After everything, Lorien could not bring himself to meet the bright arches within the obsessive gaze of that being. Still, he needed to understand why he had been asked such a question in the first place.

  “Lorien Heeler, you have always been the most apt to inherit my place,” the stone statue revealed. “But you refuse to accept it, and I accept that as your decision.”

  After confronting him at such close range, the statue ascended the steps back to its throne and sat once more.

  “Regardless, my will remains unchanged,” it continued. “Those who can make use of my authority will be able to transcend, in hopes that they may inherit my grace. Therefore, Lorien, can you still ignore such a development of events?”

  The more it spoke, the more Lorien realized the previous question had not been rhetorical, but a genuine offer backed by something unknown.

  “Just… who are you?” the boy asked.

  “You ask what you already know the answer to,” the stone statue replied simply. “And so, this conversation comes to an end—though my offer remains unchanged.”

  Before Lorien could press further, a loud crack traversed the entirety of ‘Nowhere,’ the world of endless white. The statue remained seated, watching him, as the space above split wide open.

  Once more, Lorien beheld the unintelligible chaos—and the same dark figure that had descended in New York City. He distinguished the silhouette of a man whose features were hidden behind dark garments and a peculiar helm.

  “Finally found you,” the mysterious figure proclaimed, turning his attention to Lorien. His voice—masculine and faintly exhausted—clearly belonged to a man.

  He descended surrounded by sparks of every color, and though he floated, the empty world bent to his presence, forming a grand staircase for him to complete his descent.

  When he touched the floor, the man in the dark helm glanced at the stone statue upon its throne, receiving no reaction in return.

  “Out of all places, it was certain I would find you here,” he said, opening his arms slightly. Lorien instinctively stepped back.

  “I don’t quite know who you are…”

  “He is one of our biggest problems,” Laplace’s playful voice chimed from behind, “but you don’t have to worry about that for the time being.”

  “Laplace… I would have expected nothing less from you,” the mysterious man replied, hostility threading his tone.

  “Long time no see, Ozymandias—though it must have been less than a second for you,” the horned shadow teased. “It was quite bold of you to propel your consciousness into the future. You, of all beings, should have been aware of the implications.”

  “I simply couldn’t let you get away with whatever it is you are attempting.”

  “But you cut the chase to the rabbit’s tail, and thus allowed me to linger in time as I pleased.”

  The man behind the helm fell silent as Laplace pressed on.

  “How many years do you think have transpired since we last saw each other?”

  Rather than speculate, violet sparks manifested around the man. “Fifteen thousand years it seems,” he answered immediately. “A mere speck of time compared to how long you and I have existed.”

  From their exchange, Lorien gathered that the man and Laplace shared a long history.

  “Laplace, even after everything, I come to you without desire for confrontation,” Ozymandias said. “You can still do the right thing. Stop this endless cycle of suffering—let everything reach its natural end, peacefully.”

  “I’m afraid it no longer depends on me.”

  Laplace moved to Lorien’s side and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Lorien, remember when I told you I could only help at the right time? There should be a wooden door behind you now. Taking it will lead you somewhere beyond the reach of what is about to happen.”

  He spoke as though the other man were not present.

  “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  Without hesitation, Laplace pushed Lorien through the door, forcing him out of the empty world.

  “You truly believe I will let him escape again?” Ozymandias said, lightning of every color crackling around him.

  “I’m afraid you have no choice. After all, I took all this time to set up the game board for us both.”

  Laplace shrugged as another presence emerged—a black sun hanging overhead, threatening to drag everything into its pull. Alongside it came three other colossal figures, crashing down behind the horned shadow. Their presence was so overwhelming that it felt muted and codified, impossible to perceive in full.

  “I see you’ve brought some old faces,” Ozymandias scoffed.

  Laplace ignored him, addressing the four towering entities instead.

  “I understand the discomfort of working together. However, if you uphold your part of our agreement, I will uphold mine.”

  With that, Laplace turned toward the wooden door.

  “Given the effort, I reserve the right to make the first move.”

  “You never cease to amuse me, Laplace…” Ozymandias remarked dryly before analyzing the situation.

  I knew there were risks in leaping into this very moment, but to think he would extend it for several millennia? Ozymandias reflected. There is no telling what awaits me beyond this point. The only way to learn is to entertain this confrontation for a while.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  And I cannot leave this place until certain conditions are fulfilled.

  Laplace… you truly outdid yourself this time.

  “Given the thought you put into this, I’ll be sure to take my time with each of you,” he declared to the four abominable figures, still under the silent gaze of the stone statue.

  As for the horned shadow, he merely waved goodbye before closing the door behind him.

  Lorien lost his balance entirely and crashed thunderously onto a sandy surface. Once more, he found himself in another bright setting, though not as overwhelming as the world of only white. This place had substance and weight, and the familiar pull of gravity anchored him to something real.

  He inspected himself with trembling hands and found that most of his body aches had vanished. Even the wound below his left ear, where the bullet fragment had grazed him, seemed never to have existed. The skin was smooth and unblemished, as if violence had never touched him.

  Struggling to stand on unsteady legs, he reached for the white door frame standing alone in the sand, an impossible thing, a door to nowhere. It had closed moments after he had been thrown through, sealing whatever lay beyond.

  The boy gripped the cold metal handle for several heartbeats, overtaken by insecurity. He wanted to go back, to confront Laplace and demand answers, but he also feared the presence of those on the other side. Those cosmic figures. Those beings that made his bones remember they were fragile.

  In the end, his hand turned slowly. The door opened. What lay beyond was simply the otherworldly landscape drawn from emptiness itself. There was no corridor and no room, only the nearby landscape.

