Munhwan paused, his veiled eyes intensely fixed on Sakolomé.
"I know everything you wish to learn," he said solemnly. "And as long as I am the one revealing these truths to you, you will never collapse. Remember, I remain above all an Original god…"
Sakolomé furrowed his brow, incredulous.
"An Original god?" he asked, his voice betraying both surprise and curiosity.
Munhwan nodded slightly.
"Yes. I belong to the same category as Mü Thanatos… but in a more accessible, simpler form."
Sakolomé stepped back slightly, his eyes wide open.
"Category?" he murmured. "Mü Thanatos… she also belongs to a category of deities?"
Munhwan remained silent for a moment, his veiled gaze diving into Sakolomé's. His voice then rose, grave and deep, as if it were penetrating the very walls of the Castle.
Munhwan:
"You have every reason to be surprised. Yes, Sakolomé… I am an Original god. Like Mü Thanatos. We belong to a category that few beings, even among gods, dare to mention."
He slowly raised his hand, and the torches flickered. The flames projected immense silhouettes on the walls, as if the story he was about to tell was being etched into stone.
Munhwan:
"In the primordial Dream, there are seven. Seven forms, born not from creation as you know it, but from the very fabric of the Dream. Yet, where they reside, definitions lose their weight, and even truths crack."
A heavy silence followed, then he pointed to the frescoes around them.
Munhwan:
"Mü Thanatos is the most central. She is the absolute conceptualization. The sum of all possible definitions. Everything that can be thought, named, described, belongs to her domain. She is the core of the Dream, the language incarnate, thought made flesh. Without her, nothing can be grasped, nothing can take shape."
The flames darkened, and a black silhouette emerged opposite Mü Thanatos.
Munhwan:
"But before her stands Shad Ruhvaël. Not a simple opposite, but a radical anteriority. She is the absolute non-conceptualization. The state where nothing is defined, nor even thinkable. Where there is no space, no time, no name… not even the possibility of existing. She is the pre-Dream, the outside of all things."
The ground vibrated slightly. Sakolomé swallowed hard.
Munhwan:
"Understand this: Shad Ruhvaël cannot have a form. Because to have a form, even an unformed one, is already to be conceptualized. To manifest, she must borrow a vessel. And the only one capable of bearing such a burden… is Mü Thanatos. Because she is the container of all concepts and meta-concepts."
He gestured, and a fresco of Mü Thanatos appeared, cracked, veiled, her wings twisted under an invisible weight.
Munhwan:
"But this container cracks. The veils, the pains, the torn wings… these are the scars of the impossible truth of Shad Ruhvaël, overflowing and breaking all conceptualization. That is why no one can look upon her. To see is to conceptualize… and to conceptualize that which has no concept is to erase oneself. Not to die, but to be deprived even of the possibility of ever having existed."
He clasped his hands behind his back, and his voice grew heavier still.
Munhwan:
"That is why, Sakolomé. Mü Thanatos is embodied conceptualization, the sum of all definitions. Shad Ruhvaël, her anteriority, is absolute non-conceptualization. An active absence that does not destroy, but denies the framework where destruction or existence would have meaning. If you had forced yourself to understand her, your very name would have disappeared from the walls of this castle. You would not have just ceased to be… you would never have had the possibility of being."
Munhwan lowered his head as if placing down a weight too heavy.
Munhwan raised his head, his veiled eyes intensely fixed on Sakolomé.
"You will ask all the questions you want after my explanations," he declared gravely. "But for now, let me continue…"
"All original gods fundamentally transcend Mü Thanatos," he resumed, "and thus are in the state of zero-definition, outside the dream, beyond all conceptualization. But let us proceed step by step. Let's begin with Son of God."
"Son of God is an Original god, like us," Munhwan explained. "In the dream, he often appears in a radiant form that makes his face and features almost impossible to discern. He is the second bearer of the primordial light contained in the facet of (Mü) of Mü Thanatos called Shin'ō Zettai."
"This light is older than all, without origin. It accepts everything, unconditionally: it is a light of absolute love, transcending good and evil."
Munhwan paused, letting silence weigh for a few moments, then continued:
"Where this light touches, everything transforms. Matter, time, souls themselves… nothing is destroyed, everything is harmonized, restored."
He detailed further:
"Hate is converted into compassion."
"Chaos becomes art, music…"
"The darkest intentions vanish, disarmed by the purity of this light."
"Son of God is the manifestation of this primordial light in non-definition," Munhwan concluded. "It is what could exist where nothing can exist."
He is not the dream itself, unlike Mü Thanatos, but he is an internal light of it, a perceptible facet of the Absolute.
Any attempt to name or fully conceptualize him partially fails. "Son of God" is a functional name but insufficient to grasp the entire essence.
He does not hold all the primordial power but carries the essence of the original light, making him a vector of the Absolute.
Sakolomé, astonished, murmured:
"Wow… I had no idea Mü Thanatos could have facets…"
Munhwan pointed to a drawing on the wall. Three female silhouettes stood under the depiction of Mü Thanatos. One of them, marked by positive symbols, glowed with a particular light.
"That is her, Mü… or rather Shin'ō Zettai," Munhwan explained.
"All original gods are, by nature, a part of Shad Ruhvaël through non-conceptualization, and a part of Mü Thanatos through conceptualization. We are both. The primordial light of Mü, reflected by Son of God in non-conceptualization and non-manifestation, allows us to manifest in the dream."
He continued gravely:
"All who come from non-conceptualization need Mü Thanatos—who is the totality of definition and conceptualization—to hope to exist and be conceptualized, even with an infinitesimal fragment of her primordial light…"
Sakolomé, intrigued, asked:
"So… the dream of the God the Father is embodied by Mü Thanatos, isn't it? But in that case, who is the God the Father? Is Son of God a manifestation of him, or his son?"
