Lorien froze from the shock. The images from the Low Liceas disaster were still printed into his eyelids, clear as day, but the world in front of him was more real than his memories.

  If anything, everything related to the skyport and to the Nebuchadnezzar vault felt like a vivid nightmare that had trapped him in the middle of daydreaming.

  However, as much as New York City was different from the city above the sky, both places were about to suffer from the same phenomena. Lorien turned around, standing like a rock in the middle of erratic currents of people, each trying to save their own lives.

  Two places in two different times, both under siege by the adverse effect of divine powers.

  Once more, Lorien didn’t quite understand why he found himself in the middle of such a situation and lacked any knowledge of what to do or where to go.

  It was only when he saw the woman with the sharp hazel eyes again that his body started running, ignoring all the dangers ahead.

  Larissa used the back of her pistol to break the window and free a couple of siblings who had been abandoned in the back of their crashed car. Both of their parents vanished from existence before they could do anything about it.

  Larissa, Larissa! Lorien thought as he approached, but when it was finally time to meet, another word came naturally from his mouth.

  “Mom!”

  She, wearing the dress uniform of the United States Marine Corps, looked at him with the same sharp gaze he had grown used to.

  “Lorien, help me get them out of the car!”

  And so, Lorien tried to pull the door handle, only to notice that he lacked more strength than he already did.

  It was only when he looked at his reflection in the mirror that he noticed how much younger he was. His image slightly overlapped with the one he had as a student in New Liceas, which he now barely remembered.

  “Lorien, stop fooling around!”

  Abiding by Larissa’s orders, Lorien climbed through the shattered front window to release the child safety lock, eventually getting the two kids out of the car.

  Just when he thought he could catch his breath, Lorien was pulled outside by a white man with dark blond hair and singular blue eyes.

  “Thomas!” Larissa shouted, but the man quickly interrupted her.

  “Go, go, go! We need to go, now!”

  He pointed to the fa?ade of the nearby building, now surrounded by white sparks.

  It didn’t take long for it to transform into a multiplicity of smaller and larger objects, which altogether caused it to collapse.

  Larissa and Thomas ran with one child each, along with Lorien, fleeing from the cloud of dust overtaking cars and people alike.

  By that point, the entirety of Manhattan had been covered by red sparks, destruction and chaos spreading everywhere.

  As the dust cleared, Lorien saw people overtaken by the effects of anti-causality, getting maimed, turning into other things, or disintegrating.

  It was indeed the same nightmare in flesh and bone repeating itself—and all he could do was ask himself why none of that was happening to him at all.

  In fact, not even his parents were spared from the curse of anti-causality, as they were both surrounded by aggressive white sparks.

  “No! No!!”

  Knowing what ill fate awaited them, both parents dropped to their knees to hug their son.

  “You are the most important thing to us in the world.”

  Having turned into statues of salt, their bodies immediately collapsed, becoming only mounds of white dust.

  Overtaken by confusion, from a heart that didn’t know what to feel—what was real and what was not—he still noticed the presence lingering behind.

  It was Laplace, who simply stood still. He extended his thin claws toward the boy, offering to help him stand.

  “Shall we go?”

  But before he could do anything, they both noticed a tear in the red sky. Beyond that tear was a world where everything and anything was possible—one without start or finish, one where there was no such thing as permanence.

  A dark humanoid figure descended from that chaos, surrounded by horns and trumpets that announced the end of the world. Despite not being able to see him clearly, Lorien noticed his grace, surrounded by sparks of every color under the rainbow.

  “Lorien, there isn’t any more time,” Laplace insisted.

  And by accepting the grace of his hand, everything turned upside down once more.

  Lorien opened his eyes, surrounded by a world of only white. There was no such thing as depth or distance—everything was both infinitely close and infinitely far. The absence of anything made it impossible to calculate time. Although it had been just an instant, part of him felt like he had been there forever.

  His head still spun from what had happened before. He thought about the destruction he had unleashed after destroying the Nebuchadnezzar’s vault. Then there was also that other world destroyed by the adverse effect.

  Even if he had never seen such a setting before, he still knew and remembered a lot about it.

