The First Cause of Chernobyl was unraveling, weak, reduced to using a little girl as a battery to remain what it barely still was. But he had an Infinite Cause. He had a Cause as grand as any First Cause that had ever produced an Observable Existence, a Cause that had originated from his mother and emerged into THE Infiniverse and bloomed nine Prime Causes.

Who said he could only choose to kill her or leave her suffering? Who said a dying First Cause could not be sparked back? Who said he could not simply resuscitate THE First Cause of an entire Observable Existence?

BOOM!

|Action analysis: You have connected to THE First Cause of Chernobyl through THE Mortis Cause, channeled via the anchor Infinite Lifeform Seo-yeon. You are now in direct contact with the failing foundational axiom of an entire Observable Existence.|

|Warning: Connection to THE First Cause means connection to its current condition. You are now experiencing the endings of THE Observable Existence of Chernobyl directly, as Seo-yeon experiences them. The agony she has carried is now within your perception.|

The endings hit him.

He felt them the way she felt them, the pressing-together of everything that was going to happen and now would not, the suffering of an entire Observable Existence channeled through his connection, the constant unrelenting agony that she had carried alone for eons arriving in his perception all at once.

He got a glimpse of how she had felt. Every moment. For longer than measurement!

And it made him angrier.

That a child had carried this! That anyone had let her! That the answer the powerful had arrived at was to debate whether to let her keep carrying it or to kill her for the relief of it.

"Let it all change," he bellowed into the storm of terminal infinity. "Let it all CHANGE!" 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

BOOM!

Multicolored Osmontian Absolute Infinity flowed through THE Aura of THE Source Barbarian and into the connection, carrying his identity through every coordinate it touched, surging down the strings of THE Mortis Cause and into the failing First Cause of Chernobyl. It did not seek to hold the decay in place the way Seo-yeon had held it. It sought to change the decay, to spark it, to introduce into a dying foundational axiom something that dying foundational axioms had never received.

His Infinite Cause poured its brilliance through him as he did it, the grandeur of a Cause as mighty as any First Cause flowing toward the unraveling First Cause of Chernobyl, one Cause reaching toward another, the strong offering the dying not a hand to hold the ending back, but a spark to begin again!

The light of his Infinite Cause flowed into THE First Cause of Chernobyl, and Noah began to work.

He understood immediately that sparking the decay back to life was not enough on its own. The First Cause of Chernobyl was dying because its component Prime Causes had been wounded past recovery in the war that destroyed it, the common nine that this Observable Existence had been built around failing one by one, and feeding his Infinite Cause’s brilliance into failing structures would only animate the failure.

A dying thing given energy died with more light. That was all.

So he would not simply spark it.

He would rebuild it!

"You’ve been dying for a long time," he said to THE First Cause of Chernobyl, his voice carrying through the connection into the foundational axiom itself. "Held together by a child because nothing else would hold you. That ends now. Not your existence. Your dying."

WAA!

He reached into the structure of THE First Cause the way a surgeon reached into a body that had failing organs, and he began to carve.

The decaying Bellum Cause came first. He found it where it flickered and guttered across the war-torn region, the foundational truth of conflict reduced to a stutter, and he took hold of it and removed it from THE First Cause’s architecture entirely.

His Aura of THE Source Barbarian moved with terrifying, dominant power as it roared, backed by THE Infinite Cause!

In the space where it had been, he installed his own. THE Prime Cause of Adversity flowed from his Infinite Cause into the vacancy, the foundational truth that challenge drove growth replacing the broken war-truth, and the region that had held the dying Bellum Cause stopped guttering.

It blazed. The crimson stutter became the clean light of a Prime Cause that was alive and integrated and his.

"Better," he said.

He moved to the next.

The failing Cognitio Cause, where knowledge had forgotten how to be knowledge, where the archives of an Observable Existence dissolved into noise. He carved it out.

He installed THE Prime Cause of Quintessence in its place, the foundational truth that all things had an irreducible anf purest essence, and where understanding had been failing, the region began to organize around something new, the dissolving archives reorganizing not toward their old structure but toward Noah’s, the essence of each thing becoming legible again under a Cause that knew how to find it.

He worked through them methodically, the way a man worked through a long task he had no intention of leaving incomplete!

The Cause of Consumptio that had produced only decay, carved out and replaced with THE Prime Cause of Harvest, the truth that all things could be consumed and converted, and the region that had been rotting began instead to cycle, decay becoming fuel becoming new structure.

The Cause of Immutis that could no longer hold anything together, removed and replaced with THE Prime Cause of Existence, the foundational legitimacy of being itself, and the things that had been falling apart found a reason to remain.

One after another, he removed the failing common Prime Causes of Chernobyl and installed his own in their place, each region across the dying Observable Existence transforming as its governing Cause was replaced, the dim guttering light of decay giving way to the clean blaze of his integrated Prime Causes.

THE Prime Cause of Chaos. THE Prime Cause of Mana. THE Prime Cause of Paradox. THE Prime Cause of Tyranny.

Region by region, Chernobyl stopped being a domain built around dying Causes and became a domain built around his.

Only one remained.

THE Mortis Cause. The Cause of endings that Seo-yeon had anchored, the last thread holding everything together, the one Cause that had not fully failed because a child had refused to let it.

Noah held it in his perception and considered it.

He would keep this one. Not as it was. He had a Cause compatible with it, a Cause that understood endings better than Mortis ever had, because his Cause understood that endings were not terminal but transformative!