"You're right. Let's return," she replies as the sun falls over the human world's horizon.
Both of our avatars dissolve into the void, falling out of the Origin Plane and reconnecting with our true bodies in the membrane with ease.
The Avatar fragments in the Upper Realm stay longer to reminisce and interact with all of the powerful leaders.
The Knights come to visit, and even some of the most talented and prominent descendants from Arie and Raven's family; as well as a few from Fisher and Lydia's moon base in the Lower Realm.
They respectfully greet us, but the look in their eyes is even more estranged than that of their ancestors. The newer generations see us as actual gods, like we are a physical manifestation of the system. To be truthful, they are not wrong.
Slowly, the many loyal links of loyalty all leave back to their posts.
I personally send off the members of the Inner Circle, but it feels like a disconnected bittersweet goodbye. Everyone has grown into their own routines, and found their place in their Realms.
Even Abby, when it is only her left before us. We hug her tight once again, and promise to return when we get the chance. Yet, even the strongest being in this entire galaxy, the glue that holds the entire Upper and Lower Realm together, her mind, perspective, priorities, and duties are still so different than ours.
As we fade back into the membrane, it doesn't even feel like we are saying goodbye. In fact, there is a rush of relief that comes over me, as it feels like this is just a final confirmation of the information that was already present in my mental space.
We have become Overseers. Owners, and rulers of the lives and deaths of all beings on the Origin Plane.
The next moment of active thought returns back to the enormous blue and red Immortal Emperors' forms floating before a golden Dragon in the membrane.
In the time we've left, many more laws have completely consolidated, and the new peace of mind I've gained ripples through my entire being.
Despite no additional raw power being added to my immortal form, I feel as though my perception has grown even more immense.
The small pinholes of visible space peeking through the membrane grow larger.
It is like my mind is melting away the barriers, yet the physical membrane stays completely intact. The only thing breaking through the gaps and strange bends in space is my mind.
The cool, icy sensation of Maria's mirror-like consciousness following right beside mine helps to widen the gaps and create new pathways to break through too. Ember does not help—he simply floats in space and watches with an indifferent expression, just as he did when we sent fragments of ourselves back into the Origin Plane.
Now, with both of our far more concentrated minds working together, we seep through the membrane in a matter of seconds.
It takes an enormous amount of mental power to peer through, but once our consciousness erupts through to the other side, it expands without any resistance. At first, it feels like we have just broken out of one void to plunge our minds into another.
Yet, this membrane has a surface, a presence, a mass and mind of its own. There are laws fluctuating within every area of it. The space outside is truly empty.
In just a matter of milliseconds, thousands of times less time than it took to break through the barrier, our minds spread out tens of times the total distance of the entire membrane.
We probe outward for hundreds of lengths of galaxies until we meet even the clues for other mass in this universe.
My consciousness sweeps over a chaotic puddle of mass and broken laws, swirling extremely slowly with billions of ancient planets, but not a single sign of any remaining stars. There is no ether, mana, or even demonic energy present. It is just the remnants of a galaxy sucked dry of all its energy and life.
The further out my mind travels, the more surface area it hits at once.
Multiple chaotic galaxy tombs enter my field of view, and the number of them builds up further in the opposite direction as Maria's mind uncovers the exact same scenes.
It is only a few at first, and they all look similar. Though, after the total crosses one hundred galaxies, some differences appear. A few do not even have planets intact any longer, all of the mass remaining is crushed to near microscopic dust.
Others are even more subtle, with no mass remaining at all. There is only the fragmented and bent space left behind containing unique law fluctuations. I can infer what happened, but there is no physical proof left behind.
The number of dead galaxies rises to thousands, then hundreds of thousands.
Entire superclusters begin to show up in my senses, dead and cold. Many still have fragments of ancient life, but some are even more daunting with the indents of space and laws telling me that tens of thousands of galaxies have just completely disappeared without a trace.
I even start to sense the presence of laws that can only come from an entity like this membrane. Like it, or something like it, was surrounding some of these galaxies before. Yet, if it did, my soul sword was not present. No past life memories within this universe have ever been recorded.
I try to piece together more clues, but my guesses only become more convoluted as the total number of dead and cold galaxies crosses one million.
From here, our minds have grown accustomed to traveling through this deep space. In fact, they become even faster. I begin to develop a void-step technique to push even my consciousness further into the universe faster than the laws of space around it should allow.
The registered galaxies quickly surpass one hundred million, to a billion, then a hundred billion, and surge upward to near a trillion ancient, abandoned galaxies.
Not a single one holds any signs of energy or life remaining.
Ember's words to Noctus, telling him that there are no systems remaining in this Realm, repeat in my mind as I spread my consciousness further and further.
The red and blue tinted minds become so proficient in void stepping that we meld together instantly despite traveling in separate directions at first. Now, nearly the entire universe has become enveloped in our mental senses despite still being trapped behind the membrane.
This space outside has no energy or essence in its atmosphere, making it extremely easy to process the physical information being scanned. The only complex data is the fluctuation of laws. We need to stop for almost a full minute to process everything and make sense of it.
My soul sword may not have been to any of these other galaxies, but there are extremely familiar laws that I can pinpoint to someone without a doubt.
Ember has been outside the membrane, and the state of the current universe is all his doing...
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Author's Note:
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