.

“I have been called many names, across many civilizations,

I am the perpetual darkness that turned Nidhogg’s scales in the shade of the darkest night,

I am the devourer, one that dragged the Aesir into my cave,

Valhalla despised me, Crooked One-Eye feared me,

Meynte unveiled me and manifested me upon this World, I AM—”

Lukas felt the world slip beneath his feet. He knew. He knew what it was. He should have seen it. The truth was always looking at him in the face. Frost that slew. Ice that devoured life. An existence so alien that it could only be brought about by the advent of an utterly alien circumstance, something so grave and horrible that even Gods would shy away from considering it.

“FIMBULWINTER. DEVOURER OF PANTHEONS, AND I HAVE COME TO DEVOUR—”

“...what?” He whispered, his fists clenched and drawing blood, but for all his mental fortitude, he couldn’t help but stay frozen, “...devour what?”

Tanya smiled. “Everything.”