Ekcly Wave Spaces

The two Ekcly Wave Spaces - Ekcly'Anszu and Ekcly'Orvhi - mark the top end of the cosmological scale. They are the reason why Minayero - and with it all of existence - is happening. Very little is known about those spaces, and what little is known only by a miniscule fraction of the population of Minayero, not only because the concept is so hard to grasp, but also because it is so detached from everyday life that very few people even get the notion that something like that might exist - similar to how very few Zevis will know anything about the space-time-continuum.

What is known about them by those very select few individuals - or found in the most arcane stashes of knowledge in all of Minayero, such as the Ailrokykli Archives - is that they their very nature is absolutely unfathomable, and that the whole of Minayero happens in the annihilation zone, where the two spaces touch and "negate" one another, with Minayero being the result. Consequentially, the number of dimensions that the Ekcly Wave Spaces have must be at least one cardinality higher than that of Minayero, and some theories state that the Ekcly Wave Spaces' number of dimensions is, in fact, infinite. It is furthermore known that the fluctuations of the Ekcly Wave Spaces are responsible for the Moebius Effect, and investigation into that phenomenon is one of the main reasons why some people might find out about the Ekcly Wave Spaces.

## Nature

Very little is known about the actual nature of the Ekcly Wave Spaces, but as the name implies, those select few who managed to study them consistently described them as generally unfathomable in nature, but most akin to a waveform of pure energy, except that it's not really energy or a wave. However, the waveform analogy also helps picture another few reasonably well-understood properties of the Ekcly Wave Spaces, such as that they seem to be exactly "out of phase", so they cancel one another out when they overlay. However, again, this is only a rough analogy, and instead of annihilating one another completely, the process instead creates Minayero.

One way to think about the wave spaces is a glass filled half with water and half with oil, constantly in a light motion so that the two liquids stay connected, with Minayero existing where the two touch. This is, of course, an extremely simplified way to think about it, and, if you go any deeper into literally any properties of the Ekcly Wave Spaces or Minayero, starts to break down like a house of cards built on the head of a hyperactive Bunneroo running through gale-force winds during an earthquake, but it is still a good starting point to get a first grip on the general concept.

Only an exceedingly small amount of people ever get to witness one of the Ekcly Wave Spaces, and fewer yet survive such an encounter as entering one of the Ekcly Wave Spaces effectively means leaving existence, instantly destroying at the very least the Body, and possibly the Spirit too. Interestingly, the Soul remains untouched in such a scenario, and Entities destroyed by contact with the Ekcly Wave Spaces are eventually reincarnated, albeit not always within "normal" time frames, or in recognizable forms. This has caused some to hypothesize that the Ekcly Wave Spaces are somehow tied to the origin of Souls. However, there has not been any conclusive evidence either for or against that hypothesis.

Fewer people yet have witnessed both of the Ekcly Wave Spaces and lived to tell the tale. It is, however, only through the records of those people that the existence of two separate Ekcly Wave Spaces has been confirmed. No one has been able to describe either of the two Ekcly Wave Spaces, and, in fact, a substantial fraction of the people who witnessed one and survived eventually go mad from the unfathomable experience, but those few who witnessed both Ekcly Wave Spaces, survived, and retained at least some of their sanity all agree that there are two different Ekcly Wave Spaces, which, while both unfathomable and impossible to describe, are yet as clearly different as night and day. One description stated that one of the Ekcly Wave Spaces was "All the colors and shapes", and the other was "All the ***other*** colors and shapes". As such, their names - Ekcly'Anszu and Ekcly'Orvhi - were chosen to reflect that they share the same nature yet are complete opposites of one another, even though it is unfathomable just *how* they are opposite from to one another.

## Interaction

With the exception of extremely rare - and usually quite cataclysmic - circumstances, interaction with the Ekcly Wave Spaces is utterly impossible, similar to how it is impossible for anything existing on a two-dimensional plane to touch anything outside of that plane. However, in aforementioned extremely rare -and poorly understood - circumstances, it can happen that the very fabric of Minayero gets torn apart in places, and reveals rifts into either Ekcly'Anszu and Ekcly'Orvhi, but never both in the same cosmological vicinity.

Those rifts extend through all of the dimensions of Minayero, that is, Space, Time, Urst and Ryil, and thus tend to cause all sorts of problems. However, such a rift is not automatically an opening directly into one of the Ekcly Wave Spaces. In fact, many smaller rifts "only" cause holes in worlds where falling into will result in one ending up in either another place, another time, a parallel world or the River of Dreams. Medium-sized rifts may tear entire worlds apart, and usually only large rifts will allow for any interaction with the Ekcly Wave Spaces.

These rifts can be compared to multidimensional chasms. As such, it is possible to follow them through Space, Time, Urst and Ryil in order to get to places where they are smaller or bigger. It is usually in this way that those seeking to learn about the Ekcly Wave Spaces have been able to acquire what insights they were able to gain, though on exceedingly rare occasions rifts also open up in populated areas, and while such areas are usually evacuated in the face of the slowly but unstoppably growing threat, it still presents a rare (and dangerous) opportunity to study them for those who dare stick around or venture near them.

