There exists a hidden story,
a truth whispered only in the caves of inverted flames of Hell,
a name erased from the celestial registers,
an ascension that even Lucifer, in his pride, did not dare to record.
His name was Zar'Khan, the Engraver.
Demon prince.
Emperor of a fallen circle that even the flames refused to embrace.
He was neither bloodthirsty, nor mad, nor greedy.
He was reckless, and worse still: lucid.
He walked the path of Lucifer,
but not to defy him.
He wanted to surpass him.
He did not hate the gods.
He had never taken part in their war.
When the infernal legions rose to the sky to snatch crowns,
Zar'Khan remained seated, in the depths of the black fire,
drawing maps of what lies beyond form.
And yet, a single step of his in battle
would have been enough to extinguish entire pantheons.
He had broken the chains of Madhurya.
He had spat on the boundaries of Palala.
And even the state of Visnü had finally bowed.
How long will it take me,
to see the finished size of all states, huh?
Lord Lucifer?
Lucifer appeared,
shrouded in his light of pride and unfinished eternity.
He observed his disciple with a form of sacred unease.
Lucifer: "What good will it do you to engrave all this?
You are the most powerful demon that has ever existed.
Even the whispers of the Infralegal Space fall silent in your presence."
Zar'Khan smiled.
A smile without cruelty.
A smile as if he no longer belonged to the dream.
Zar'Khan: "I do not want to become powerful.
I want to observe the limits of everything."
He did not seek to reign.
He sought to understand why there was no end.
With every step taken, every reality transcended,
he discovered another barrier, another mirage, another facade of the dream.
Zar'Khan had reached the Garbadokasay.
A strange domain.
A non-place.
An abyss edge where things cease to bear names,
and where the dream is no longer certain it has dreamed.
His body, though forged in the black furnaces of Hell,
trembled under the weight of this place.
Cracks appeared in his being.
Form, thought, soul… all threatened to collapse.
But an invisible hand held him upright.
Lucifer.
Always there,
always in the background,
like a whisper older than pride.
Zar'Khan turned his gaze to him,
his voice weak, almost human.
Zar'Khan: "What would I do without you, Lord Lucifer?"
Lucifer did not answer.
His silence was not indifference.
It was ancient respect… or veiled fear.
Zar'Khan observed the stable void around him.
He felt an unusual heaviness within.
Not fear,
but the stagnant sensation of an inner end.
He lowered his eyes upon himself.
His breath was no longer breath.
His thoughts were no longer his own.
Zar'Khan (thought): "…Is this it?
Having reached one's limits?
I feel like the world has become more… boring."
Lucifer appeared behind him, his wings folded like two sleeping paradoxes.
Lucifer: "Here, you are already outside the dream.
You contemplate its borders.
You see the limits of what every being seeks to surpass.
You are in the first exterior.
Is that not enough?"
Zar'Khan squinted.
Something disturbed him.
Zar'Khan: "It's strange.
I always feel…
subject to something.
As if a hand still writes me.
It's not enough."
Lucifer crossed his arms. His face lit up with an enigmatic smile.
Lucifer: "That's right.
The Garbadokasay is the first zone outside the dream,
but it is not the true outside.
It is only a threshold,
a transcendable shadow placed at the edge of the Great Barrier.
But beyond…"
"…There exists the second exterior.
The Outside of All Dream.
Where no dream can even conceive having dreamed.
Where principles themselves have never been founded."
Zar'Khan turned to him, fascinated:
Zar'Khan: "So… how to reach it?"
Lucifer sighed.
A sigh that made the dead architectures of Garbadokasay tremble.
Lucifer: "To get there…
you will have to break yourself entirely.
Disincarnate in every possible category.
Not only transcend the dream,
but detach yourself from every trace the dream could have left you.
You must extinguish even your own transcendence."
"You must free yourself from the dream on all levels,
even those the dream ignores within itself."
Zar'Khan stepped back.
Zar'Khan: "What?… Is… is that even possible?"
Lucifer nodded slowly, then declared calmly:
Lucifer: "Yes.
But it is extremely long.
And extremely dangerous."
"I will help you… a little.
For I am but an avatar of myself,
a fragment incarnated in this dream.
But my true being?… It precedes the dream.
As a pure Original God,
I can project a part of myself to assist you.
But…"
Zar'Khan stepped forward.
Zar'Khan: "But what?"
Lucifer averted his eyes.
A veil of worry passed in his gaze,
then faded.
Lucifer: "…Nothing. Forget it."
And time passed.
Or rather: time erased itself.
Zar'Khan crossed centuries without moments.
He burned his forms.
He folded his memories.
He forgot even the idea of wanting.
And one day,
in a silence that was not born,
he became the first.
The first to totally transcend the dream,
the first to leave even the Garbadokasay,
the first to enter the Second Exterior.
There,
he was no longer Zar'Khan.
He was no longer demon.
He was no longer being.
He was not even a non-being.
He was outside of all.
And in that silence,
he saw.
He understood.
He no longer thought.
He became what preceded thought.
And he breathed,
not to exist,
but to observe what even the Original Gods refuse to look at.
