The grove…that monument to impossible agriculture, was gone. In its place was nothing.
The trees hadn't been destroyed; the concept of their growth had been devoured. The soil hadn't been scorched; the idea of fertility had been consumed.
Noah looked up through the absence where beauty had been and witnessed something that transcended his understanding.
The First Farmer stood in the space above, holding a farming hoe that looked simple except for how reality bent around it in reverence. The tool dripped with something that might have been blood.
At his feet, or what served as feet for a being of his scale, lay the massive leg of an Early Creature, severed at the thigh. Crimson-gold droplets gushed from it like rivers, each drop containing enough authority to create or destroy Folds!
But it was the Farmer's expression that struck Noah.
Viltharion, the One Who Gazed Upon THE Living Spirit, was crying!