  A giant blazing sun scorched everything beneath a bright, clear blue sky that seemed to stretch into infinity. Lorien found himself surrounded by ruins, traces of overwhelming chaos and destruction compressed into impossible proximity. The remnants were crammed together due to the narrow canyon walls, packed like books on an overflowing shelf.

  They were nothing like what he had expected. Buildings lay collapsed atop one another, each bearing different architecture and scale. Gothic spires were crushed beneath brutalist concrete, wooden temples fused with steel frameworks. Every structure was torn by the passage of time and weathered by centuries or millennia compressed into this single graveyard.

  Lorien picked up a handful of burning sand and watched it slip through his fingers as strong winds carried it away. The air tasted of distance and endings.

  His thoughts were interrupted by Laplace’s voice from behind. The shadow stood atop a nearby rock, silhouetted against the merciless sun.

  “That must have been quite close, but everything turned out all right,” he claimed, displaying his wide grin as always.

  Lorien remained silent. Instead, he collapsed onto the sandy platform among the ruins, his mind and body completely drained. Every part of him felt hollow and scraped clean.

  “How was that all right at all…?” he whispered, contemplating the suffering and memories of the tragedies. Low Liceas destroyed. Larissa falling upward into oblivion. The manifestation of anti-causality turning people into salt and nothing. He remembered the overwhelming auras radiating from those otherworldly figures, pressure that made reality bend.

  “Back in the world of white… the things the stone statue said…” He swallowed hard. “Could I really have become God?”

  “‘Its’ offer was as real as it gets. Just like it told you, the offer still stands for as long as you live. The only thing you have to do is accept.”

  “Is it really that easy?” the boy asked, though he already knew the answer would not be.

  Laplace simply shrugged. “If that’s what you think, why don’t you try accepting it right now?”

  But the chaos and anguish he had endured had already reshaped Lorien’s resolve into something different.

  “I… just can’t.”

  After experiencing the miracle of transmutation and witnessing its consequences spread like a plague, Lorien finally understood why humanity stood so far below the divine.

  Unlike before, he realized his desire to improve the world had been little more than a whimsical imposition rooted in what he believed was right. But who was he to define right from wrong? A human with flawed perception, placed in creation only halfway to truth.

  Moreover, his confusion deepened as the boundary between reality and imagination, the fragile barrier safeguarding identity, crumbled. The walls separating self from the world had shattered.

  Surrounded by ruins, Lorien could no longer distinguish what was real from what was not. He could not anchor his feelings to anything solid. Everything drifted untethered.

  The only constant was the dark, horned figure. By now, Laplace had become his sole point of reference in a universe that felt unstable.

  “Why are you still here after everything? What do you truly want from me?”

  Laplace turned toward the sun and lifted his sharp-featured head as though gazing at something far beyond the horizon.

  “I wish for no one else to become God. You heard it from the stone statue itself. There are others who carry its will, and with it the authorities that allow them to freely shape reality. You may think of them as candidates competing for divinity, striving to sit upon the throne you witnessed. Some are already dangerously close.”

  “So there are more people with the power of transmutation?”

  “The power of transmutation is merely a surface manifestation of the authority of creation, which corresponds to half of God’s omnipotence. There are six divine authorities, each relating to the half of three divine properties: to do everything, to know everything, and to be everywhere.”

  Laplace’s tone grew serious, stripped of its usual playfulness.

  “As for what involves you, you are the only one who rejected the statue’s offer. I also oppose its will for others to ascend. Don’t you think that makes us natural allies?”

  Lorien stared at his empty hands, remembering the weight of the Vault and how it had seemed almost warm despite being metal.

  “But what’s the point now? I couldn’t do anything right… Besides, I destroyed the Nebuchadnezzar’s Vault. There’s nothing left I can do…”

  “It seems you still hold a misconception,” Laplace replied. “The Vault never possessed the authority of creation. It was merely a container until it reached you. The power to change the world resides within you. It has always been yours—by right and nature”

  Lorien raised his empty arm toward the sun and closed his eyes as he imagined everything he had lost. Aristarchus. Larissa. The inn. The workshop. His small room with scattered blueprints and half-finished dreams.

  When he opened his eyes, cursed white sparks surrounded him once more, crackling across his skin like a living accusation. Tears streamed down his face as guilt and regret spilled freely into the sand below.

  He regretted how little he had understood about himself and the world. He had blamed ignorance yet acted with confidence. He had wanted to help and instead brought ruin.

  A large shadow cast by one of the towering monoliths provided brief relief from the scorching sun, though not from his shame.

  “I want to return to New Liceas and make things right, but…”

  “But?” Laplace prompted.

  “If its not possible... What am I supposed to do from now on?”

  “There are others who wield this power, each eager to impose their own vision upon reality. You may not wish to become God, but will you allow them to? Will you stand aside while they repeat your mistakes without your restraint?”

  Lorien tried to answer, but his mind could not grasp the weight of it.

  “Even so,” Laplace continued, “I'm afraid I cannot intervene any further. I have no option but to trust in your decisions and criteria in order to achieve our mutual goal.”

  By the time Lorien looked up, Laplace had vanished once again.

  Left alone, the boy surveyed the canyon and its endless ruins. It resembled a cosmic dumping ground filled with fragments of structures from countless places and eras. Some he recognized, pieces of New Liceas, shards of New York, remnants of worlds and civilizations he had never seen.

  The ruins stretched without end, a graveyard of possibilities and a museum of collapse.

  Now, alone and surrounded by nothing, Lorien sank into his regrets, fears and desperations. It was only the cold wild wind and the constant whipping of the sand that kept him awake—alive.