Chapter 99

• Everything the Primordial had told them in the Heart of Oblivion had been true. The power they carried was not theirs to wield indefinitely. It had been loaned to them — not in the diminishing sense, not as something that would be taken back, but in the sense that it was too large to be permanently contained in the form they currently occupied. At some point, what they carried would need to go somewhere. The question had always been when, and in what direction.
• The answer was: now. And back.
• Back to the original Lock, which Elyndor had built fifteen thousand years ago as a seal rather than a victory, a last resort rather than a triumph — back to the fundamental structure of the Nexus itself, reinforced by the Primordial essence in its pure form, the original truth of existence returned to the architecture of the thing that held the multiverse together.