**First Epoch, Year 564 - The Final Days of Light**
The "sun" was dying.
Adrian felt it through every sense he possessed—physical, mystical, and those stranger perceptions his Archivist Characteristic had developed over five and a half centuries. The Primordial God Almighty, who had served as Earth's light source throughout the entire Lost Era, was preparing for war.
He stood in the deepest chamber of the Foundation Archive, surrounded by information structures that pulsed with accumulated knowledge. Five hundred and sixty-four years of work. Five hundred and sixty-four years of preserving everything humanity had been, training disciples to resist convergence, building an organization that could outlast divine conflict.
"Final report," Adrian commanded, his voice carrying through mystical channels to every Archive sanctuary across three continents.
Marcus appeared first, his crystalline elf-form now fully stabilized at Sequence 4—what Adrian designated as "Regional Sovereign" in the Acting Method framework. Five centuries of conscious role-playing had refined his control to extraordinary levels.
"Sixty-eight fully trained disciples," Marcus reported with military precision. "Two hundred and fourteen apprentices at various stages. Seven deep sanctuaries completed and sealed. Archive Seeds distributed to all full members. Surface operations suspended. We're ready to go dark."
Elena manifested next through the communication array, her demon wings now elegant rather than manic. "All temptation networks deactivated. Human populations we'd been covertly managing have been taught basic Acting Method principles. Those who can survive the coming chaos will. The rest..."
She didn't finish. Didn't need to.
Thomas's massive giant-form appeared, nine meters of controlled power. "Defenses are at maximum. The deep sanctuaries can withstand continental-scale destruction. Mystical shields, information matrices, dimensional folding—all active."
Vera's phoenix-form flickered with controlled flames. "Cultivation arrays are self-sustaining. Food production will continue indefinitely. We can survive centuries of isolation if necessary."
Adrian nodded, processing it all. They'd prepared as well as possible. Now came the test.
"The Pillars are about to engage in full-scale war," he announced. "Based on my analysis of convergence patterns and mystical tremors, I estimate we have less than seventy-two hours before the conflict begins. When it does, reality itself may fracture. The 'sun' will be extinguished. Darkness will fall."
He pulled up information structures showing projected combat zones.
"Neither of us—none of the Beyonder races, none of the kins of chaos, not even the Seven Lights of the Spirit World—will know the exact details of what happens during their battle. The Pillars operate on scales beyond our comprehension. But we know the outcome from the patterns:"
His voice became grim.
"Both will die. The Primordial God Almighty's corpse will form something called the First Blasphemy Slate in the Chaos Sea, with the Error Uniqueness beside it. The Celestial Worthy will seal all Sefirot except Sefirah Castle and the Chaos Sea to the Western Continent before perishing."
Marcus's eyes widened. "You can see that far ahead?"
"I can analyze mystical patterns and extrapolate probable outcomes," Adrian corrected. "My Archivist Characteristic has been processing convergence data for five centuries. The Pillars' instability, their accommodation of additional Sefirot exceeding their stability limits, the trajectory of their cold war—it all points to mutual destruction."
He gestured, and the timeline extended forward.
"After they die, the world will slowly recover for approximately two years. This is the Era of Destruction proper—year 564 to 566. During this time, the Archive remains in complete isolation. No contact. No surface operations. We wait."
"And then?" Elena asked.
"Then comes the Era of Carnage." Adrian's expression was cold. "Year 567 to 981. Over four centuries of unprecedented violence. With the Pillars dead, their suppression of Beyonder races will end. The convergence instinct, held in check for five hundred years, will run wild. Every Beyonder race will fight each other with madness we haven't seen since the immediate aftermath of the Cataclysm."
He pulled up sociological projections.
"Giants, elves, demons, vampires, dragons, phoenixes, mutants, demonic wolves—all of them will tear each other apart. Some will merge, creating hybrid species. Some will advance through consuming countless Characteristics. And eventually, from the carnage, Ancient Gods will emerge."
Thomas leaned forward. "How many?"
"Eight primary ones, according to my projections. They'll dominate their respective pathways and establish tyrannical rule. The strongest among them will be Aurmir, born from the union of the Primordial God Almighty's legacy through the Brood Hive and achieved with Omebella's support. His emergence as the first true God King—the first Ancient God not born directly from the Original Creator—will mark the end of the First Epoch and the beginning of the Second."
Silence fell over the assembly as they processed centuries of future violence.
"When do we emerge from isolation?" Vera asked quietly.
"Not until year 600 at the earliest," Adrian replied. "Thirty-six years of complete darkness. During that time, I'll continue archiving in isolation. The rest of you will maintain the sanctuaries, train new disciples from any survivors we'd previously recruited, and preserve your own consciousness through constant Acting Method practice."
He looked at each of them with absolute seriousness.
