The Painter's voice resonated not only in my ears, but in the marrow of my bones, in every cell of my body. A simple question, yet one laden with the weight of countless erased lives and ages: "What are you looking for... in my canvas?"
The storm of light and color that formed its manifestation pulsed gently in the vast space of the Source. I sensed no immediate hostility in the question, but an immense, ancient, and dispassionate curiosity, like that of an artist asking why someone interrupted his work. But I knew the suffering his 'art' caused.
Gustave stood at my side, his hand still on the hilt of his sword, prepared for anything, but with a look of shock on his face. Maelle, Sciel, and Lune also stood motionless, their gazes fixed on the Painter's manifestation, their own silent reactions echoing in the shared space between us.
It was my ability to sense rhythm that had brought me so deep into the Veil. It was my perception that seemed attuned to Source itself. I felt that the answer, the key to whatever came next, lay partly within me. I breathed deeply, concentrating not just on my words, but on the Painter's 'rhythm,' trying to sense the underlying cadence of her 'voice,' the emotion (or lack thereof) behind her question.
"We seek... the end of painting," I replied, my voice sounding surprisingly clear in the silence. "We seek to break the cycle of erasure. That no one else will be claimed when their age comes." I chose direct words, trying to convey the desperation and purpose of our mission.
The storm of light pulsed in a way that felt like a response, not of surprise, but of... recognition. "The End... you seek to erase the act of the brush," her voice echoed. "But the erasure... is not the end. It is... the mixing. The addition to color."
Her words were cryptic, but I felt a wave of icy understanding. Echo had said that what she erases doesn't disappear entirely; it becomes part of the Veil, part of Her. The Painter didn't see the disappearance of lives as destruction, but as integration. We became pigment on her vast canvas.
"For us, it's the end," Gustave chimed in, his voice deep. "It's suffering. It's separation. Families torn apart. An existence limited by an arbitrary expiration date."
The Painter was silent for a moment. I felt her 'attention' intensify, weighing Gustave's words. "Suffering... An understandable reaction to the dissolution of form. But form is temporary. Color... essence... is eternal. I only rearrange the pigment. To create the Great Work."
The Great Work? Our lives, our memories, our hopes and fears, were just... pigment for a cosmic work of art? The idea was both horrifying and magnificent.
"Your 'work' is killing us," I said, frustration and anger lacing my voice. It was difficult to remain calm in the face of an entity that saw our existence as mere raw material. "It reduces our time, limits what we can be."
"Time is an illusion of the canvas," the Painter replied. "Art... transcends time. The limitation you feel... is the resistance to the process. The fear of mixing."
"It's not a fear of mixing," Maelle replied vehemently. "It's a fear of loss. The loss of who we are, of what we love."
The Elder Elias in Veridia had said that the Source might be the Painter's mind. Sensing its 'rhythm,' its 'symphony,' was like being inside a vast and ancient consciousness, whose thoughts and perceptions operated on a completely different scale than our own. Trying to resonate with it, to find the right 'rhythm' to communicate, was incredibly difficult. It seemed that our words about suffering and loss didn't resonate the way we expected. She understood them on an intellectual level, perhaps, but not an emotional one.
"The Source..." Sciel said, his voice trembling but determined. "It is said that truth lies here. What is your true purpose, Painter? Why do you paint? Why do you erase?"
The storm of light swirled a little. I felt a surge of energy, not aggressive, but immensely powerful. "My purpose... is to create," the voice echoed. "The canvas of the Veil... is vast, but incomplete. It lacks a certain... resonance. A certain color. My art... adds that resonance. That... beauty." The last word was felt with overwhelming intensity.
Beauty. She perceived the erasure and assimilation of our lives as an act of creating cosmic beauty. The dissonance between our perspectives was abysmal. How do you convince such a being that her art is causing untold harm?
"Your beauty..." Lune said, her voice surprisingly strong and clear. "It is built on ruin and fear."
The Painter fell silent again. The rhythm inside me, its symphony, seemed to turn inward. I felt an unfathomable complexity, layers of meaning my mind could barely grasp. There was sadness there, yes, an ancient, cosmic sadness, but not because of the suffering it caused, but because of... something else. Something related to the incompleteness of its 'canvas.'
"The canvas... was torn," the voice echoed, with a tinge of... pain? Memory? "The Fracture... an act of dissonance. It destroyed the balance. My art... is an attempt to restore it. To fill the gaps. To make the canvas sing again."
The Fracture. The event that had shattered the world centuries before. The Painter implied that its 'erasure' was not an original act of evil, but a response, an attempt (perverse from our perspective) to repair ancient damage.
"What... what happened at the Fracture?" I asked, feeling like we were on the verge of a crucial revelation.
The Painter didn't immediately respond with words. Instead, the storm of light in front of us intensified, swirling violently. The rhythm inside me suddenly became chaotic, bombarded by an avalanche of sensations and images that were not mine. Visions. Fragments of memory. I felt the tearing itself, a cosmic violence that ruptured reality. I saw figures, not human, struggling with each other. I saw a blinding light, a deafening sound. I saw... a monolith, not Lumière's, but an immense, primeval one, breaking into fragments. And I felt... an absence. A void. The loss of something essential.
The avalanche of sensations ceased as quickly as it began, leaving me breathless and trembling. My companions looked at me, their faces pale, having also felt the disturbance, though perhaps not with the same intensity.
"The Fracture... was an act of destruction," the Painter's voice said, quieter now, but with the underlying sadness more pronounced. "Someone... or something... tried to silence the canvas's song. They broke the Primeval Monolith. They created the void. My art... is my response to that void. It is my lament turned into color. My attempt to make the canvas... sing again."
His perspective was that of an immense being, dealing with cosmic trauma through the only means he knew: creation, even if that creation meant the dissolution of our individual existence. He didn't see us as enemies, but as necessary, or accidental, components of his process of healing the torn canvas.
The conversation on the canvas had revealed an unexpected truth. The Painter wasn't simply an arbitrary villain. She was a wounded entity, whose "art" was a desperate response to a cosmic injury. This didn't make the suffering she caused any less real, but it greatly complicated our mission. How do you stop someone who thinks they're healing? And what did it mean to "stop" a being whose existence was so intertwined with that of the Veil itself?
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