A mont later, clarity returned to the eyes of everyone within the hall.
The giant blinked once.
Below him, the kneeling subjects raised their heads naturally, completely unaware that ti itself had repeated around them.
"My lord… you have awakened."
The voices of the kneeling subjects echoed together in perfect unison.
"Long live the Immortal Lord."
The giant remained seated silently for a mont before his gaze slowly descended toward them.
"How long," he asked slowly, "have I been slumbering?"
"By mortal standards, two thousand one hundred years have passed since your lordship entered slumber."
The giant's expression barely changed.
"It seems… not much ti has passed."
"Did your esteed self encounter sothing worthy of awakening, my lord?"
The giant's dark gaze drifted slightly, as though recalling sothing vague and incomplete.
"One of my incarnations appears to have encountered a strange power within a dark region."
"My lord… should I prepare the armies for an expedition toward that world?"
"No," the giant replied calmly. "It has already been dealt with."
The conversation flowed naturally.
None of them realized it had already happened once before. None of them rembered the World Tree.
The previous monts had vanished completely, erased so thoroughly that not even an instinctive trace remained behind.
Only the cosmos itself bore evidence that sothing had occurred.
The giant slowly lifted his gaze toward the distant stars once more.
His eyes narrowed faintly.
"Strange…"
Far beyond the frozen world, the vast region of darkness continued to spread silently through the cosmos, larger now than before.
"The darkness has grown."
A faint unease settled within his ancient gaze.
"The Calamity is nearing…"
His voice lowered into a murmur, heavy with thoughts even he could not fully grasp.
"At such a crucial juncture… where have all the Primordials disappeared to?"
For thousands of years he had searched.
He had sent his incarnations crossed ruined worlds, ancient dinsions, forgotten void paths, and remnants of civilizations older than stars themselves. Yet no matter where he looked, there was nothing.
It was as though the Primordials had vanished from existence entirely.
The giant slowly clenched one hand against the armrest of his throne.
"I have searched for their existence for thousands of years," he muttered quietly, "yet not even a speck of their remains can be found."
His dark gaze lingered upon the expanding void in the distance.
"Did the earth swallow them…"
"…or did the void expel them?"
"My lord… by the Calamity, are you referring to the catastrophe the Primordials once fought against?"
The taller subject's voice carried careful hesitation as he spoke. Even uttering those words felt strangely uncomfortable, as though instinct itself warned against probing too deeply into matters buried by ti.
The giant remained seated upon the frozen throne, his dark eyes still fixed upon the distant cosmos beyond the castle walls.
"What do you know of it?" he asked.
The subject frowned slightly, trying to gather fragnted mories that refused to fully surface.
"There are records describing a great war in the distant past, one fought by the Primordials against…" His voice faltered mid-sentence.
A strange confusion crossed his face.
"Against…"
He stopped completely.
The surrounding subjects exchanged uneasy glances as the tall figure pressed a hand against his forehead, as though struggling to grasp sothing slipping away from his thoughts.
"It was against… who?"
His expression grew increasingly unsettled.
"Forgive , my lord… I cannot rember."
The giant showed no surprise.
"It is normal that you cannot rember," he said calmly. "Everything regarding that existence has been erased."
The hall grew quieter.
"Erased?" the subject repeated faintly.
"If one were capable of recalling even its true na…" His voice lowered slightly. "Then that existence itself could fully awaken once more."
The kneeling subjects stiffened visibly.
"Co alive?" the tall figure muttered, unable to conceal his disbelief. "Then… did the Primordials not win? Didn't they all perished and disappeared after that war?"
"No."
The giant's answer ca imdiately.
"Only one Primordial truly perished." He continued. "The Primordial Chaos sacrificed her own existence in order to seal away a fragnt of that thing."
A brief silence followed. "The others vanished."
"That sa Calamity…" the giant continued quietly, "…is beginning to resurface."
The words struck the subjects like frozen steel.
Several of them lowered themselves instinctively, fear flickering within their eyes despite not fully understanding why.
The giant fell silent afterward, his gaze lifting once more toward the spreading darkness in the distant cosmos.
As one of the few beings who had reached the pinnacle, he knew truths the rest of existence had long lost.
In the earliest age, before immortal civilizations rose across the stars, before laws and realms had fully stabilized, the cosmos had belonged to beings known as the Primordials.
They stood beyond all known concepts of power.
Creators. Rulers. Foundations of existence itself.
And yet even they had once faced sothing they could not easily destroy.
A Calamity had descended upon existence.
An enemy so terrifying that even after countless ages, all traces of it had been deliberately erased. Every record tied to that era had vanished as though reality itself feared allowing its mory to persist.
The immortals of later ages had uncovered only fragnts through divine calculations, forbidden ruins, and broken remnants of ancient laws. They learned enough to know such an era had existed, but never what the Primordials had truly fought against.
Even its na no longer remained.
For beings such as the Primordials to erase the identity of their enemy so thoroughly could only an one thing, that existence had reached a level where rely rembering it carried danger.
And now… after endless ages of silence…
Sothing had begun to stir once again.
The giant's expression grew heavier.
This ti, however, there would be no Primordials left to oppose it.
The Primordial Chaos, the first existence born before existence itself, had sacrificed her own will to imprison part of the Calamity beyond the reach of reality.
The Primordial Heaven, the creator of worldly laws and the source from which free will first erged, had abandoned its throne long ago, leaving the order of existence without a ruler.
The Primordial Witch, the sovereign judge who governed life and death, had vanished without a trace, as though even causality itself no longer rembered her.
The Primordial Tree, the bearer of countless worlds whose branches once stretched across the cosmos, had severed its own limbs before disappearing into the endless void.
The Primordial Human, the first sentient life and ancestor of all conscious beings, had already reached the natural end of his existence ages ago.
And the Primordial Light…
The giant's eyes narrowed faintly.
It was the first radiance that pierced the eternal Chaos.
It too had abandoned the world.
One by one, the other Primordials also disappeared.
What remained afterward were the Immortals, the strongest surviving existences of later eras.
Yet compared to the beings who once ruled creation itself, even immortals seed insignificant.
If the Calamity truly returned…
They would not be able to stop it.
Across the cosmos, the story of the Primordials and the ancient war had long since faded into little more than myth.
To the world, it was nothing more than folklore, a terrifying myth crafted to frighten the masses. There was no proof, no trace that such horrors had ever existed.
But he knew the truth. The tale was no fabrication. The enemy lurking beyond the veil was real, and it was coming.
After all, he was among the very few beings who had survived that calamity.
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[A/N: With this chapter, Volu 4 cos to an end :)
To everyone who is still reading this story, thank you. Your support ans lot to . Whether you've been here from the beginning or joined along the way, I'm grateful you chose to spend your ti with this book.
And don't worry, I fully intend to finish this story. No matter how long it takes, no matter how well or poorly it performs, I will see it through to the end. I plan to finish what I started.
Thank you for staying with until now. I hope to see you again in Volu 5 :) ]
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