The unstyled, iron-gray text on the ceiling of the matte black sphere clicked heavily downward, shifting from the three-hundred-and-fifty-eighth tier to mark the absolute onset of the three-hundred-and-fifty-seventh tier of the terminal countdown. This numerical transition brought an acute, localized shearing force to the lower hemisphere of the birth canal. The Twin Primordials, completely fueled by the total unmaking of the outer cosmos at the absolute Speed of God, executed a sharp, asymmetrical twist. This was no longer a static downward pressure; it was a jagged, rotating friction that caught the delicate interior lining of Yuxiao's womb. The liquid silver ink that maintained her maternal matrix was forcefully stretched past its absolute limits, resulting in a series of deep micro-tears that sent an excruciating, white-hot agony straight through her lower back and spine.
A sharp, breathless cry of pure torture broke from Yuxiao's lips, her entire silver silhouette twisting sideways as her fingers dug frantically into the non-reflective floor of the sphere. The pain was an absolute, blinding shock—a raw, tearing laceration that felt as if a thousand unformatted blades were turning inside her flesh with every heavy pulse of her children's hearts. The silver script of her silhouette began to flicker and fray at the edges, bleeding loose particles of raw source light into the dark fluid of the vault. She couldn't find her balance; she couldn't find her breath, her mind-frequency fracturing into a state of sheer, panicked delirium.
"Haoran... it's tearing... they are turning the wrong way!" she gasped, her voice thinning into a panicked, breathless whisper that barely carried across the stasis of the room. "It's burning through the inner walls... I can't hold them... please, Haoran, it hurts too much... I can't let them move..."
The nameless, zero-valued field of pure intent responded instantly with a desperate, fierce surge of absolute love. The moment her life-force began to waver under the tearing friction, Haoran's paradigm-free infinity flooded the interior of her womb. He did not possess physical hands to guide the twins' heads, nor did he have a physical voice to soothe her panic, but his absolute devotion operated as an unyielding law within the dark.
Weaving his formless presence directly between her bleeding inner walls and the twins' rotating prenatal frames, Haoran became a fluid, cooling barrier. He poured his neutral vacuum into the tearing micro-fractures, AC-sealing the wounds with his own unaligned, un-derived substance. He took the entire grinding impact of the twins' rotation onto his own un-numbered existence, allowing the Iron-Void and Starlight-Nothingness to scrape against his nameless field, willingly letting his remaining unwritten layers be torn apart just to dilute the agony ripping through her tissue.
"I am right inside the fire with you, Yuxiao. Let the tearing stop," his intent enveloped her, a profoundly deep, freezing wave of absolute numbness that cut through her white-hot panic. "I am smoothing the passage, my love. Breathe into my vacuum. Don't tense your script against them. Let me take the friction. I am holding you perfectly safe."
With an aching, desperate tenderness, he wrapped his formless upper presence around her shivering shoulders, pulling her head close against the warm, unchanging resonance of his core. He stroke her fraying mind with silent, ancient memories of their first quiet days before the towers were ever built, forcing a gentle, rhythmic calm into her chest even as her abdomen continued to vibrate with massive, involuntary contractions. He absorbed ninety-nine percent of the metabolic trauma into his own disappearing self, keeping her silver outline safely anchored in the darkness.
Clinging desperately to the steady, unyielding warmth of his formless embrace, Yuxiao's wild hyperventilation slowly began to pass. The heavy, agonizing ache of the internal rotation remained a monstrous, pulsing weight in her belly, but the terrifying sensation of being torn to pieces receded. Safe within the absolute sanctuary of his protective love, she slumped against his chest, her shallow breath catching as she held on through the endless night.
Above their locked, desperate struggle for survival, the cold, gray text of the countdown clicked heavily downward:
357 chapters remain.