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Time is falling apart.
The Shadow of Everything and Nothing is descending upon the land. Light burns too bright, it cannot be caught. You can’t stop it, not like this. Or can you? Haven’t you already done this before? Yes, you have, you just have to remember how.
Don’t be scared, it’s all in the palms of your hands. Cradle it, nurture it, it’s been waiting for you since all of this began. Your ascension was foretold eons ago, but your story wasn’t ready to be written, no, not until now.
More than once you thought you lost everything. When you awoke that day in a home that you lived in all your life but no longer knew. When your horns first curled back over your head and you didn’t recognize your own reflection anymore. When the mirror broke and the sky fell. When you thought you made a mistake that couldn’t be fixed, when you so desperately reached through the Shadow to find the Light, when-
Well. The rest has yet to come. (Hasn’t it already happened?)
You have your greatest challenge to face, it’s rushing to meet you head on, and you turn to your adversary with a smile on your face. You belong right here, right between Light and Shadow. This is your life, remember? Of course you do. Magic weaves along your arms like notes on a page. You control the tempo now; speed up, slow down, it’s a symphony of your own design. You know exactly what you want it to do, all you need is to ask.
You barely whisper and your magic bursts from your palm, taking the shape of something you don’t recognize, but it’s yours, that much you are aware of. The Aethyr Titan’s power is neutralized in your wake. You have nothing more to fear.
Create, destroy.
Sculpt, carve away.
You twirl along the weaving lines of the Spiral’s energy as you always have, although this time it’s personal, and you nestle yourself in the comfortable hug of the song that’s been playing in your head since you first awoke.
Hero. Savior. Scion. Paradox. So many titles you carry, and only the last feels like something you own.
You are the Paradox, and right now, you are undoing divinity.
You are becoming all that was. Becoming all that is. Becoming all that could ever be.
As you reach out, your hand gently brushes along every world, every curve, every root of the Spiral, restoring it, bringing it back to its start, pushing it all the way to the end. Returning it to where it should be. It’s just a split second, even shorter than that, an atom of time in the vast experience of the universe, but Reality is pierced, and Nothing is shown that Everything can exist.
You gather your power and you strike. Focused through your blood, thrumming through your veins, everything aligns, everything scatters. The Aethyr Titan falls, dissipates, and it, too, returns to what it is supposed to be.
Yet some of it remains. You don’t know it yet, but you’ve done something extraordinary.
You feel something deep within you change.
You are no longer the same person.
You feel the same, though. Nothing about you needed to change. It was always this way, just waiting to be awoken.
And now you are awake. Now you’re alive, truly alive.