  Needless to say, there was also the fact that he had referred to Larissa as his mother and that other man as his father before they died horribly.

  Finally, the thought of that human figure invading the world—the one surrounded by all graces—still lingered in his memory.

  Slowly, Lorien felt as though he were falling into insanity, losing every sense of self he believed he had.

  “Why is this all happening to me?” he asked almost agonizingly, before hearing the familiar voice by his side.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “The explanation might be a lot to take in.”

  His nonchalant attitude and sarcastic yet honest tone were easily recognizable.

  Lorien was no longer surprised by Laplace’s presence, as he had already proven capable of being anywhere.

  “I don’t care whether I understand or not. I just want to know.”

  “You made the choice to destroy the Nebuchadnezzar’s vault, rejecting the power you believed it held. However, as I told you after I formally introduced myself, it was a very special item. You witnessed the connection it had to the powers that represent the impossible, but did you ever wonder why it was still unaffected by them?”

  “In truth,” Laplace continued, “the vault was an object that existed somewhat outside the usual flow of time. It remained unchanged while all the adverse effects that manifested around it were postponed further into the causal chain. In other words, the destruction of the container allowed for the immediate liberation of all the accumulated adverse effects it had suffered from.”

  “So… it was all my fault…” Lorien admitted, lowering his face. “Laplace… New Liceas—was it completely destroyed?”

  But the shadowy figure remained silent for a while.

  “Where are we…?” Lorien finally insisted, wondering what had become of his fate.

  “I call this ‘Nowhere,’ and it ‘exists’ outside both space and time. What you think of as a second can be an infinity of time—or the shortest moment ever lived. There is also no such thing as physicality here, meaning that your body doesn’t quite exist—only the idea of it.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense. How can it be ‘nowhere’ and still be a place?” Lorien protested.

  “In the realm of the divine, things that are paradoxical and exclusive to human understanding are simply part of a greater order. For example, in a Cartesian plane, the positive and negative stand as opposites—but if you change your perspective to a sphere, they become the same line.”

  He wondered how a human boy like him could suddenly be in a place like that.

  “Since this place exists outside of reality, it is inaccessible under most circumstances, thus leaving only one alternative: you were summoned.”

  “Summoned?”

  “However, by connecting to this place, you began to receive influence from the absence of space and time, leading you to experience ‘jitter’ from what must be your past and your future at the same time,” he said, watching Lorien’s appearance shift in an indeterminate way. “Meanwhile, ‘Nowhere’ became anchored to your experience of space and time, therefore amplifying its chaotic nature back in reality.”

  Lorien suddenly raised his right arm and saw it surrounded by metal only. He had lost all sensation, replaced by the rigid movement of mechanisms driving his fingers.

  “There is one thing I still don’t understand… You said I was called here… and if you are also here, that means you knew where I was going to be and what was going to happen.”

  “I had only a vague idea—an educated guess, if you will,” Laplace answered while staring at his clawed fingers. “I don’t mind telling you about it, but right now there are more important matters to attend to. Since you are now outside of space and time, yet still connected to the world’s flow of time, your body is slowly assimilating with all other coordinates relating to yourself across everything that has ever been. At this rate, your connection to reality is going to break, and you will become one of infinite ideas, losing all sense of self you have left.”

  A much younger version of Lorien stared at Laplace with a raised eyebrow.

  “Is there any way I can stop this from happening…?”

  At that point, Laplace showed his usual widened grin.

  “I’m afraid this would be a dead end for almost anybody—but if it’s you, there’s one thing you can try,” the shadow schemed. “Try closing your eyes the same way you do when performing transmutation, and think about all the things that make you ‘you.’”

  Considering his current situation, that sounded unlikely to work. Nonetheless, he recognized his lack of options.

  Resigned, Lorien began to think about himself.

  He thought about his appearance, his life in Low and New Liceas… He remembered the Inn, Larissa, and all the shifts he worked. There were also the lessons from Father Ben and Professor Zenith, as well as the mistakes he made—both before and after he encountered the Nebuchadnezzar’s vault.

