Kael sat deep in his chair, his back pressed against the backrest as though he wished to sink into it.

  His gaze fled, shifting between the table and the floor, unable to meet Dubium’s.

  The gaze of the Primogen of Doubt pierced him.

  Not like a blade.

  More like a scalpel, peeling back his mind layer by layer, down to the marrow.

  Dubium… the Primogen of Doubt?

  Kael blinked several times, trying to force sense into the absurd.

  A twisted smile formed on his face — a grimace tangled with nervousness and confusion.

  His hands had risen on their own, a fragile shield between himself and the being seated across from him.

  But it was not enough.

  Nothing seemed enough.

  Then, without warning, a small laugh escaped him.

  Dry. Nervous.

  He tried to swallow it back… but it was already too late.

  A chuckle.

  Then another.

  And finally, the dam broke.

  Kael burst into loud, almost painful laughter, clutching his stomach with both hands, bent double in his chair.

  Tears welled up in his eyes, uncontrollable.

  He laughed until he nearly choked.

  “As if that weren’t enough!” he managed to gasp between fits of hilarity.

  He slapped his thighs, laughing even harder.

  “A month ago… I was in an alley in the Broken Crown, getting beaten half to death by men who reeked of sweat and filth!

  And now? Now I’m having tea with a god!”

  He fell back against the chair, still convulsed with laughter.

  His mind was spinning, battered by too many truths, too many absurdities.

  “A god who’s training me… because, and I quote… ‘someone asked him to’!”

  He laughed again, almost hysterical.

  “Who gets what they want from a god? Who?!”

  His laughter grew hoarse.

  It was no longer truly funny.

  It was… something else.

  A scream warped into laughter. A mask cracking.

  Kael was breaking. Slowly.

  Everything he had buried — the doubts, the losses, the loneliness, the incomprehension — spilled out in a distorted cascade of laughter and tears.

  And Dubium did not laugh.

  He watched Kael without blinking.

  Calm. Upright.

  As though observing a natural phenomenon — an inevitable storm.

  Then, in a composed, almost gentle voice, he spoke:

  “And if the Immaterial… were a transition? Where would it lead?”

  His voice flowed into the air like a blade through water.

  “That was your question, Kael.

  …But it is also mine.”

  Kael’s laughter slowed. Or at least softened.

  His breath remained short. His ribs ached.

  But his gaze lifted. Still blurred with tears… yet attentive.

  Dubium continued:

  “And if the question posed by the Immaterial… is not ‘where,’ but ‘when’?”

  Kael remained silent.

  He wiped his eyes slowly, offering no reply.

  Dubium did not look away.

  “I have been searching for several centuries. Centuries spent attempting to understand it.”

  He lowered his head slightly, thoughtful.

  “I can now state it — with almost no doubt at all…”

  He raised his eyes to Kael. And in that colorless gaze…

  there was something.

  Gravity.

  Clarity.

  A conviction that crushed hesitation.

  “The Immaterial… leads to the past.”

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  He paused.

  Then, more quietly, as though uttering a forbidden secret:

  “…to the past of the past.”

  Kael felt his heart tighten.

  Everything Dubium had said until now suddenly shifted into another light.

  The paradoxes. The hidden truths.

  The layered structure of the world.

  He no longer looked at him as a teacher… or even as a guide.

  He looked at him as a god.

  Dubium continued, imperturbable:

  “The past… before the Primogenes.

  Before the creation of humanity.”

  Silence settled between them.

  But it was not the silence of emptiness.

  It was the silence… of revelations too vast to digest.

  Dubium added calmly:

  “Your Trial, Kael… unfolds within the past of the past.”

  Kael slowly lifted his head, elbows resting on the table, hands pressed against his skull as though his own thoughts had grown too heavy to bear.

  He hesitated. Then asked, almost in a child’s voice:

  “But… how is that possible?

  You created the universe.

  How… how could anything have existed before you?”

  Dubium took a sip of tea. He sighed, long and distant.

  “I am a god… and yet, I do not know.”

  Kael stared at him, shaken. Then, as if voicing a thought he had held back too long:

  “You said… you made an ‘exchange of mutual benefit’ to gain access to this place.

  Was it with someone?

  If he had access to all this knowledge… then maybe he knows who compiled it?

