Climbing the long, lofty stairway, Skyl reached the great doors of the Stone Stage, with only this one gate standing between him and the Erdtree's core.
Interwoven stone thorns coiled around the door, reinforced by the golden seal of Radagon, the Elden Lord.
No one was allowed to pass within.
The brambles that had once drawn only Morgott's weary sigh now stood before Skyl instead.
The Erdtree's seal was already a segment of the Order itself. Only by altering the law could the seal be undone—yet that same law was hidden inside the Erdtree. It was like locking a door, then tossing the key through the keyhole into the room beyond.
After inspecting the Erdtree at close range, Skyl realized there had been a flaw in his earlier hypothesis.
The timeline of the Lands Between really was written by the law, but that state of affairs had not begun with the shattering of the Ring. It had been that way throughout the whole age of the Erdtree.
As the outward manifestation and symbol of the Golden Order, the Erdtree was the nexus of space and time in the Lands Between. All the history of this land was carried along the tree's omnipresent roots back into the trunk and recorded in its lush crown. Every leaf was a story; every leaf corresponded to a single rune.
On the day a leaf fell, someone would die.
From the Erdtree, Skyl had glimpsed a type of magic more terrifying than Eternal Transfiguration.
It was fate.
Leaves did not wither because someone died. Someone died because a leaf withered. It was a strong prophecy, almost guaranteed to be fulfilled.
When Queen Marika tore the fate of the Erdtree's falling leaves out of the law—when that rule called Destined Death vanished from the Ring—those blessed by the Erdtree no longer died.
To control the Erdtree was to control destiny. And the Erdtree had only one master: the Greater Will, the true ruler who held the power of life and death over the Lands Between.
Law was the kind of thing that could take a perfectly good world and make it unrecognizable. It compressed the universe's limitless imagination, along with all life's struggle and fate, into this one towering tree, distilling every tragedy and every joy into nothing but the rise and fall of a single trunk and crown.
Sublime—and selfish.
The workings of a god's law gave Skyl a great deal of inspiration.
He was beginning to think he ought to plant a tree in The Tower of Tomes as well.
But before that, there were still many hard problems to solve. Take runes, for instance. He knew they were a special form of thought-string, yet he still hadn't figured out how they actually formed: were they shaped and twisted by the law, or were living things in the Lands Between simply born that way?
In any case, he should go meet Queen Marika first.
Skyl: Elden Beast, I'm on my way to kill you!
The Erdtree's seal was unbreakable, but Skyl could route around the defense. He drew a sliver of eternal divine power from the Tower's Eye—this all-purpose promised substance gradually merged with the seal, then wrapped around him, allowing the seal to recognize him as kin to itself and letting him slip through bit by bit.
When Skyl tore the brambles apart and pushed the doors open, a rush of golden radiance crashed over him.
He closed his eyes, but the brilliance still speared through his eyelids.
Light bright enough to blind.
Skyl had not taken a single step, yet he felt as though he had crossed some invisible threshold.
Only when the light in his vision dimmed did he open his eyes again.
What lay below?
Beneath Skyl's feet stretched the cold, ashen Stone Stage, like the frozen ground of a world after the sun had gone out. At its center stood a short pillar where the Elden Ring had once been set; now only the hammer that had smashed it remained.
What hung above?
All around was empty and boundless; the deep, dark sky stretched out to immeasurable distances.
What did the air feel like?
Cold. Lonely. Silent. Clear.
This was the highest place where the law ran.
If one compared the Erdtree to a computer, then this was its virtual data world.
It was almost like a dream—an emptiness given form.
Skyl had only ever seen this kind of void inside a soul.
Perhaps the Stone Stage was the Erdtree's conscious mind?
If so, where was the Erdtree's self-awareness?
He looked up and saw Marika, crucified in agony high above the void.
Queen Marika, who had committed the great sin of shattering the Ring, now hung in midair, a spear driven through her chest and belly, stewing in endless time and endless pain.
Supreme in glory, strongest among gods—yet more wretched and powerless than anyone.
She could do nothing at all, save wait, and wait, and wait.
Until Skyl, having come as she had asked, arrived—and the shackles binding Marika suddenly snapped.
Her broken body began to fall.
And she dropped straight into the portal Skyl had opened beneath her.
The Tower of Tomes.
Skyl carved out an isolated island in the void. This was where he intended to settle things with the Elden Beast.
Marika slowly rose to her feet. From her broken, hollow shell poured a black, void-like liquid—that was the breath of the Elden Beast, the final weapon the Greater Will had hurled into the Lands Between. Sensing Skyl's threat, it drove Marika's body and prepared to fight him in her flesh.
But that battle was never going to happen.
The moment it fell into The Tower of Tomes, the result was already decided.
"I order you," Skyl said, standing in his own divine kingdom.
His word outweighed the law.
"Elden Beast, leave that body."
A mass of pitch-black stormwind roared out of Marika's shell, taking the shape of a vast deity-beast, its outline strange and magnificent, like a raindrop bristling with wings. It raised its long, slender neck, and within its clear, abyssal liquid body there flared, in succession, the lights of a hundred billion distant stars. Bones condensed from that star-swarm shone like glowing golden neurons.
The instant he saw it, Skyl knew: the Elden Beast was the Erdtree's self-awareness.
He watched the Elden Beast glide through the air; wherever it passed, phantom Erdtrees rose in the void, gathering into a forest.
The Golden Order descended upon The Tower of Tomes.
Tiny as he was, Skyl turned slowly in the god-haunted emptiness, surrounded by a forest of golden phantom trees. He raised a hand to his forehead; the overload of information once again crushed against his brain with unbearable pressure, but now he understood the roots of the Golden Order. He could create laws of his own.
"I'm beginning to grasp everything," he murmured. "I have to say, it's quite a generous gift."
The Elden Beast dove toward Skyl, nebulae streaming across its body; every little burst on its surface was as violent as a dying star.
But that was all it was.
A god would not bleed in his own realm.
Skyl stretched out his hand lightly toward the charging giant. The contrast between their forms was like a child on the shore reaching a palm out toward a blue whale.
Size was relative.
The sun might hang far away in the sky, yet a raised hand could still blot it out.
In his own field of view, Skyl's hand covered the diving god completely.
And so he simply closed his fingers and seized the Elden Beast.
The massive creature fell into Skyl's palm like a tiny fry; the nebular detonations rippling across it could not even scratch his skin.
It was not that the Elden Beast had shrunk, but that, in this moment, Skyl stood from earth to sky like a world-shaping titan.
In the heavens, the Eye of Magnus opened, and a column of resplendent eternal power gushed forth, wrapping itself around the Elden Beast.
[Transfiguration]
The star-bodied beast was kneaded and rolled into a glass sphere as beautiful as the night sky itself—
And tucked away by the god.
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