Lianna had been quiet, composed and unhurried, and when she finally spoke, her voice was even and gave away nothing.

"Both of them are describing the hammer," she said. "Neither is describing the nail. To illustrate this, let me tell you about some Infinite Lifeforms I came across, a long time ago, in a domain that no longer exists."

She paused, the dark-haired Sword choosing her words.

"They had built themselves into something they believed was eternal. Layers of Infinity, civilizations stacked on civilizations, a structure so deep they had forgotten it had ever been assembled at all. They thought of themselves as permanent. As foundational. As the kind of thing existence is built on rather than the kind of thing existence builds. And when Destruere reached them, it reminded them."

"It traced their entire structure back down through every layer to the simple source they had been assembled from, and it returned them to it, and in the returning, they finally understood that they had only ever been arranged, never necessary. That is what Destruere is. It is the return. Everything that was made can be unmade back to where it came from, because being made was never the same as being permanent. The most powerful thing I ever watched it do was teach a being that thought itself eternal that it had a source, and that its source could be reached, and that the distance between standing and gone was always shorter than it believed."

She fell silent, having said exactly as much as she intended and not a word more.

Lastly, Noah looked at Sir William, who had said nothing through all of it.

The Gentleman Knight met his gaze and gave the shortest answer of any of them, his voice carrying its usual dignity.

"Destruere is the cut that should be made, made cleanly, by one who has the right to make it. Nothing more. Nothing less. A Sword does not break things because it can. It returns what must be returned, and it does so with the manners befitting an ending. That is all the letter has ever meant to me."

WAA!

All of it passed as they crossed THE Undefined Gaps, and when the four had finished, Dame Seraphine nodded and looked ahead into the obsidian black.

"All of existence is information passed down," she said.

"The First Tongue, one of the pillars of Observable Existences, holds letters within it that the Observable Existences themselves passed down at the genesis of time. And then those who learned the letters, the phonemes, the logos, the philologies, passed them down again, hand to hand, age to age."

"THE Primordial Tongue is more unique than the First Tongue, more foundational, harder to hold. But it is still information, and information can be passed down. Only a select few hold the authority to pass it, and I am one of them." She turned to face him.

"This is the access to Destruere. If you can comprehend it at first glimpse, then you are what you say you are. And you can tell us whose definition helped you most."

HUUM!

A singularity of obsidian light bloomed from Dame Seraphine and shot into Noah’s head, and his eyes shone brightly.

|Receiving: Access to the third letter of THE Primordial Tongue, the letter of Destruere.|

|The first letters of THE Primordial Tongue concern standing firm and evolution. Persevere is the refusal to fall. Exelissomai is the transformation forced by pressure. They are letters of endurance and becoming, of remaining and changing. The third letter turns in the opposite direction. Destruere is the letter of destruction.|

|Destruere allows the wielder to read the structural makeup of any existence, technique, weaving, Cause, or being, identify the arrangement that holds it together, and return it to its source by unmaking that arrangement. It dismantles a thing back down to the foundation it was assembled from, severing what was made from the fact of its making. Applied with sufficient authority, there are few structures in existence it cannot trace, unbind, and return to nothing. It is among the most dangerous letters a being can hold, because almost everything that exists, exists by virtue of an arrangement, and Destruere is the unmaking of arrangement itself.|

Noah closed his eyes and processed the new letter.

He felt a flicker of disappointment that Dame Seraphine did not hold the Prime version of Destruere, only the standard access. But it passed quickly.

He carried Apocalypse among his nine Prime Causes. He carried a dozen other cataclysmic concepts woven through his existence. He understood destruction in his bones.

His eyes opened, shining, and he spoke loudly enough for all of them to hear, even using their names he already uncovered.

"You all described pieces of Destruere," he said. "Richard sees an editor. Botswana sees an honest force. Lianna sees a return. Sir William sees a duty. And none of you are wrong, which is exactly why none of you are right." He held up one hand, obsidian light gathering faintly across his fingers.

"Here is what Destruere is. Everything that stands does so because it has agreed, somewhere in its structure, to a particular arrangement of itself. A being. A fortress. A Cause. A civilization that thinks it is eternal. They are all the same thing. They are all a yes that existence said once and never bothered to take back. Destruere...is the authority to say no on existence’s behalf."

He turned his hand over, watching the light.

"And that is why the those who think it is about strength have it backwards. Strength breaks the surface of a thing. Destruere reaches past the surface to the agreement underneath, the original yes, and revokes it, and then there is nothing to break because there is nothing left standing. You do not fight the thing. You fight the reason it was ever allowed to exist, and you win that fight before the thing even knows a fight has begun." His eyes were cold and bright.

"I have Infinity. Infinity is the authority that says yes to everything, endlessly, without limit. So a letter that says no, cleanly, to anything I choose, sits very comfortably in my hand. I do not see destruction when I look at Destruere. I see editing privileges. The whole of existence is a draft someone left lying around, and most beings spend their lives too afraid to touch it. I am not most beings. I... will revise whatever I please."

...!

BOOM!

When his words finished, every Sword present looked at him with shining eyes!