  Maybe he was part of it?”

  Dubium had closed his eyes. The wind lifted his hair and brushed his face.

  “Impossible,” he replied.

  “He disappeared.

  I have never managed to contact him again… since he granted me access to this place.”

  Kael frowned.

  “If, as you say, this place leads to the past of the past… then why are there humans here?

  They are your creation, are they not?

  Your entire reasoning… collapses.”

  He paused. Then his voice sharpened:

  “And this man… the one you made a bargain with.

  Who strikes a deal with a god… if not another god?”

  Dubium remained silent for a moment. When he answered, his tone was level:

  “I do not know.”

  Those words seemed to cost him more than he let show.

  “The man with whom I dealt… bore the appearance of a human.

  Yet he resembled a god.

  Older than I.”

  Dubium continued evenly. His gaze drifted into the distance, as though he were speaking as much to himself as to Kael.

  “He possessed knowledge… that even I did not hold.

  And I was incapable of determining its source… or its origin.”

  He slowly turned his head toward Kael.

  “How could a being… seemingly human… carry within himself knowledge that even the Primogenes have never touched?”

  Kael said nothing. He listened. Fascinated.

  Dubium resumed, more slowly:

  “So I formulated a hypothesis. A theory I reached after… centuries of meditation.

  There was something before us. Before the Primogenes.”

  He paused.

  “Civilizations. Peoples. Humans… or at least beings resembling us.

  But they vanished.

  Erased.

  Stripped from all memory… from all trace… even divine.”

  Kael frowned, incredulous.

  “You mean there were… humans before humanity?”

  Dubium inclined his head slowly.

  “Not ‘humans’ as you understand the term. Something else. An earlier version.

  More advanced.

  More expansive in their understanding of the world.”

  He placed his hands flat upon the table. His tone deepened.

  “These beings… possessed knowledge so profound, so vast, that even I — Primogen of Doubt — am incapable of synthesizing it in its entirety.”

  Kael felt a shiver crawl along the back of his neck.

  “And you think that knowledge is… what these books contain? These flowers? This wind?”

  “Exactly.”

  The wind moved gently around them, as though affirming Dubium’s words.

  “This Garden… is not a place. It is a scar. A persistent memory of an older world.

  What you see here, what you feel, what you read… are only fragments. Echoes.

  But together, they compose something that humanity… even guided by gods… was never meant to reach.”

  Kael swallowed slowly.

  “And… that man you met… was he one of them?”

  Dubium closed his eyes.

  “I do not know. Perhaps he was one of them.

  Or perhaps he was simply the last one who remembered.”

  Kael slowly lifted his gaze toward Dubium, then asked a question that, on the surface, sounded almost na?ve:

  “You never tried… speaking to the humans within my Trial?

  If they live in the past of the past, then… they must know things, mustn’t they?

  They are living libraries themselves. Their books are here. Their minds as well.

  Even I… can access them.”

  Dubium closed his eyes again, as though the answer wounded him more than he wished.

  “That is… where matters grow complicated.”

  He reopened his eyes.

  “I cannot interact with the past of the past. I cannot even walk freely within it.

  My presence is rejected.

  As though the universe… refuses to tolerate me.”

  Kael frowned.

  “But you are a god.”

  “Precisely,” Dubium replied. “And that may be why.

  The little control I was able to exert… was only possible because you were there.

  I anchored my library there through you — by using your existence as an entry point.

  You are human… born of the Primogenes.

  Without that… I would not even have been able to trap you within the Ouroboros.”

  Kael was about to speak, but Dubium raised a hand.

  “Before you ask… no, I did not create your flaw.

  I merely confined you within a temporal loop.

  A closed cycle.

  You are living the same day, again and again…

  For one reason alone: so that you may identify the first cause of your instability.

  And reach the Velasquez Limit.”

  He paused.

  Then, for the first time, his voice lost some of its neutrality:

  “I need you, Kael.”

  Kael remained seated, elbows on the table, temples pressed between his palms.

  He did not answer immediately.

  His eyes were vacant, fixed on a point beyond reality.

  He was thinking. Too much.

  Each answer called forth a thousand more.

  Each truth fractured his balance.

  At last, he exhaled in a whisper, almost extinguished:

  “I’m tired…”