Read Novel Full Chapter 5877: Are You Alive? I
Chapter 5877: Are You Alive? I
Little Kir One opened its eyes!
They were black, obsidian like the rest of it, glossy and deep, and far back inside them burned a faint light, small and steady, like a single candle at the end of a very long hall.
It looked at THE Verdant Regard.
And for the first time since it had stepped out of the tear in space, it spoke.
|THE Kirtimukha speaks.|
Its voice was quiet and flat and utterly sincire.
|"Are you alive?"|
HUUM!
...!
The question hung over the arena.
THE Verdant Regard stared at it. Her green light flickered, as if the words had touched something beneath it.
Then the Kirtimukha’s body began to change!
A faint light rose over its skin. Obsidian, like its body, so thin that Noah almost missed it. Where an Immensity would blaze and flare and pour out into the air, this simply settled over the Giant from head to foot, a fine black sheen, close as a second skin, and stayed there.
That was all.
Aura, storm, the wash of power rolling out across a sea of stars: all of it was absent. The vast obsidian titan stood in the arena with that faint film over its body, and to every sense Noah had, it seemed to have grown quieter rather than stronger.
And yet his existence went very still.
Inside his mind, Lifthrasir’s voice came along the thread.
"Do you see it?"
She sounded pleased.
"That is Shinjitsu. Look how little of it there is. Everything Little Kir One is, its Narrative, its Immensity, all of its strength, is held inside its existence. Nothing leaks or shines, and nothing is wasted on being seen. It has all been gathered inward, and pressed into its own truth, and that faint light is the only part of it that reaches the surface."
Noah watched the obsidian sheen.
"Most Immense Ones are loud," Lifthrasir went on softly. "Their power spills out of them in every direction. Light and pressure and grandeur, all of it borrowed, and all of it announcing itself. Shinjitsu is the opposite. It is what remains when you stop wearing what isn’t yours. And what remains, when it is true, has no need to shine."
Across the arena, THE Verdant Regard raised her plum branch.
|THE Verdant Regard speaks.|
Her voice was cold.
|"Alive."|
She lifted the branch high above her head.
|"I will show you exactly how alive."|
Her power came all at once!
Green light erupted from her body in a tidal wave that washed across the whole arena, and behind her, the dark of the Chrysalis split open, and an eye opened in it.
A vast verdant eye, larger than the arena, larger than the Ossuary, its iris a slow whirlpool of green and gold, its pupil a black seed. It hung in the sky behind her, and it looked down.
Its gaze fell on everything.
And everything it looked upon began to grow.
THE Verdant Regard’s Immensity was Regard itself. Whatever fell beneath her gaze became her garden. Its growth answered to her. She could make it bloom in an instant, or wither in the same breath, or take root wherever she pleased. The falling silk of the Chrysalis, caught in the eye’s gaze, sprouted roots in midair and burst into plum blossoms. The swaying destiny-threads at the arena’s edge put out leaves, and the dark itself began to green.
She brought both hands together in front of her chest, fingers interlaced in a tight, deliberate sign.
|THE Verdant Regard speaks.|
|"Orchard of the Unblinking Eye."|
The arena became an orchard!
It unfolded around the Kirtimukha in a single instant: endless rows of plum trees bursting up out of nothing, thousands of them, millions, their branches heavy with blossoms of pink and white and wine-red, filling every direction, sealing the arena inside a realm of green beneath the gaze of the great eye. Inside it, there was no escape from being seen. And everything that was seen was hers to grow.
The orchard turned on the Kirtimukha.
Roots burst from the ground beneath its feet and wrapped its ankles, its calves, its thighs, thick as rivers, driving downward to anchor it. Branches lashed out from every tree at once, a million spears of living wood sharpened to points, plunging toward its chest, its throat, its eyes. Blossoms tore loose and spun through the air in razor storms, each petal an edge. And the great eye above pressed down on it with the full weight of its Regard, commanding its body to bloom, to put out roots of its own from the inside, to split open and flower and wither away to nothing.
It was terrifying!
Noah watched it with wide eyes. An Ancient Immensity, unleashed at full strength, an entire region of existence turned into a weapon in a single breath.
