Those who had wandered the Deep Layer and been fortunate enough to return had almost all seen that shattered Celestial Body.
If they had not dismissed it as a nightmare and forgotten it, it was not hard to realize one fact: something incomplete and broken must once have been whole, and something must have happened between wholeness and fragmentation.
A very few might learn from ruins and obscure records that there had been an impact which shaped the world as it was today.
The Celestial Body's collapse had become an irrevocable fact. Its wreckage had pierced the barrier and scattered throughout the Deep Layer and the Present World, mixed with unidentified Black Substance—yet the other party in the collision had always been missing.
No one had ever been able to clearly identify that point in time. It seemed very distant, so distant that few traces remained on the surface; yet it also seemed very near, near enough to have been recorded in human history.
Or perhaps it had not occurred within the time and space ordinary people understood. Otherwise, there was no explaining how its aftershocks had spread, or why they echoed here.
The "sound" came rolling out of empty nothingness like tides crashing toward land. The closer it came, the higher it swelled, until violent vibrations erupted from within body and consciousness, drowning every sense and seizing the mind.
Consciousness could perceive it distinctly—and bore its impact as well.
It far exceeded the limits of what could be received, even taking on a kind of "texture." The instant it made contact, it washed everything else away and filled the senses.
Yet what suffered the greatest impact was not consciousness itself, but the living knowledge trapped within it. It could scarcely mount any effective resistance before dissolving and scattering in