On occasions, "Waves" can also seep out of such rifts, causing strange and unfathomable phenomenons. And while contact with those "Waves" is not as immediately obliterating as passing into one of the Ekcly Wave Spaces, it still is one of the more deadly things in Minayero, surpassing even Nightmares in terms of danger. Incidentally, opposing such waves is possible with the same kind of specialized equipment required to fight Nightmares, with Waveblades being the most effective. This fact has caused further speculation about the nature of the Ekcly Wave Spaces, but again, no conclusive proof for or against it has been obtained.

Closing a rift, once it has formed, is for all purposes impossible. However, owing to the fact that no rifts of both Ekcly Wave Spaces have ever been observed within cosmological proximity of one another has given rise to the hypothesis that the rifts appear as a result of one of the two Ekcly Wave Spaces being stronger in that particular area, thus causing the annihilation zone that forms Minayero to break down in those parts. Assuming that hypothesis were to be true, restoring the balance between Ekcly'Anszu and Ekcly'Orvhi would cause existence to be restored, and the rift to disappear. Another way of putting this is that it should be possible to close a rift of one of the Ekcly Wave Spaces, a rift of the other one has to be opened. However, there are no records of something like that being ever attempted, let alone accomplished, and while wild speculations and hypotheses abound, no practical solution has ever been found. Records of rifts having been closed exist, however, it is ultimately unclear on whether this was due to the actions of Entities seeking to close the rift, or if it was simply a natural part of the rift's "lifecycle".

Influencing a rift to shrink or grow, while possible, is tricky. At times, rifts appear to react to what happens around them, or the actions of Entities nearby by either growing or shrinking. However, the problem is that the reaction of the rift - if any - seems to be completely random, and even if an action is found that affected the rift once, that same action may have the opposite effect the next time around, or no effect at all. It has been hypothesized that if an action manages to align or misalign with the precise and ever-changing wave-like nature of the Wave Space causing the rift, than this will cause the rift to shrink or grow, yet while this hypothesis does sound logical, it still fails to deliver a meaningful way of manipulating a rift in a predictable manner.

Since the rifts transcend all dimensions, it does not really make sense to speak of them in terms of durations. However, since that means that the rifts also span across the dimensions of Space and Time, the two most predominant ways of dealing with them are either get out of their way, or wait them out.

One good thing about the rifts is that they rarely appear suddenly, and "Waves" only emerge from them once they have reached a certain size. Observed from within worlds, rifts usually start as tiny holes or scratches in reality, which will slowly, but steadily grow. The rate of growth can vary wildly, from a few delfeltoj to several fanfeltoj per standard year. The rate can also change unpredictably and erratically, and shift from growing to shrinking and back again at any time. However, since even the fastest growth is still slow enough to comfortably walk away from, rifts, apart from the eventual destruction of homes, habitats, continents, and potentially even whole worlds, are generally not a danger to anyone not foolhardy enough to walk right into them. However, especially smaller rifts can be hard to see at times, and rifts that are hidden within dark or obscured spaces might still cause unexplained disappearances. Sometimes rifts may change size so slow that it seems like they are a permanent feature of a place, and there are records of rifts existing in some places for as long as anyone can remember without ever changing size enough for anyone to measure it without a doubt.

In rare exceptions, rifts may form more suddenly, extending to a size in which "Waves" may emerge from them. These exceedingly rare events are one of the few continuous leads on the nature of the Ekcly Wave Spaces, as they always happen in the wake of large-scale cosmological events or projects, so it is hypothesized that anything that puts a big strain on the very fabric of Minayero itself has a chance of causing such a sudden rift to form. Even so, the chances of that actually happen are still exceedingly low, so for all practical purposes, there is no way to wilfully force a rift to form.

Rifts do not actively interact with their surroundings unless "Waves" emerge from them. Gases and fluids will generally try to flow around them, but will still be absorbed by the rift if directed towards it with sufficient momentum. Interestingly, if a rift shrinks, it leaves behind a "blank template" of the space it previously occupied. Though difficult to explain, one way to put it was that an area vacated by a rift will contain whatever that same area occupies on average in all other points in the Urst-Continuum with the same Space/Time coordinates that are not occupied by a rift.

The appearance of rifts is hard to define. Basically, they appear like holes in the world, or slivers of non-existence. Another way to put it is that they look somewhat like the River of Dreams, except not. The larger the rift, the more mind-boggling and potentially maddening this effect becomes, until it eventually climaxes at the point where the rift becomes large enough for the Ekcly Wave Space beyond to be witnessed.

The maximum extend of rifts is unknown, though it has been observed that rifts become less common as their size increases. A rift may open up to only a few feltoj wide and then close, or it might grow enough to consume an entire world. Rifts beyond that scale are rare, but not unheard of.