The roots reached the faint obsidian sheen over the Kirtimukha’s skin.
And slid off!
They neither snapped nor burned. They simply failed to hold, as if they had tried to take root in polished glass and found nothing at all to grip, then loosened, fell away, and withered on the ground.
The million branches struck the sheen.
And broke!
Every one of them. Shattered on contact, splinters of living wood spraying out in great green clouds, the points crumbling before they could pierce even the faint light that covered the Giant’s body. The razor storm of blossoms hit next, and the petals fell away from the sheen like snow from a window, harmless, drifting to the orchard floor.
And the great verdant eye above pressed down with all its Regard, commanding the Kirtimukha to bloom.
The Giant stayed exactly as it was.
The command reached the obsidian sheen, and found nothing beneath it that would answer. Borrowed names, legends told by others, titles given from outside: the Giant had none to offer. Only its own truth, small and plain and wholly real, and that truth had no interest in becoming a garden.
The Regard slid away.
"There," Lifthrasir murmured inside Noah’s mind. "Her whole Immensity works by seizing hold of what she looks at. But to seize something, you must grip it by what isn’t truly it. Its names, its stories, its place in existence. Every lifeform has a great deal of that, and she grips them all by it. Little Kir One has almost none. There is nothing left on it that isn’t its own. She has nowhere to take hold."
THE Kirtimukha took a step forward.
The orchard shuddered.
It took another step, and the roots at its feet withered back into the ground. Another, and the nearest rows of trees split down their trunks and fell. It walked through the orchard of the unblinking eye as a man walks through a field of tall grass, and the grass simply bent aside, and then broke, and then died.
THE Verdant Regard’s eyes went wide!
She raised both hands. The great eye above her flared, its pupil splitting open, and a beam of pure green Regard poured down out of it, a column of power so dense that the sea of stars beneath it began to sprout a forest.
The Kirtimukha raised one fist.
Over its knuckles, the faint obsidian sheen was barely visible.
It punched!
The fist met the column of green Regard and went straight through it, as a hand goes through smoke. It met the Verdant Regard’s defenses, layer upon layer of living wood and verdant light and woven Immensity wrapped around her body like armor, and broke them all, one after another, in a series of sharp cracks like river ice breaking in spring.
And it landed on her chest.
BOOM!
Her chest split open!
A long, ragged wound tore across her from collarbone to ribs. Blood sprayed out of it, verdant and glittering, green as new leaves and full of tiny points of starlight, and it hung in the air behind her in a long shimmering arc as she was hurled backward across the arena. The great eye in the sky blinked once, and shut. The orchard died all at once, every tree collapsing into green dust.
She flew toward the edge of the arena, toward the crescent of Ancients, trailing stellar blood.
Someone caught her!
THE SLEEPLESS FIEND stepped forward out of the crescent and caught her easily in his burning arms, cradling her against his white-hot thraeds. She lay there limp, her plum branch fallen, verdant blood leaking from the wound in her chest.
The Fiend looked down at her.
Slowly, almost tenderly, he raised one hand and stroked her hair.
He was smiling. It was a dark smile, slow and pleased, the smile of someone watching a thing he had quietly hoped for come true.
THE Kirtimukha stood alone in the middle of the empty arena.
|"You...are not alive."|
HUUM!
The faint obsidian sheen over its body settled, and stilled, and faded back into its skin.
Its eyes closed again.
Beside Noah, Lifthrasir smiled.
"Very few Ancient Immense Ones even practice Shinjitsu," she said softly, aloud this time, so that everyone could hear. "Fewer still know how to begin. It cannot be granted or inherited, stolen or devoured. It has to be found, slowly, in oneself, and most never find it at all. But when it comes to me and you...we can make many more methods possible."
She looked at the crescent of Ancients, at the Fiend cradling the bleeding Verdant Regard, at the Sovereign of the Endless Spiral standing very still at the center of them all.
"An Ancient Immense One is grand," Lifthrasir said. "But an Ancient Immense One who knows Shinjitsu is unfathomably grander."
She patted the air in the direction of the obsidian Giant, fondly.
"And Little Kir One barely holds a half of one percent of Assimilation."
...!