Chapter 209

Gears of Creation

As twilight's last kiss parted from the day, a barren, sorrowful landscape stretched out towards the bleak horizon. Where a pulsing heart of a grand capital city once stood, there was now only a silhouette of charred desolation. Its lively veins that bustled with the laughter of children and the rhythm of commerce were now rivulets of silence, carrying whispers of a time before the cataclysm. The echo of cosmic fire, the magic that had razed this flourishing kingdom to nothing more than a tragic tableau of ashes, still hung heavily in the air.

In the middle of this void, a solitary figure stood, clad in shadows as thick as a winter's cloak. His presence seemed to ripple the very fabric of reality as he opened his eyes, peering into the invisible gears of the universe, his gaze drifting into realms that lay beyond the mortal understanding of space and time.

Sylas never imagined himself here–in the vast nothingness. He was but a man, a lowly nothing, a little thing–and now… he was ungodly. He had become a Voyager, that which feeds the cosmos with particulates. Asha did not need to inform him, for he instinctively knew as soon as the shadows consumed him–he was Voyager of Death, the masked reaper, the faceless ghoul consuming the ending life. Many worlds called him many things–some even dubbed him a merciful angel, and some yet a vengeful demon.

What he was still at his core was human–though he felt the power beyond cosmic grasp swelling within him, it did not change that he was quite young, all things considered. And innocently naive of many things. For beyond the veil of the material that the human eyes could see, he had grasped the tendons of it all, the gears that move and originate everything.

The cosmos was a grand orchestration of forces, emanating from a single point: the Innuai, or 'Genesis Particle'. From it stemmed four fundamental concepts – Creation, Destruction, Life, and Death. Each concept birthed a representative avatar, the Primordial Voyagers, who upheld the delicate balance of existence. The Primordial Voyagers had long since vanished, and while their derived concepts could continue without avatars, the universe required the presence of Voyagers for the fundamental four. Such was the strange paradox of existence, where the Voyagers both crafted and were bound by the laws they upheld.

Emerging from the poetic haze of universal mechanisms, the narrative returned to the figures embroiled in this cosmic dance. Sylas, now a being of profound reverence, was joined by Asha. Her eyes, seemingly filled with stardust, mirrored the sprawling cosmos she contemplated.

“What do you think?” Asha asked as she cast her gaze outwardly toward the expanding cosmos. Even she could not count the innumerable galaxies, for even the Voyagers could not be quicker than the expansion of everything.

“What’s there to think?” Sylas replied with a sigh. “I’ll just ignore it and pretend I’ve never learned any of it.”

“... why? You expected something more complex?”

“Well… yeah?” Sylas chuckled lightly as the two withdrew from the projected cosmos and into their tent where the light of the lantern gently illuminated them. “It can’t be that all that is, was, and will be came from a single particle.”

“... it’s just a myth, Sylas.”

“Huh?”

“The only confirmed true part of the origin story is that there, indeed, were four Primordial Voyagers. But they have been dead for literally billions of years at this point. The only reason why we even know about them is that every inheritor of their particular concept is told so through the fragments. Just like human myths, Voyager myths could be true… or they may be entirely made up. For example, for a long, long, long time, there was a common belief among the Voyagers that permanence of a concept was what augmented one’s strength.”

“And that’s not true?”

“Of course not,” Asha said. “Concept is a wrong word to use, anyway. We aren’t concepts–we are living, breathing beings capable of wielding existing, physical elements and not some made up vu-jo. You may represent the concept of Death, but you are not death Sylas–I want you to remember that.”

“... can’t I just be your boy toy and we can call it a day?”

“Oh, that you are, of course. But our lives will be long. We’ll have to diversify our interests. Did you ever consider taking up piano?”

The ensuing conversation, steeped in cosmic intricacies and lighthearted banter, was a stark contrast to the happenings within another tent. Here, Prince Valen, bound by the constraints of his wheelchair, was gripped by a tormenting guilt. He grappled with the monstrous notion that he might be responsible for the destruction of his own city. Although it was his parents who had forged the deadly pact with the Voyager, as the sole surviving kin, he bore the colossal burden of their sins. The remnants of a kingdom left to him, the daunting task of rebuilding it, and the overwhelming weight of tens of thousands of deaths stared back at him in the face of the Voyager’s debt collection.

The mysteries that shrouded Sylas had begun to clear, like a morning fog slowly unveiling the landscape beneath. Valen, through the lens of his human understanding, had begun to comprehend the man he had traversed a complex journey with. Or perhaps, he had started to grasp the entity that Sylas had morphed into. It was a perplexing thought, tinged with a mix of awe and sorrow, as it marked the culmination of their shared journey.

Sylas, who had been christened as the Prophet, now seemed to be anything but. A foreboding suspicion nestled in the crevices of Valen's mind, whispering that Sylas might never have been truly human, or divine, for that matter. He was something else, something that resided in the twilight zone between mortality and godhood. And as their journey neared its end, Valen had come to a staggering realisation.

Sylas had shed his semi-mortal shell and had ascended into an existence beyond the grasp of human understanding. He had become a Voyager. The timeline of this transformation was unclear. Had it been a sudden metamorphosis, or a gradual shift that had occurred right under Valen's nose? The reasons and mechanics behind this evolution were even more obscure. These were matters of cosmic intricacy, matters that Valen, despite his noble status and educated mind, found himself woefully unequipped to decipher.

And why should he? He was but a mortal, a man bound by the constraints of human thought and human life, navigating a universe that was vastly more complex than what his human senses could perceive. As a prince, he was versed in the affairs of his kingdom, knowledgeable in the arts and sciences of his world. But when it came to matters of the cosmos, he was as ignorant as the next man.

In the light of this newfound understanding, Sylas' peculiarities, his idiosyncrasies, and his superhuman strength took on a different meaning. They were no longer baffling anomalies but rather stepping stones in his path towards becoming a Voyager. Sylas had been transitioning into a being of cosmic indifference, an entity that existed on a plane far beyond the reach of humanity and divinity.

This revelation brought Valen a sense of uneasy clarity. The Gods of the Realm, whose tales of divine power and wisdom he had grown up with, held the Voyagers in absolute reverence. These were beings whose existence was a testament to the cosmos' infinite complexity and paradoxical simplicity. They were entities who, despite being integral to the cosmic mechanism, remained elusive to human understanding.

The human mind, despite its incredible ability to learn and adapt, was barely capable of conceptualising the existence of a Voyager, let alone understanding the depth of their being. They were like distant celestial bodies, visible to the naked eye, yet their true nature, their true power, was something that could only be speculated upon, never truly comprehended.

In the grand cosmic narrative, Sylas had become a Voyager, a testament to the universe's endless mysteries and the human mind's relentless pursuit of understanding. Amid the ruins of his capital city, Valen found himself reflecting not just on the journey he had shared with Sylas, but on the vast and fascinating cosmos they were both a part of.