Apeiro's voice reached Arias like a memory. Quiet. Familiar. Not quite sound. Not quite thought.
He smiled.
"Many things."
Suddenly, the room began to give way.
The lights warped at the edges. The walls peeled like wet film. The floor lost texture. His chair lifted slightly—floating, not falling—untethered from the space around it.
Arias didn't move.
Shapes spun across the black forming around him—limbs, faces, fragments of places that weren't here. They twisted, broke, disappeared. Screams without mouths. Light without source. Meaning without context.
Soon though, it slowed. It was a mindscape.
The chaos around him softened, drawn inward by his stillness. Lines began to form. Angles. Structures. As if the scape, like a wild animal, recognized it had been seen.
And then it changed.
———
A battlefield.
Rain fell sideways. The world was mud and panic. In the distance, a soldier screamed while firing into a fog that didn't lift. Another boy—maybe sixteen—ran across the field with a bloodied shoulder, slipping as he tried to keep going.
He screamed too. But no one came.
Then—gone.
The battlefield folded away, the fog sucked into itself.
Then, streets.
Riot police dragging civilians into vans. Zip-ties. Covered badges. No one shouted orders. No one resisted loudly enough.
The silence felt heavier than the screams.
None of it touched Arias. He sat still, eyes forward, watching.
They weren't dreams. They weren't predictions.
They were truth.
As he observed, he spoke low. "I've come to realize something…"
The scape didn't respond.
But it did listened.
"…to build anything in this world—
a nation, an empire, even a religion—
three things are always required."
The world changed again.
———
"Fear."
Baghdad, 2003.
A door burst open. Boots thundered inside. A woman dragged by her arms, her head striking a table on the way down. A man stepped in front of her, her husband, but was shot in cold blood. One soldier laughed.
"Fucking savage."
———
"Control."
Beijing, 2022.
The street was full. Then it wasn't.
Riot shields crushed the space between bodies. Phones blinked off. Signal jammed. A girl pulled away from the boy next to her—he reached for her and vanished into black uniforms.
———
"And blood."
Chicago, 1969.
A man sleeping beside his pregnant partner. No warning. Just bullets. Forty-one shots. Thirty-two into the bed.
She survived.
He didn't.
———
The images slowed again.
Ash blew in from nowhere. A crumbling statue collapsed mid-air. The fragments swirled and reformed.
"Back then, if you didn't like your king, you could raise a sword." He paused. "Now?"
He scoffed faintly. "You vote."
The fragments dissolved. Replaced by glowing screens. News feeds. Targeted headlines. Manufactured rage.
"Your beliefs and those of your children—
shaped by what they force you to consume."
The light shifted. Fluorescent. Artificial.
"And if you scream too loud once you realize the truth—
they freeze your assets. Or call you unstable."
Still seated, Arias let the words sit for a moment. Then, he continued.
"It's cleaner." He glanced upward. "Not kinder."
The ceiling above him was gone now. In its place—space. Empty. Wide.
Stars blinked into place. Quiet. Distant.
Then one went dark.
Then another.
Then more.
A familiar voice returned.
"And yet… you still choose to build. Why?"
Her tone wasn't accusatory. Just... curious.
He watched the sky. Still leaning back, still silent. Then replied, "Because even gods need territory. To observe. To learn. To experiment."
"Is that truly all you seek, Ari?" Apeiro's voice dimmed—but not in presence. In gravity.
"With your current power alone, you are far beyond the scope of these mortals. They do not even quantify a second in what will be your life."
"There are those who wield cities like swords. Then there are those who forget what gravity feels like."
"After that, language becomes useless. Thought becomes architecture."
"And beyond even that…"
"You find what you are now."
Apeiro too a long pause. Before adding "…still climbing."
He looked up again. Quiet.
Stars formed novas. Cold light spun in silence.
"Perhaps," he said. "But I won't know until I try things my way."
"I knew you'd say that."
Arias blinked once. "Do you know whether I'll fail or not?"
"Yes." Apeiro answered. "Of course I do."
Arias smiled at the response. Not forced. Just amused. "You won't tell me?"
"No." Apeiro's voice remained steady. No trace of mockery. No shift in tone. Just an answer. "You are not bound by fate, time, or consequence. Anything you could possibly want is within your reach to gain. Even answers about your future."
She paused. Brief. Intentional. "But you don't want to know, do you?"
Arias didn't move. The smile stayed.
Only when she spoke did he feel like this.
Exposed. Seen. But not judged.
She asked questions directly. She didn't guess. She knew. Every part of him. And still, she allowed him the illusion of choice.
He couldn't understand it.
Even learning how reality worked—how it bent, how it folded—was already difficult enough. What did she think about? What could she possibly care about?
If he was capable of crafting realities in his own mind, if he could open cracks in time just to glance through them… and he was still this limited—what kind of being was she?
He didn't envy her.
He pitied her.
A world without limits sounded more like a sentence than a gift. He lowered his gaze slightly, eyes drifting toward the nothing beneath his feet.
Then he gave a single nod. "Yes. I don't want to know. I enjoy approaching each day like it's a mystery."
The void shifted. The stars blinked out. Not one by one—but all at once. The air thickened—not in pressure, but in presence.
Light began to return. Not from the stars, but from the side. Glass reflected a warm hue that hadn't existed moments ago.
Sunlight.
The green glow of the table returned in pieces—flickering like it had been rebooted. One wall regained its edges. The ceiling stopped drifting.
The room was returning.
The conference chair under him settled. Its legs touched the floor again with a soft, mechanical click.
Arias didn't look around. He was still listening.
And her voice came one last time, fading with the last of the distortion.
"With you… perhaps I can look forward to the same."
The ceiling above him shimmered briefly. A puddle of stars remained—a thin portal into something vast. Galaxies spun across its surface. Then it shrank. Quickly.
Gone.