"This is the most dangerous period we'll face. The Pillars' battle may cause reality-warping effects that penetrate even our deep sanctuaries. Some of us will die. Some sanctuaries may be destroyed. But those who survive must remember:"
His voice carried the weight of five centuries of purpose.
"We are humanity's memory. We are the Archive. And no matter how many of us fall, the organization must persist. Every full disciple carries an Archive Seed. If the worst happens, if I die and the main sanctuaries are destroyed, any survivor can rebuild from scratch using the knowledge we've preserved."
He placed his hand on the central Archive crystal—now massive, containing compressed information equivalent to Earth's entire Pre-Epoch knowledge base.
"I've uploaded everything into redundant storage. Every sanctuary has a complete copy. Even if seven sanctuaries are destroyed, the eighth will preserve it all. This is our insurance against oblivion."
Marcus stepped forward. "And if you survive? If we all survive the Era of Destruction?"
Adrian smiled grimly. "Then in year 600 or later, we begin Phase Two. We emerge carefully, selectively. We observe the Era of Carnage from hidden positions. We identify which Beyonder races are winning, which are losing, which are desperate enough to want the Acting Method."
He expanded the organizational chart.
"And we offer it. Not freely—we're not missionaries. But strategically. We trade consciousness retention techniques for protection. We exchange knowledge for resources. We become the neutral party that every side needs but no side can afford to destroy."
Elena caught on. "Defensive integration on a massive scale."
"Exactly. By the time the First Epoch ends and Aurmir becomes the first Ancient God, we'll have established ourselves as indispensable. The secret society that teaches sanity in an age of madness. The hidden order that preserves forbidden knowledge."
He pulled up the final projection—extending all the way to year 981 and beyond.
"This is generational thinking. Most of you won't live to see the First Epoch's end. Your disciples might not either. We're building something that will span half a millennium of continuous carnage."
Thomas spoke slowly. "That's a lot to ask."
"I know." Adrian's voice softened slightly. "But consider the alternative. Without the Acting Method, every one of you would have lost yourselves to convergence by now. Without the Archive, human knowledge would be lost forever. Without this organization, humanity would enter the Second Epoch with no memory of what they'd been, no framework for resisting divine tyranny, no hope of ever rising again."
He gestured to the sanctuaries around them.
"We're not just surviving. We're preserving the very concept of humanity. And when our descendants finally break free from whatever chains the future forges..."
His eyes burned with absolute conviction.
"They'll know. They'll know exactly who saved them."
---
**Year 564, Day 0 - The War Begins**
Adrian felt it before he saw it.
Reality *screamed*.
He was in the deepest isolation chamber when the first tremor hit—not a physical tremor, but a mystical one that propagated through every layer of existence simultaneously. The information structures around him flickered. His Archivist Characteristic recoiled from something too vast to fully comprehend.
The Pillars had stopped restraining themselves.
Adrian rushed to the observation array—a mystical construct that let him sense surface conditions without physically going there. What he perceived made his breath catch even after five centuries of witnessing horrors.
The "sun" was flickering. Not like a dying star, but like a god losing control of its manifestation. The Primordial God Almighty's light—stable for five hundred and sixty-four years—was becoming erratic. Brilliant flashes alternated with patches of absolute darkness.
And in those patches of darkness, Adrian could sense the other Pillar. The Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings, emerging from whatever dimensional space He'd occupied during the cold war.
They were fighting.
Not with physical weapons. Not with mystical techniques that Beyonders might recognize. They were fighting with *concepts*. With authorities over reality itself. With the power of beings who'd accommodated multiple Sefirot and touched the threshold of Original Creator-level omnipotence.
Adrian couldn't see the details—even his enhanced senses couldn't penetrate that level of divine conflict. But he could feel the aftershocks rippling through reality.
Space folded incorrectly in millions of locations simultaneously.
Time crystallized and shattered, creating temporal dead zones where causality ceased to function.
The Spirit World bled through completely in some regions, merging with physical reality.
The barrier protecting Earth from Outer Deities trembled, and Adrian sensed something lurking beyond—the Mother Goddess of Depravity, the Mother Tree of Desire, other entities watching hungrily for any weakness.
But the Pillars' power, even while destroying each other, was still strong enough to keep the Outer Deities at bay.
For now.
"All sanctuaries, emergency lockdown!" Adrian broadcast through the mystical channels. "Seal everything! No external contact whatsoever!"
Acknowledgments came back one by one as each sanctuary activated its deepest defensive protocols.
Then the "sun" went out completely.
Absolute darkness fell.
Adrian's enhanced senses could still perceive through mystical means, but for anyone dependent on physical light, the world had just ended. Every human settlement, every Beyonder haven, every kin of chaos territory—all plunged into eternal night.
The battle continued in the darkness. Adrian could sense massive discharges of power, reality-warping effects on a planetary scale, forces that would have instantly annihilated any being below Sequence 1.
