A system of receptors became visible that should only have been perceptible to those at THE Second Scale. They emerged from Beowulf's internal physiology like a nervous system being extracted from flesh, except these were not nerves in any biological sense.
These were the fundamental architectures through which all suffering flowed, the structures that Beowulf himself had described when he tortured Alexander across millions of years of subjective time.
Vibrant crimson vessels spread outward from the wound in Beowulf's chest!
They resembled a network of veins or nerves, branching and subdividing into configurations that covered the Primordial Architect's entire existence. The Existential Nociceptors blazed at the center, fundamental receptors that served as the foundation for everything else. From them extended the Civilizational Afferents, pathways that could carry agony through one's entire Civilization simultaneously.
