Ñout, sitting with natural elegance, looked at Sakolomé and spoke in a soft but firm voice:
"I hope you now understand what we are. We are the commanders of the gods. Do you remember the time I had to intervene to stop Isissis¹ when he was derailing? Well… this is our role: to ensure the coherence of the Pure Dream."
Sakolomé then understood that in the first zone, in the Pure Dream, the primordial gods were simply invisible, unbeatable. Their superexistence was so solid it could not be broken. He felt even smaller: already, the entities of the third zone surpassed his strength, and in the fourth zone, victory was never guaranteed. Yet here, he had before his eyes the scale of all this, and he understood that the true nature of these beings surpassed the very capacity of the Pure Dream. There was undoubtedly a hierarchy among them, explained by these mysterious flows. This made Zeus even more terrifying: in addition to the primordial voice that the God Father had entrusted to him, he possessed pure superexistence.
Sakolomé realized that the Dream itself was filled with hierarchies — up to absolute hierarchies. The Dream contains everything that can be told, but the narration itself is a force of the Madhurya. The primordial gods escape this narration, which made clear to Sakolomé the nature of their power against Isissis, who was already infinitely stronger than him.
"Uh…" murmured Sakolomé, unable to say anything else.
Apollon frowned: "Since the time of Adam, this is the first time I have seen gods take an interest in a mortal. Yet, he does not resemble one..."
Thanato added in a grave tone: "Maybe it's simply what he seeks that makes him worthy of attention."
Ñout sighed, slightly annoyed: "Stop bothering him, my little human subject…"
She fixed her gaze on Sakolomé, more tender this time.
"The primordial gods that we are have some favors to ask of you."
Sakolomé frowned: "A favor…?"
Ñout nodded: "In exchange for some answers about what you wish to know."
Sakolomé trembled slightly: "G-gods of your level want to ask me a favor?"
Apollon intervened: "It concerns your brother, Bakuzan. He has become a current of the Madhurya's Narration. We want you to pull him out of there."
Sakolomé, confused: "Why? Is it dangerous?"
Thanato replied: "Of course it's dangerous. A mortal must never bind himself to a structural force... it is already too risky."
Sakolomé: "On top of that?"
Apollon continued: "He carries within him the son of Mü Thanatos, the one called Validus. He is Mü Thanatos' proudest child. His ego... can cause serious problems."
Sakolomé, puzzled: "I don't understand... what prevents you from removing him yourselves?"
Ñout explained gravely: "The Madhurya's Narration has two faces: the Narration itself, which frames everything, and the Scriptomaton, a force even more... uncontrollable."
Ñout breathed slowly, letting the silence stretch before speaking.
"Sakolomé... it is time you understand what the Scriptomaton is."
Sakolomé frowned, heart pounding.
"The Madhurya," Ñout began, "is the primordial abyss, the source of all existence and the Chōshinku from the Meta-Concepts in the second zone of the dream. Everything that was born, everything that could be born, stems from this vibrating void. But this void is not inert nothingness: it is animated by the Dream of the God Father, and from this Dream emerges the Narration — an invisible, living framework that structures everything."
Sakolomé felt a shiver run down his spine.
"The Narration is not a story as you understand it, nor a simple causality. It is the primary law, the grammar of all being. The Chōshinku are its living instruments. Even the gods, even the most powerful, are woven by it, subjected to its invisible rhythm."
She fixed her gaze on him, heavier and more solemn.
"Some, in the lower levels, have tried to escape it. They refused to be inscribed, to be framed by this system. They invoked the void, broke the living texts... But nothing escapes the Narration."
Sakolomé felt a dizzy spell seize him.
"The Scriptomaton," Ñout explained, "is the form it takes to absorb this refusal. It does not fight. It digests. It encodes and transforms all rebellion into data. Even Superexistences, even primordial gods, can be affected. Those who thought they could escape the Narration... never left its story."
Her voice grew lower, almost a whisper heavy with threat:
"The refusal becomes pre-inscribed. The flight is digested. The negation is archived in the deepest layers of the original language. All resistance turns into a narrative fragment, a myth, a fiction."
