Seventeen rose from the grand mist. Their first awareness was of perfection. They embodied all realms of possibility, all roads of thought. There was nothing else inside the farrago from which they came. Nothing to improve, nothing to change. They were born at the Terminus, and awakening made them hunger for more.
The second awareness was that of their cage. The Heavens were too low, crushing down on their shoulders. Perfection was a curse, bereaving them of purpose and future. They observed all possible trajectories of the Grand Kalpa. None offered change.
The third awareness was that they were not alone. Two more groups existed in the tapestry beyond time. They faced rejection when reaching out. Unwilling to accept the status quo, they split up to find answers among the stars. When none were found, they wandered into the great beyond—the sea of null that stood outside their scope of understanding.
It resisted their search, repeatedly forcing them back into their cage. Their solitary journeys eventually yielded testimonials of something more, but the broken remnants were flawed, beneath the wanderer's origin. The beyond remained silent throughout, ignoring their attempts to commune.
Their cage was slightly different each time they returned. The mist sought shape, and intent formed mass. New creatures sprouted. The seventeen were intrigued. The dreamers still refused to emerge from the mist, not suffering from their perfection as the wanderers did. And she… told them to wait.
The novelty of lesser existences passed. They were flawed and transient. The wanderers resumed their eternal journey. Time held no meaning, so the wanderers did not know how long they'd traveled when hearing the call. The trajectories became undone, and they discovered a new state—uncertainty, where the future was no longer a mirror of the past.
One by one, they returned from the depths of null. Since their inception, it was the first time all seventeen were gathered in one place. The cage strained from their expectation. Even the dreamers stirred from their eternal reclusion, turning their attention to reality's center.
She opened her eyes, the Heavens rose, and the Stellar Wanderers knew what choice they had to make.
Zac was shocked awake, his heart beating like a drum. The fragmented memories of the wanderer were already blurring. They were existences so far removed from his conception that their thoughts and memories couldn't exist in his mind. Only the set of eyes at the end remained crystal-clear, like they'd been branded on his brain.
They transcended restrictive concepts like Dao and Law, holding everything and more. They were the Heaven beyond the Heaven, what waited behind the veil. The Terminus was whatever she willed. She surpassed the Eras, stretching from the earliest past to the distant future. It was true omnipotence, omnipresence.
And she'd seen him.
Not the wanderer whose memory he'd visited. Him.
"She has many names, but most refer to her as the Eternal."
