Damien was in…quite the situation.
After spending nearly 8 years floating through the Abyss, he thought he'd gained a relative understanding of its functions, and through it, he'd been able to avoid the worst.
There were absolute death zones in this place that even he, with his unreasonably powerful life force and regenerative ability, would die in, and he'd been able to sneak past them without being harmed several times.
However, what got him wasn't an absolute death zone, but a natural trap he never expected to encounter.
His current location was indeed the Abyss, but at the same time, not quite.
He was in a separated dimension looking out into the Abyss.
This place was like fragments of broken glass, each one roughly 5 meters tall and 3 or 4 meters wide, and they blended into the blackness of the environment to the point where even Damien's eyes couldn't make them out.
Naturally, perception also couldn't sense them.
They were completely removed yet completely integrated with the atmosphere, and Damien only realized he'd entered one when he realized he couldn't leave!
He'd been stuck in this strange state for over a year now, and the solution he'd come up with was simple.
'I have to comprehend the fractured laws here and find a way to merge them with the chaotic Abyss.'
Not only would this require the presence of the Void, but also a level of Spacetime comprehension he hadn't reached.
It was his first major setback on his way to Al'Katra, and it wasn't just a matter of losing time. He was certain the Abyss was still changing around him, creating a situation with the same consequences as leaving for the Sanctuary.
He'd spent the last year in comprehension.
Sitting in this place that was like a small piece of existence trapped in the void, he had no choice but to meditate and merge with its laws.
In the process, he'd also hypothesized how such a phenomenon came about.
He was no stranger to the shattered universes that created the Abyss. While he hadn't found anything similar to Reva yet, he had found several fragments that held small amounts of Universal Law, which he promptly absorbed.
He felt like if he returned to Grand Heavens Boundary with his current comprehension of Universal Law, he'd surely be able to control reality in unthinkable ways.
But that was beside the point.
This wasn't like the rest of the shattered pieces he'd seen.
Those were already beyond repair. Even if he brought them all together, he'd only get a vague idea of the Universal Law of the universes they belonged to, nothing else.
But this place was whole.
Yes, it was fragmented, but these pieces were large and complete enough to be considered true legacies of those ancient universes.
So, while Damien was irked by his entrapment, he was also eager to explore the secrets of this separated space as he found his way out.
Today was just like any other day.
Damien sat with his eyes closed and his senses spread. At this point, he'd already merged his consciousness with the surrounding space and started comprehending its nature.
Overall, he sensed many similarities to Grand Heavens Boundary, which made sense since both were part of the same greater universe at some point, but there were definitely several differences in the ways the laws functioned.
'First off, space and time are out of wack. Instead of the constantly expanding space that Grand Heavens Boundary has, this one is constantly shrinking. As for time, the flow is completely ruined. There is no sense of past and present, and everything is like a single picture that one can only view comprehensively.'
The matter of space shrinking was interesting. It gave him the idea this this fragmented dimension was actually the universe itself at the end of its life instead of a piece of it.
Such a truth would explain its wholeness, but if it was the answer, where was everything?
The shrinking wouldn't get rid of the worlds and celestial bodies that inhabited the universe. In fact, from what Damien understood, it was such an ingrained mechanism that it would provoke all things to shrink along with it.
However, even at a molecular level, Damien couldn't sense the existence of anything besides himself.
'As for time…'
Theoretically, any beings that viewed time from this perspective were already above the universal standard, so-called 4th-dimensional beings in Earth terms.
They would've been able to mold society in their image, altering the past and future to affect the present in ways to create the most ideal results.
But if that was true, they wouldn't have ended up in this state.
Therefore, the conclusion he came to was that these factors changed after their destruction.
Or perhaps, the extinction of all life within the universe morphed the Universal Law like this.
'It's already established that the relationship between a universe and its inhabitants is symbiotic. When the Nox invaded us, they didn't just kill the people, but also destroyed the universe, but what if…'
What if, in the earliest stages of their conquest, they aimed specifically for World Cores as they'd done with the Giant Domain instead of touching the universe?
What if they left the universe as an empty container and moved on, with no interest in its existence?
'If that's the case, I'm near the edges of the ancient greater universe. The destruction of this place happened near the beginning of time.'
The current Nox race wouldn't just leave a universe alone like this.
It wasn't a matter of their destructive nature. Damien had long since abandoned his preconceptions of the Nox and viewed them as a whole species with the same flaws as humans.
However, if this universe's life ended so long ago, knowledge would've been much sparser.
The things people knew today were plenty, but there was one thing that was still a mystery to this day, only inferred by the highest experts.
Such a fact wouldn't have even entered the imaginations of those ancient people.
'When the Nox are finished plundering all the World Cores from an existing universe, their next step would naturally be its higher variety.'
Worlds were microcosms of the universe itself.
Just like worlds had World Cores…
'...the universe had a Universal Core.'
That core was the operating system that allowed its laws to be maintained, and could be considered the physical body of Universal Law.
How could the Nox leave it be?
Reva was a fragment of a Universal Core, and the strange phantom woman he met when he bound her was its true form, or at least an image of it.
The destruction that created the Abyss naturally came about because those very Universal Cores were plundered, and the universes lost their means of staying stable.
Just blowing things up wasn't enough to cause this scene.
Just imagining the power such a mysterious construct contained sent shivers down Damien's spine.
He, as a Celestial, had an undeniable urge to explore it, but also a natural fear of its grandiosity.
And…
If this universe really became like this in the same way he assumed it to…
'...it's Universal Core might still be intact.'
And he, as the man who was dragged into this space, was the only person in existence who had a chance to find it.
