My heartbeat shook at these words from the Sovereign, and I nodded, but did not say a word, as a part of me truly wanted to know how deep the rabbit hole went.
He said nothing, but continued staring at me, as if waiting for my verbal acknowledgement, and I gave it.
"Show me, then," I said.
He did not move for a moment, then he lifted one hand, and the darkness of the whole nave drew in toward it, and where it gathered, it thinned, becoming clear like water.
This transformation of darkness was shocking, as I could not imagine how many profundities I was witnessing in such an easy act. I believe that with Lightning Edict, I may be able to replicate such a thing, but I was just borrowing the powers of the spell, and I did not fully understand all the mechanisms that guided its powers.
In this moment, something struck me so hard in my mind that I nearly gasped, and I saw the path to the Arcanist level and beyond more clearly than I had ever gotten before, and I nearly sighed at how easy it was to obtain, and how easy it also was to miss this enlightenment and stumble along as an Adept forever.
The truth lay in my spells and their interactions with the world; still, I had to suppress this enlightenment in my heart and focus on what the Sovereign was about to show me. There would be time for that later.
The darkness that had become clear slowly solidified until it took the shape of a window to somewhere else.
"You have looked at the anchor," he said. "You told me you have been inside it. I believe you; a lie would have been clumsier, after all, you have that flame, and know the position of the anchor, so it is possible to do the things that you have said. But you have just seen a door and think you know the whole house." He turned his hand, and the clear dark turned with it, causing the anchor to come into view.
The anchor was reflected from his skin to the clear window he held, and this window expanded, causing the anchor to unfold, as if he were spreading out a map.
This time, I could not help but gasp in appreciation at the subtle application of this spell. Sid wanted to show me the anchor, but he did not touch the Inscriptions; instead, he used darkness to reflect it while showing me its inner workings.
This reminded me of the last loop where he used the darkness inside of me to create a clone of my entire body. This was most likely a Legendary Spell he was using, and yet, it was the ease of application that drew my attention.
"Look again. Properly. As I see it, you cannot be claiming you can master a work without understanding the full scale of it."
Knowing I was about to take a road that I would not be able to return from once I stepped upon it, I looked.
∞
I have tried, since, to find the words for it, and I do not have them. I will do my best, and my best will be wrong.
The last time I was inside the anchor, I had seen a world of dark strings stretching to infinity, and I had thought that was the whole of it, and I had been proud of myself for reading as much as I did.
What Sid showed me now was that the world I had walked into had been a single letter. One character, in a script that ran on past it in every direction, and the script was one line of a page, and the page was one of a book, and the book...
My Anima Depth began to ache.
I knew that ache. I had felt it looking at the carvings on the walls of the Celestial passage, the ones I had to take my eyes from before they hurt me. This was that, and worse, because Sid was not letting me glance and look away. He was holding it open, and holding me open to it, and making me see the true size of the thing.
The anchor was not a knot I could learn to untie. It was not even a world I could learn to read. It was a structure, Sovereign-tier and older than my bloodline, and understanding one thread of it was not enough, I had even understood any of the threads, I had just burned it, and there were more threads in it than there were deaths in my whole looping life, and each thread was joined to the next in ways that made my hundred loops of study look like a child sounding out the first letter of the alphabet and mistaking it for having learned to read.
"Stop," I said as I collapsed to my knees. My eyes could see nothing but darkness, and my face was wet, and I realized I was blind, but it did not matter. The web kept unveiling itself to me, and I felt my soul stretch as my Anima Depth began to crack. I could barely croak out, "Please."
He must have closed his hand, as the window folded into itself and the ache in my collapsing depth eased. I nearly collapsed to the ground, but I forced myself to rise; this sort of pain was my old friend.
"Remarkable," I heard him whisper, "I knew that your soul was impressive, but I had no idea the depths of it could contain so much knowledge before being taken to its limits. Apart from your lack of attainment in the laws to strengthen your foundation, you already have the basic requirements to hold a law in your soul... freaking ridiculous. If I could not see your birth was tied to the core of this world, I would have taken you for a fallen god or a Broken Celestial."
I felt a cool wave touch my face, and my blindness slowly vanished. I opened my eyes to see the Sovereign looking at me. I expected greed in his eyes, and while I thought I could glimpse a small part of this, what surprised me more than anything was that I could see wariness inside them that almost looked like fear.
"Now you see what you say you can break," he paused, "and yet that is not all."
The Sovereign turned and walked toward the far wall of the chamber, and a layer of darkness covered the wall before it vanished, and I saw a door that had not been there a moment before, a slab of black metal, covered in Inscriptions so dense they seemed to writhe in the dim light.
"Follow me," he said. "And try to keep up."
He stepped through the door, and I followed. The fox was on my shoulder, her claws digging into my flesh, her silver eyes fixed on the darkness ahead.
The passage beyond the door was narrow, the walls lined with the same living Inscriptions I had seen on the anchor. They pulsed with a faint, rhythmic light, and I could feel the weight of them pressing against my soul.
The Sovereign walked in silence, his grey eyes fixed ahead. I did not speak; I simply followed him.