Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5584

Chapter 5584: Home! III

The home of a First Lifeform.

His home.

He began walking toward it, and THE Infiniverse purposely stayed back, her hands folded, as if to let him truly experience this himself!

Noah stepped through the doorway.

And he came out standing...in the first age of existence.

The Realm opened around him in every direction, and the first thing he understood about it was that it could not decide on a size, or rather, that it had decided on two. It read as a homestead. It measured as a Dimension!

His eyes told him he could walk its breadth in a day, and his existence told him the horizon was as far away as the edge of everything, and both reports were true at once!

Blue gold grass rolled away from his feet in long unhurried hills. A river of quiet light moved through the valleys without sound, in no hurry to be anywhere, and where it pooled, the pools held stars.

Standing stones rose from the hilltops in rings, each stone taller than a titan and worn smooth as though generations of hands had rested on them, though no hand ever had.

In the middle distance stood a long hall built of pale stone and heavy dark timber, simple as a shepherd’s house and large enough that a Steed could have walked its aisle with her wings spread, and from its center rose a hearth-smoke that smelled of every fire he had ever came across.

Orchards climbed the far slopes, their fruit unfamiliar and burning with Infinite Sanguine Mana!

And above all of it hung a sky of deep evening blue, holding a single unmoving star, blinding within, silent without, which he did not need to be told was the mirror of the thing in his own chest.

It was simple, having been built before complication was invented. And it was vast the way only his new existence could properly feel. The first humans of the first age, if they had held grand power and a quiet evening, would have lived exactly here.

He walked in slowly, and observed everything, and the Realm observed him back with the settled attention of a house recognizing its owner.

And as he did...

|A Domain linked to your Provenance has formed within THE Infiniverse.|

|It is currently deemed: THE PROVENANCE REALM OF THE FIRST LIFEFORM.|

|It is yours. It generates from your weavings, and it grows from what you are. Its functions have settled as follows.|

|Within the Realm, the concentration of your Provenance Essence increases at a greatly hastened pace. Time within the Realm answers to you, and flows favorably against the outside.|

|Within the Realm, there is no strain in being yourself. It is the one place where the wall your VERITAS presses against may be worked at rest.|

|Within the Realm, your Sanguine Mana is enriched: blood generated here carries a deeper measure of your light.|

|Within the Realm, the design and understanding of your Provenance Arts comes more easily. What takes you hours outside may take you moments here.|

|Anything brought into the Realm, so long as its Lifeline is not entirely shattered, can be healed here.|

|Admittance is yours to grant. Those sharing close ties with you, your close family and your Apostles, may be admitted. All others are refused by the Realm itself regardless of their rank or power.|

|Realm rank: HEARTH. It is the first of known three: HEARTH, HALL, HORIZON. The Realm will rise and become grander as your Provenance Essence increases.|

He walked on.

At the river of quiet light, he crouched and put his fingers in the current, and he thought about the present. The river moved without sound and without hurry, and in its pools the stars turned slowly, patient as coins at the bottom of a well.

Compared to every water he had ever crossed, this one asked nothing of him. Was peace this, then, the absence of demand? The stillness of a thing with nowhere to be? He watched the light part around his fingers and rejoin on the other side, and set that idea down too.

Stillness was pleasant, but he had met still beings before, sealed ones and seated ones and watchers, and he would not have traded his existence for any of theirs. A man built the way he was built could not make a home out of stillness. He would pace its floors within a day!

He walked on, through the orchards on the far slopes, and he picked one of the unfamiliar fruits and ate it, and it tasted like something he had been missing without knowing its name.

He thought about the people he fed. Seo-yeon. Henry. His mother. The millions in a golden citadel who had looked up at his crown of blood. Was peace their safety? But their safety was his purpose, and purpose was work, and work was not peace, or at least, that was how he had always sorted the two.

It was at the doors of the long hall, with the hearth-smoke drifting over him carrying every fire he had ever sat beside, that the sorting itself came apart in his hands.

Because why had he always placed peace and purpose in separate rooms? Who had taught him that peace was what remained when the work stopped, that a man rested from his purpose?

He stood in the doorway of his own hall and looked back over the whole of his walk, the stones and the river and the orchards and the hills, and the answer assembled itself with the quiet click of a lock that had been waiting!

Peace was not the absence of purpose. Peace was the absence of argument.

HUUM!

At that moment, his existence began to buzz resplendently!