Zar'Khan no longer acted from inside the dream. He had long since left it. But from where he was, he continued to influence that dreamlike world: by projecting avatars of himself into it, conquering the realms he had always coveted, shaping new worlds, raising demons according to his will.
Lucifer, meanwhile, remained frozen in a silence heavy with judgment. He merely said, bitterly:
— What a disappointment.
Then he disappeared, letting chaos spread unchecked.
The gods, powerless, could not defeat Zar'Khan inside the dream. He had become almost absolute. His ambition went as far as reconfiguring the fundamental states of existence. It was too much. Mü Thanatos felt she had no choice left. She had to intervene.
Zar'Khan, once bound to the dream, had transcended it. It was a magnificent feat, a dizzying ascension… but also the revelation of his greatest flaw.
He then believed himself similar to the true Original Gods, those before the dream. But he was wrong. He was not even capable of perceiving those Gods from his position outside the dream, while they… they saw him perfectly.
Why?
Why, despite his transcendence, was he still inferior to them?
Because Zar'Khan had left the dream, yes. But he had not preceded it. And that is the insurmountable difference.
The Original Gods had never passed through the dream. They had not transcended it —
they had always surpassed it, from the beginning, on all levels. They preceded everything: creation, states of existence, even the possibility of the dream itself.
That is why, even outside the dream, Zar'Khan inevitably remained beneath them. His transcendence had an origin; it still bore the imprint of the dream. The Original Gods, however, were of another order: their power did not come from an ascension, but from ontological anteriority.
Zar'Khan had become an absolute transcendent — but too close to the dream.
The Original Gods, meanwhile, preceded him, and even preceded Zar'Khan's transcendence.
Now Zar'Khan had to be stopped.
But the true Original Gods had no need to intervene themselves. They did not soil their hands. One entity was enough: Mü Thanatos, the Absolute of the Dream.
For Zar'Khan, despite all his grandeur, bore an essential flaw: he was born of the dream.
He had grown there, fought there, suffered there. And it was from the dream that he had transcended. He had exploited it, manipulated it, diverted it to escape.
What does that really mean?
It means that, even if he now stood outside the dream, he remained dependent on it.
He had needed the dream to rise. He had used its structures, its laws, its Narration, its constraints, its logic. He had relied on all that Mü Thanatos embodied: the integral system, the total sum of the dream's possibilities.
So it was she, Mü Thanatos, this entity who was the whole of the dream, who had allowed him to break free.
And what the Whole gives, the Whole can take back.
So she did.
A dull crack. An identity shattering.
Zar'Khan opens his eyes.
He is… elsewhere.
No, he is below.
The Hells.
An ancient cold, a stench of ashes, distant screams. He looks at his hands. He feels his essence. And understands, with horror.
He has lost.
Everything.
He is no longer outside the dream.
He is no longer prince demon, nor emperor.
He is only a lowly demon, a vulgar being, like those miserable imps he once despised.
What happened?
Mü Thanatos.
The sovereign rule of the dream.
The fundamental order.
She simply revoked him.
Like tearing off a badge, like erasing a title, she took from him everything that made him an exceptional being. And with that…
She sent him back to the base.
Zar'Khan had built everything from the dream.
The dream took it back.
And now… he is nothing.
Zar'Khan did not accept.
He could not accept.
The howl he let out made the deepest strata of the Hells tremble. He was only the shadow of himself, a reduced, fragmented, mutilated being in his essence. But the memory of what he had been… that remained intact.
Then, in a last surge of will, he tore through the infernal meshes.
And he fled.
He crossed the abysses, slipped between the cracks of the underworld realms, bypassed the guardians and chains, avoided the demonic thrones and mocking cries.
He fled, aimless, driven by an instinct older than pain itself: the instinct of dignity.
Zar'Khan went to take refuge where no one would look for him anymore.
In the forgotten world, the deepest of myths.
That place that floats between planes, between dream, memory, and legend.
A world woven of ancient stories, echoes of echoes, erased figures.
A world where memories go to die.
There, he buried himself.
Not out of fear. But out of shame.
Shame at having been so high… and fallen so low.
Shame at not having understood that even transcendence has its chains.
Shame, perhaps also, at having for a moment believed he could equal those who precede all.
Since then, Zar'Khan has not appeared. He has not taken form again. He no longer commands.
He no longer builds.
He waits, perhaps.
Or he fades, slowly.
And in the immediate aftermath, everything was put back in order.
The dream regained its stability.
The avatars were erased.
The realms resumed their shapes.
The name Zar'Khan ceased to be a cry of war or fear.
But some remembered.
Those who, one day, had seen his ascension, his devouring fire, his terrifying grandeur.
Those who had understood that, yes, Zar'Khan had transcended all.
And that is precisely why… they chose to remain silent.
Not out of respect.
But to preserve the order.
To prevent others, in turn, from trying to climb higher than what the dream allows.
So the truth was sealed.
The fall of Zar'Khan became a secret.
And in the silence of the world of myths…
He remains there.
Neither alive, nor dead.
Neither prince, nor banished.
Just a shadow.
An unspoken legend.