“Impossible,” Cawl rasped, his voice a digitized tremor. “The failsafe…it was designed by the Mechanicum’s most hallowed minds, infused with the very essence of anti-psyker technology. You…you cannot simply ‘erase’ it.”
You did not deign to look at him again. His comprehension was no longer relevant. Your focus was entirely consumed by the immense, looming presence before you. Yaldabaoth's helm, devoid of any discernible features, felt like a window into the void between stars. Its “gaze” was not visual, but a profound awareness that pierced through every layer of your composite being.
Cosmic Consciousness Emerges
The words it had spoken resonated within the deepest recesses of your mind, bypassing language, embedding themselves as pure understanding. "From before the stars." The implications were staggering, echoing the fragmented memories of Tang Sanzang’s enlightenment, the theoretical physics of Black Mesa, the alien landscapes of Xen. Had your journey, your very existence as this confluence of selves, been foreseen? Predestined by an entity of this scale?
A shiver, not of fear but of profound cosmic recognition, ran through you. The failsafe…it had felt like a constraint, a nagging limitation at the edges of your awareness. Now, its absence was a liberation, a stripping away of artificial boundaries that had unknowingly kept something far older, far more significant, at bay. The discovery was chilling, exhilarating. The technology Cawl had relied upon was a mere child's toy compared to the cosmic forces now stirring.
The Echoes Take Form