Hours passed. Days. The conflict showed no signs of ending.
Adrian maintained constant vigil, recording everything his Characteristic could perceive. This was history. This was the moment when the two strongest fragments of the Original Creator destroyed each other. And he would remember every detail that he could comprehend.
---
**Year 564, Day 3 - The Deaths**
It happened simultaneously and gradually, paradoxically.
Adrian felt both Pillars' presences begin to fade. Not weaken—fade. As if they were being erased from reality itself, their very existence becoming uncertain.
Through his mystical senses, he perceived something impossible:
The Primordial God Almighty was ripping something from the Celestial Worthy. The Error Uniqueness—an artifact of unimaginable power, torn from one Pillar by the other in their final moments.
And then... silence.
Both presences vanished.
The Pillars were dead.
Adrian stood in the darkness, his Archivist Characteristic frantically recording the mystical aftereffects. He could sense it—the Primordial God Almighty's corpse transforming, solidifying into something that would later be called the First Blasphemy Slate. The knowledge of all twenty-two pathways, crystallized in divine remains, sinking into a place called the Chaos Sea.
The Error Uniqueness settled next to it, pulsing with residual power.
And the Celestial Worthy's final act—sealing most Sefirot to the Western Continent. Adrian felt dimensional barriers slam into place, cutting off entire regions from the rest of reality. The elves who hadn't escaped the Western Continent in time were trapped forever.
Then, finally, true silence.
The war was over.
The Era of Destruction had begun.
---
**Year 566 - Slow Recovery**
Two years in absolute darkness.
Adrian had spent that time in meditation, archiving everything he'd sensed during the Pillars' battle. His disciples maintained the sanctuaries with practiced discipline. The Archive Seeds proved their worth when one sanctuary—the third complex beneath the Australian Abyss—was destroyed by a spatial anomaly created during the divine conflict. The twelve disciples stationed there died instantly.
But their knowledge survived. The Archive Seeds they'd carried preserved everything critical. When rescue teams finally reached the ruins in year 565, they recovered the Seeds and integrated their data back into the main archive.
Twelve more names for Adrian's perfect memory. Twelve more humans who'd given everything for humanity's future.
The world slowly recovered. The Pillars' bodies had stopped warping reality quite so violently. The tremors became less frequent. The spatial anomalies stabilized. The Spirit World bleeding lessened.
But the darkness remained. Without the Primordial God Almighty to serve as the sun, Earth was lit only by whatever mystical sources the Beyonder races could generate. It would remain this way for centuries—until the Ancient Sun God eventually emerged to take up that role.
"Status report," Adrian commanded as year 566 drew to a close.
Marcus appeared, his expression grim. "Lost one sanctuary—twelve disciples. The remaining six sanctuaries are stable. Total survivor count: fifty-six full disciples, one hundred and ninety-eight apprentices."
"Ancient God emergence signs?"
"None yet. But convergence patterns are changing rapidly. The suppression is gone. Beyonder races across all continents are beginning to fight each other with renewed intensity. The Era of Carnage is beginning right on schedule."
Adrian nodded. "Then we proceed to Phase Two. Maintain isolation for another thirty-four years minimum. Year 600, we begin selective reconnaissance. Year 650, we start offering the Acting Method to desperate factions. Year 700, we should have established our role as the neutral knowledge-keepers."
He pulled up the long-term timeline.
"And by year 981, when Aurmir finally emerges as the first Ancient God and ends this nightmare epoch, the Archive will be so deeply integrated into the world's mystical infrastructure that no god will dare destroy us."
Elena spoke quietly. "That's two hundred and eighty-one more years until the First Epoch ends."
"Yes." Adrian's voice was steady. "Two hundred and eighty-one years of the Era of Carnage. Over four hundred years of unprecedented violence. But we'll endure. We'll adapt. We'll survive."
He looked at the central Archive crystal, pulsing with preserved knowledge.
"Because that's what we do. We're humanity's memory. We don't forget. We don't surrender. We don't stop."
His eyes reflected centuries of perfect recollection—every human lost, every sacrifice made, every moment of horror and hope.
"The Pillars are dead. The Lost Era and Era of Destruction have passed. The Era of Carnage begins. And through it all, the Archive endures."
Outside the deep sanctuaries, in the absolute darkness of a world without its divine sun, the Beyonder races began tearing each other apart.
But deep beneath the earth, protected by layers of fractured reality and information matrices, humanity's last memory keepers prepared for the longest phase yet.
Four hundred years of carnage.
Four hundred years of careful operation.
Four hundred years until the First Epoch finally ended and the Second Epoch's tyranny began.
Adrian had waited five hundred years already.
He could wait four hundred more.
After all, he remembered everything worth preserving.
And he would never, ever forget.
---
**End of Chapter 5**
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*Next: Chapter 6 - The Era of Carnage*