The revelation was soul-crushing. Alex sat with it for exactly as long as he could afford to, which was not long at all, and then he reasoned through it, from the outside in, stripping away the emotion until the shape of the problem became clear enough to work with.
The Ancestral Realm Ruler was a cosmic entity. That much was beyond dispute, and in the hierarchy of power that governed the Ancient World, she sat at a height that most beings never came close to even comprehending, let alone reaching.
And yet, it was also true that she was caged. Her domain, vast as it felt from within, was small by any meaningful standard. A single realm, comparable to a large world in scale.
A realm also only capable of producing Tenth Rank Ascendants at its ceiling, which was remarkable by any measure but also entirely unremarkable by the measure of what actually existed within the universe.
A frog inside a well.
Lady Enigma was something else entirely.
