The Primordial Record novel Chapter 1747

Chapter 1747: Xylos, the First Doubt

The world was a tomb of obsidian and silent screams. Telmus knew this because he had built it himself, stone by agonizing stone, deep within the cavern of his own mind.

At first, the exercise had been to amuse his mind, but slowly it began to transform into a thing of necessity.

Telmus had never been one to do things by half measures, and he plunged into the depths of his psyche, creating blocks of Will that were impossible to destroy.

Without any guidance or a path forward, Telmus was forging his Destiny using nothing but sheer stubbornness and his innate arrogance.

And he had no idea what he was doing... had no idea he was rapidly crossing dimensions while imprisoned in his mind.

Talents such as these were enough to make all geniuses despair.

Here, there was no sun, no wind, no sensation of a body. There was only the chamber—a vast, circular arena of polished black mirror, reflecting a darkness so complete it seemed to swallow its own reflection. At its center, he sat, or rather, the essence of him sat, chained not by iron but by filaments of pure will, each one thrumming with a corrosive, alien energy.

This was his prison. His mind, the warden. His soul, the inmate.

And he was not alone.

Across from him, coiled in the space that was not space, was the demon. It had no true form, for it was a thing of concept and primordial hunger, but in the theater of the mind, it needed an avatar. It chose something vast and serpentine, a beast of shadows and embers, with eyes like dying stars and a voice that was the sound of continents grinding together.

Its name was Xylos, the First Doubt, the Last Silence, the Primordial Demon.

"You persist in shaping this place," Xylos rumbled, the sound vibrating through the floor and up through Telmus’s intangible being. "This... austerity. This bleak monument to your futility. You could imagine a sun-drenched meadow. A quiet library. A lover’s embrace. Yet you choose this as your foundation."

Telmus did not open his eyes. This demon took many shapes and had too many voices. He instinctively understood that the best method to deal with a Primordial Demon was to find its black heart.

To open his eyes was to see the thing’s reflection a thousand times in the polished floor, a legion of dying stars staring back. Still, Telmus did not back down from a battle, and clashing his mind with the demon had an unexpected benefit for his mental growth.

Knowing that time seemed to always be meaningless in the presence of the demon, Telmus took his time to reply,

"A meadow would be a lie. A library, a distraction. This is the truth of our situation. A cell. I will not decorate my cage for your amusement."

A sound like a mountain cracking in half—a laugh. "Amusement? Mortal, you have been the source of my amusement for decades. Your stubbornness is a diverting comedy. Your ’truth’ is a child’s simplistic drawing of a thing it cannot comprehend. This is not a cell. It is a confluence. A meeting point. The place where a river of mortal struggle finally joins the infinite, stagnant ocean of my being."

"Poetic," Telmus said, his voice flat, worn smooth from the internal erosion of this endless conversation. "For a parasite."

"Parasite?" Xylos’s form shifted, coils of smoke and promise tightening around the periphery of Telmus’s awareness. "I did not invade a healthy host. I did not seek you out. You plunged your hands into the well of shadows, you drank deep of the waters of power I represent, and you are surprised that the well drank back? You called me. Your rage, your ambition, your desperate, clawing need to be more than a speck of dust in a hurricane... that was the invocation. I am not a parasite. I am the answered prayer you were too shortsighted to understand you were making. You had the choice not to use your talents, a part of you knew you were drawing closer to me, but you could not resist the allure of my power."

Telmus finally opened his eyes. The thousand dying stars flared in unison as Primordial Demon grinned. He did not flinch. "I took the strength to protect my people and my child. To turn back the tide of annihilation from a pantheon of mad gods."

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