  However, he also thought of the events in New York City, of the planet called Earth, of the five thousand years of human history he began learning in middle school, his house in Arlington, Virginia, and his parents, Larissa and Thomas: a retired Marine and a criminologist, respectively.

  Even if he didn’t want to, Lorien had already fused with many memories and fragments of information from lives he had never lived. They felt like stains he couldn’t wash away, no matter how hard he tried.

  But if he couldn’t solve his problem, Lorien knew he would end up learning and forgetting most of what he knew, to the point where he would become a different person.

  And so he focused. He remembered, again and again. Much like when he used the transmutation powers of the vault, Lorien found himself surrounded by a world of darkness—an opposite to the so-called ‘Nowhere.’ Because of that, he was finally able to picture himself clearly.

  When he opened his eyes, he was back in his present body, without any interference in his being.

  “…How did you know it was going to work?” he finally asked Laplace.

  “Another educated guess,” he answered, still smiling.

  Once recovered, Lorien tried to take a step in the world of white, only to find that there was now a floor beneath him.

  “Laplace… I need to go back to New Liceas. I need to stop all of this from happening.”

  “I’m afraid that is not currently possible,” the shadow answered dryly. “Lorien, all the events you have seen unfold—and the ones you haven’t—converge at this singular point. Although you must be tired and overwhelmed by choosing, what happens right after now will define everything that follows.”

  Laplace’s tone had suddenly turned ominous. The grin on his face disappeared, leaving only an expression of empty expectation.

  “My only piece of advice… When the moment arrives, you will know what to choose. Your answer will be important—but less so than how you feel about it.”

  Laplace smiled gently at the boy before vanishing completely. But unlike the other times, it happened instantly—as if he had been removed from existence itself.

  Lorien tried to locate him, but the shadow was gone, leaving only the world of light.

  Keeping his thoughts—and the advice—in mind, Lorien began walking into the empty horizon. Each step carried the weight of regret and uncertainty, making it harder to continue. In the end, he only managed to reach the frontier of his already shattered resolve.

  There, his silver-colored eyes met the only other presence in the hollow world.

  It was a tall, almost humanoid figure sitting quietly upon a white throne. Its silhouette was angular and regal, defined by sharp lines and edges that shaped its carcass—a sleek armor of marble stone. It looked no different from a statue until it lifted its gaze.

  The cavities where its eyes should have been were nearly empty, like voids capable of devouring everything. Yet within that deepest darkness, two arches of light—bright as suns—stared down at him with pure, overwhelming obsession.

  The tyrant rose from its throne, still looking at the boy from above.

  “And so it means to happen, regardless of chance or might.”

  Its voice—powerful and omnipresent—extended across all of ‘Nowhere,’ despite the stone figure having no mouth.

  “You… brought me here.”

  The other remained silent for a moment, still observant, before speaking again.

  “To grant an audience to the unheard and unwanted.”

  Each word pierced his understanding sharply, yet in a way he had already grown used to. After all, he had heard those very words before.

  “And so we meet once more, Lorien.”

  With no space and no time, they had no choice but to confront the pure ideas of one another.

  “What do you want from me? Why did all of this happen?”

  Slowly, the being descended the steps of the white throne and stopped directly in front of him. The contrast between the towering figure and Lorien’s stance made him feel like the smallest thing in existence.

  “For you to become the realization of my will.”

  Regardless, there was one thing Lorien knew he had to say—something he had never dared to consider.

  “Lorien, would you like to become God?”

  The question struck him down. Why would someone frail and weak like him be able to transcend into godhood?

  Yet if he did, wouldn’t that mean he could solve every problem he had caused?

  However, he remembered what Father Ben had told him—and what he himself had learned when he briefly held the almost almighty power to change the world.

  What guarantee did he have that he would make the right choices? And what about him—or what he had done—gave him the right? Until then, he had only harmed others despite his best intentions, resulting in chaos, destruction, and devastation on a scale that felt absurdly disproportionate to who he was.

  And so, as much as he wanted to fulfill his dreams and wishes, he gathered the strength to answer with both mind and heart.

  “I… don’t.”