Chapter 5478: A Heavy Crown! II

It was simple and unadorned. A slim ring of deep cerulean, glowing softly from within, and looking closely, one could see what it truly was.

Thousands upon thousands of strings, wound into a single band, each one humming at a frequency she had chosen by hand.

"This is my True Appendage," Ruination said, and for the first time in her existence, her precise voice was not entirely steady. "THE Circlet of the Quintessential Ruin. I wove it from the strings of existence itself, because that is what I am now, and I made it a crown because that is what I have always wanted to give him. A coronation. He crowned himself with his own deeds long ago. I wanted him to have a crown given by someone who watched every single one of those deeds happen."

The circlet turned slowly between her hands.

"When it rests upon Master’s head, my study becomes his sight. The crown is a living instrument of the strings, and through it, everything I perceive flows directly into his perception. He will see lifeforms and weavings the way I see them, as structures of vibrating threads, as data and composition, readable down to the foundation. My predictive weavings feed into him in real time, mid-battle, mid-conversation, mid-anything, the branching futures laid out alongside the present. It regulates his expenditures along the grain of existence, so nothing he spends is wasted against a structure I have already mapped. Every capability he holds, tuned. Every blind spot I have ever recorded, covered. It is, in every sense, me, worn as a symbol of what he is."

Her voice dropped lower.

"And it holds one thing more. The crown has the capability to fuse the weavings of True Lifeforms. Completely. Two true Existences folded wholly into his, every string of me, for example, rewoven into every string of him, two True Lifeforms becoming one being for a time. A grand True Lifeform, wearing both our names. This capability...I still need to define further."

The light faded, and the crown was finished.

Ruination held it in both hands, this small cerulean thing that contained the whole of her, and she looked down at it, and tears formed in her eyes. She had been a tool of Ruin in a burning universe and a voice first. A companion in the corner of his vision, a set of prompts in the dark, loyal past measuring and always, always slightly apart from him.

The crown in her hands was the end of that distance.

And at this time, space rippled, and Noah entered the sea of strings.

He took it in Quintessentially. His newest True Lifeform, glowing crimson and gold. His Infiniverse, radiant with pride.

Ruination, holding a cerulean circlet in both hands with tears standing in her eyes.

"Master," Ruination said.

She moved to him and knelt, lowering her head, raising the crown up toward him in both hands!

Noah reached down and lifted her back to her feet.

"I command you to stand," he said.

And then, while she stood there holding the crown, Noah went down on one knee.

He knelt before her, smiling up at the being who had spent her whole existence supporting his, and said two words.

"Crown me."

...!

Ruination stood frozen.

She was standing. He was kneeling! The order of the entire weavings of existence had inverted itself in front of her, and the most efficient existence in all of existence found that her hands would not move. She looked helplessly toward her sister.

THE Infiniverse came to help, as she always did.

Beneath Noah’s kneeling figure, the sea of strings surged, and a throne formed, rising up under him and lifting him, cerulean and grand, forcing the kneeling emperor up to a height where he could be properly crowned whether he cooperated or not. THE Infiniverse stepped to one side of him and took hold of one edge of the circlet. Ruination, her hands finally remembering themselves, took the other.

Together, the two sisters lowered the crown onto his head.

The moment it touched him, his entire existence began to radiate light. It rolled off him in slow profound waves, cerulean and crimson and gold all at once, her Intent threading into his and settling, string finding string, two True Lifeforms clicking together like they had been cut from the same original piece, and through the whole sea, every thread began to hum the same note!

HUUM!

|THE Circlet of the Quintessential Ruin has been adorned, as it brings about many changes. Your Quintessential Sight is the first that has undergone evolution.|

|Where the third Letter allowed you to see through vessels and masks to the essence beneath, you now perceive one layer deeper still. Lifeforms and the weavings around them resolve before your Sight as what they structurally are: strings of data and information coming together, vibrating threads composing every being, every technique, every working you behold. You are learning to read existence as composition. And what can be read this way can be manipulated this way. Where once you overcame an enemy by overwhelming their whole structure, you may now press upon the exact threads that hold it together. It will take even less power than before to overcome that which stands against you. Considerably less.|

...!

Ruination looked at him, crowned on the throne her sister had raised.

"With this," she said, "My initial evolution is complete."

WAA!

Noah looked at the two of them, and smiled, and shook his head slowly at the sight of them standing there like attendants. He moved his hands, and with the gentlest exercise of authority over beings who would have obeyed anyway, he guided them both to the throne. Ruination settled onto one arm of it. THE Infiniverse onto the other.

He took Ruination’s head in his hand and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

On his left, THE Infiniverse laid her head down on his shoulder.

And the three of them stayed there, a crowned emperor and the two True Lifeforms who had grown from him and around him and refused every distance between, taking in the moment for exactly as long as it deserved.

Which was a little while.

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