The Innkeeper

Chapter 2472: The Queen

Up until Eclipse pulled up that tiny purple orb, Lex watched everything she did, even if he could not think about anything he saw deeply. He still watched. He was still aware. Yet from the moment that orb came out, he became entirely overwhelmed.

Even with whatever awareness he had, he could not perceive more than the presence of that orb. That, alone, consumed the entire processing power he attained as a Primordial Celestial Immortal.

The fact that the universe itself seemed to freeze, and the laws appeared to stop working, did not help the situation either.

Yet when the orb connected with the black hole, even what little awareness existed ceased. Time, it seemed, had stopped. Everything came to a halt as the universe entered an extremely precarious situation - one which threatened to unravel all of reality, and destroy everything in a profound, yet extremely horrifying way.

If the past was changed whatsoever, all of reality would have to be rewritten. The universe did not have enough energy to rewrite all of reality, especially from a point so far back in the past. That was like asking an architect to change the foundation of a building after constructing a skyscraper - except this was infinitely more complicated than that.

Thus, neither Lex, nor Cassandra, nor even the likes of David and the others, were aware of what happened after that point.

They also didn’t see the massive fracture that seemed to appear in Destiny’s body as she was split diagonally, rainbow sand rising from her wounded body.

The hole that appeared, linking to a moment far in the past, and it existed merely for the tiniest possible iteration of time. The duration was so small that it bordered on non-existence, and even that consumed all the energy Eclipse had accumulated for two ages. Moreover, the strain of doing such a thing ripped Destiny’s body further, making it seem like she was made of paper.

Within the Primal realm, Death too lay on the ground, wounded beyond anything he had felt since the Primordial Age, with no hope of recovery in sight. Let alone recovery, he could not even say for sure he would survive.

His mind was blank at that moment, though deep in his being he knew that if he managed to survive this ordeal, he would need to go hide immediately. He would be weakened beyond what could be explained, and even if the other Archons didn’t take advantage of the situation, there was no way Eclipse would let him be. She had said as much already.

The Dream Arena itself seemed to have suffered a great deal of damage as well, though the time was too short for that damage to become apparent yet.

Eclipse didn’t care. As tiny as the time was, it was enough for her. It was more than enough. She had been preparing for this moment for nearly as long as it had been from the moment she looked back to.

She saw him - Lunareth Selaryn. Most living beings in the universe did not know how much of their reality had been shaped by this one Celestial. Although his Dao was that of Moonlight, ushering into reality something so beautiful, he was responsible for the birth and creation of countless concepts that were common now in the universe.

He was considered one of the first heroes to exist in history. The concept of valor itself came into existence when Valor Borne, an Elf back in the Primordial age, tried to replicate what he had learned from Lunareth.

There were countless other examples, but it did not matter. The universe had forgotten. Everyone had moved on - everyone except Eclipse.

She opened the portal back in time, using Destiny and Death to bear the strain of the universe for that one fraction of a moment, and saw how even in the midst of the most heartless betrayal, Lunareth had not given up his mission.

That the universe was safe today was as a result of his sacrifice back then. The fact that the Celestial race retained some semblance of honor was based on how they idolised Lunareth’s sacrifice that day.

The fact that Destiny... and perhaps even Fate, and a few others were able to reach the ranks of Archon may also be tied to that one instant. As much as Eclipse wanted to, she could not rob the universe of Lunareth’s death.

Too much was tied to it. Even she, as strong as she was, could not achieve such a thing, now or in the future. That didn’t mean she was ready to let Lunareth die. It just meant she needed to get creative in her approach.

Fortunately, she had all the time in the universe to prepare for this moment before this.

The instant that the portal was open, Eclipse watched Lunareth fall, watched his body begin to die, his spirit begin to fade, and his soul begin to extinguish.

She needed to let him die. More specifically, she needed to retain the direct consequences of his death, whether in terms of how people reacted to it, or in the karma that was sown, or how destiny and fate were affected, and how the laws of the universe were affected.

She needed none of that. She only needed... him. She reached out, her hand encompassed in the power of dreams, making it so that all those who were awake at that point in history could not sense her at all. Considering that back then, all beings were so innately powerful that there was no need for sleep, that included everyone.

She touched, with the tip of her middlefinger, Lunareth’s soul, and channeled into the perfect substitute. It was a clone she had made herself, studying the technique used by Life to create Eclipse’s own clone.

This substitute immediately took on all of Lunareth’s karma, all his destiny, and even his fate, effectively replacing him in every sense, while the tiniest wisp of ’life’ that was left in Lunareth in that moment was taken away from the body, completely untraceable to anyone and anything as Eclipse wrapped it in the power of dreams.

The timing was perfect. It coincided perfectly with history. Lunareth ’died’ exactly at the moment he was supposed to, and history was preserved perfectly with none the wiser that anything had changed at all.

Eclipse had set a precedent. By perfectly preserving all subsequent actions and consequences to an event, she actually changed history without any actual consequences whatsoever.

Yes, there was the tiny matter of the fact that by reaching into the past, she created karma between the past and future - a tiny error that should have been enough to cause the laws of the universe to implode, or at least rewrite themselves, ultimately changing history.

But was that also not the reason that she had spent so much time learning about and mastering karma? So that she could avoid this one, unavoidable mistake?

Thus, through means and sacrifice that none other than Nulli knew, Eclipse had perfectly preserved history without leaving any mark whatsoever. She saw with her own eyes how Lunareth ’died’. At the same time, she pulled out that one wisp of ’life’ from the past and brought it to the present.

The whole thing happened all at once. There was no room for errors or mistakes. Fortunately, there were none. Yes, many suicide warriors had tried to attack Eclipse at that time. Yes, many weaker beings and forces tried to interfere in the present to stop her, even though the most powerful did not. But she had prepared for all of that.

Thus, with her own hand, she preserved the life she had mourned the loss of for so long, and brought Lunareth back to life.

The moment the portal closed, Destiny’s body exploded. There was no other word for it - there was a massive explosion of rainbow dust, resulting in the unquestionable demise of an Archon.

The universe greedily absorbed all that rainbow dust, or at least it tried to. In the past Eclipse was restricted, but in the present, she was a Queen.

With a wave of her hand, she gathered that rainbow dust and channeled it into that single wisp of fragile life, on the verge of being extinguished. But when it was nourished by an energy so potent it ought not to exist in the universe, how could it die?

Yes, that energy would have been too much for anyone to normally absorb, but wasn’t that what Eclipse was there for? She filtered and purified it into the gentlest form of energy so that the life was preserved, and then slowly, in front of the eyes of so many witnesses, she recreated the body of Lunareth Selaryn.

The Celestial looked blankly at her while he recovered, and for a moment even he could not understand what had happened. He only sensed the foreign and unfamiliar laws of the universe, brushing up against him, while he looked down at the expectant eyes of Eclipse.

His first thought was not that he had somehow lived, but that...

"You look tired," said Lunareth softly, as he lifted his hands to Eclipse’s cheeks, and saw through the most powerful Dao Lord in the universe.

She said nothing, and let him caress her, as she felt the touch she had longed for, for over two ages.