Munhwan smiled slightly, as if admiring the pertinence of the question.
"Your questions are sound… Sakolomé. In truth, no original god can claim to have created the dream. The dream contains us all. Even those who are outside the dream belong to it in some way."
He continued, with growing solemnity:
"There exist 'outside-dreams': two levels in total. Our domain is the first outside-dream, and there is an absolute exterior, totally beyond the dream."
Sakolomé, speechless, asked:
"So no original god is the God the Father?"
Munhwan slowly nodded:
"Exactly. The God the Father himself does not exist within his own dream. To speak accurately, the God the Father is either an absolute myth… or an entity that even the dream cannot contain."
In truth, a fundamental detail escapes the understanding of many, but Munhwan underlines its scope: the God the Father is an entity anterior to the dream on all possible levels, ungraspable by the dream itself. Beyond all conceptualization, there would exist seven true original gods, beyond all limits of the dream, all equal in their essence and power, whom the dream can neither imprison nor name.
All that is perceptible, what manifests inside the dream, is only what the dream has been able to imagine of itself… or perhaps what the God the Father has compelled to exist in an absolute container. Every name, every story the dream can tell, every entity that can be described, are only reflections, projections of what can be conceptualized. Thus, the dream, in its playful nature, forces the existence of beings who, on a higher plane, should surpass it. These creations are never the original entity; they are what the dream can conceive, what the dream can grasp and shape.
It is comparable to the act of imagining a god and drawing him on a sheet of paper. The paper is the dream: it contains, materializes, fixes the representation. The one who draws is the one who conceptualizes, who imposes limits on what he cannot fully grasp. But we all know that the god depicted on the paper is not the god himself, only his subjective representation.
And yet, a troubling question arises: what would happen if the one holding the pencil, who inscribes the god on the paper—who conceptualizes and constrains the form—was in reality the God the Father himself? If the paper is the dream, and the dream is nothing but the medium of the God the Father, then each representation, each projection, each entity of the dream would not truly be a reflection of a higher order imposed by the Anterior?
This remains an unfathomable mystery, but one of relentless logic. All that the dream seems to create or contain is only a window on the infinity that transcends it.
Thanks to Munhwan's explanations, Sakolomé finally understood the magnitude of what he was contemplating. Everything that could move, speak, act, be told or even thought was contained in the Dream. Even those who seemed "outside the dream," like Original gods such as Munhwan, remained embodied in its fabric.
A tragic revelation imposed itself: the true outside-dream did not exist for those who had already been conceptualized. Any attempt to escape the dream, by action or thought, meant remaining inscribed in it, belonging to its very logic. Munhwan illustrated this with the story of Zar'Khan, a legendary demon emperor. He had been the first to transcend the dream on all levels, including the first "outside-dream." He had reached the total outside, Exuvé—having rid himself of all conceptualization to leave the dream.
Yet, despite this absolute transcendence, Zar'Khan was still inscribed, his trace persisted. His actions, his gestures, his passage, all he had been or accomplished continued to be part of the dream. Even by extracting himself from the world of Mü Thanatos, he remained capturable by the Dream, because the Dream contains all that has been, all that can be told, thought or conceptualized.
Sakolomé then realized the greatness and absolute power of Mü Thanatos: she embodies the Dream itself, and it is impossible to escape her, impossible to be stronger than her. His own dream of transcending or exuvé to surpass her faded before this truth: even Zar'Khan, who had succeeded, had been captured by her, immutably.
Sakolomé also understood that the only true way to be out of reach of the dream was to have never existed in it, never been a form, conceptualization, story, or action… which he had practically never been.
Sakolomé, in a low voice, murmured:
— It's screwed… I can't be stronger than her…
Munhwan, with a slight solemn smile, replied:
— Your dream was really strange, Sakolomé… to want to surpass what gives shape and tells everything is a futile endeavor.
Munhwan remained pensive for a long moment, as if absorbed by the immensity of the dream, then resumed:
"Sakolomé… I told you no Original god can claim to have created the dream, right?"
Sakolomé nodded slowly.
Munhwan continued, in a grave and calm voice:
"Very well. But I have not yet revealed to you that there exists a being who holds absolute authority over the entire dream."
Sakolomé frowned, incredulous:
"Absolute authority? More powerful than Mü Thanatos?"
Munhwan nodded, his dark gaze fixed on the castle's void:
"His name, given by the entities of the dream themselves, is God the Father Odin. He is the voice of the dream, the primordial voice. He exerts total authority over conceptualization and definition, even over us, the original gods. The authority of primordial gods is only an echo of his voice. For example, Zeus holds this gift from God the Father: his word, although limited by nature, is superior to that of the six other original gods like us but does not apply to Odin…"
Sakolomé felt a shiver run down his spine. He recalled Orlongue's words, once: Mü Thanatos strangely obeyed Zeus and Odin. Now everything made sense. Zeus's authority came from this primordial voice, and all, even the original gods, had to bow before it.
Munhwan continued, almost in a whisper:
"He symbolizes the 'Pure Yes,' the legitimacy of the dream. His true name, in its purity, is Kami-no-Koe. He is the true Lord of the dream."
Sakolomé murmured, eyes wide:
"Kami-no-Koe…"
Munhwan added, with a slight sigh:
"As omniscient and absolute as I am… he is the only one in the dream I cannot fully understand."
Sakolomé felt his mind wobble. Could Odin, God the Father, Kami-no-Koe, truly be the absolute God the Father? Or was there an even greater entity behind him but linked to them? The fact that even the original gods prostrate themselves before him made the situation terrifying beyond anything he had imagined. An Original god superior to other Original gods by nature.