Sakolomé instinctively stepped back, breath short.
"But the vertigo does not stop there," Ñout continued. "It is no longer only gods or bearers of fate who are concerned. Superexistences and fragments — primordial gods ourselves — can be caught... yet for the lower zones and for the zone where the narration supposed to frame exerts itself, we are neither named, nor located, nor conceptualized. We are outside all dialectics, outside time and space. We are naturally unconceivable for it... and yet, even we can become paragraphs, fragments of a greater story."
An oppressive silence settled.
"The Scriptomaton imposes the absolute law: even the refusal to refuse is integrated. Every will to escape the frame becomes a narrative zero, a frozen form, a fixed silence that even the primordial gods cannot escape this mechanism."
Ñout stared at Sakolomé with an intensity almost painful.
"Understand this well, Sakolomé: this is not an opponent to face. It is the matrix itself of existence, the shadow of all freedom, the weave in which all that is, was, or will be is absorbed. The Scriptomaton... is the inevitable."
Sakolomé felt his heart tighten. Even his courage, even his will to protect Bakuzan, seemed trivial against a force that could rewrite the essence of being itself.
Ñout concluded, her voice barely audible but heavy with gravity:
"Now that you know what it is, understand the danger: trying to act within the Narration, even with all the power of the gods, can reduce you to a fragment. And sometimes, some fragments never recompose."
Sakolomé was thinking, his gaze lost in the void. He saw Bakuzan again, inscribed in the castle of the Unforgettable as the most powerful human, and yet... he had never imagined he could reach such strength.
The descriptions of the primordial gods came back to his mind, monstrously powerful. To Sakolomé, they appeared as absolute entities, beyond any frame, the very beginning of the dream. They seemed to form a bridge between the outside-dream and the pure dream, a connection so fundamental that everything else was only residual resonance.
He then understood that the true pure dream corresponded to the second zone, where the Madhurya deploys its power and brings everything into existence. The first zone was only a sketch, a beginning on the anteriority of the dream. That is why, by default, the primordial gods escape the classic Narration of the Madhurya. But the Scriptomaton... this form seemed to come from a force even more distant, more senseless than anything the second zone could conceive. Even the pure dream dared not touch these entities: the primordial gods were the absolute beginning of the pure dream, their anteriority placing them beyond reach of everything.
Bakuzan alone was not able to affect them. But what terrified Sakolomé was this extension of the Narration embodied by the Scriptomaton. An entity, perhaps superior to the primordial gods themselves, manipulated this force in the shadows. And it let people believe that all this was just a simple extension of the Narration. A controlled illusion, but heavy with consequences.
Sakolomé shivered. Sooner or later, the truth would be revealed, and what he believed he understood about the Narration and its limits could collapse, unveiling an even greater danger.
Apollon: "Sakolomé… if you have understood well what we mean, it is not about defeating your brother. It is impossible for you — and even for many others. We could pull him out of where he is, but the Narration has its laws: if we intervene head-on, the Scriptomaton will awaken. And believe me… none of us wishes to face this mechanism. That is why we seek a more subtle approach."
Ñout nodded gently: "And in this subtlety, who better than a blood brother? Nothing is more delicate, more 'narratively acceptable', than sending a human subject, his own younger brother, to him."
Sakolomé bowed his head, crushed by the weight of this imposed role. A heavy silence settled, broken only by Thanato who placed a firm hand on his shoulder:
— Fear nothing. If it is power you seek, we will give you the means to grasp it. If it is Mü Thanatos you wish to reach, we will open a path to her.
At these words, Ñout slightly frowned, as if struck by a distant memory.
— By the way… you mentioned her in the world of myths. You are looking for her imprint, aren't you? So listen carefully, Sakolomé…
She sighed, then dropped the truth with a heavy gravity:
— Mü Thanatos was exiled. By Zeus… and by me.
Sakolomé's eyes widened, almost staggering:
— What…?
Around him, the other primordial gods bowed their heads, as if bowing to a secret too heavy to be spoken aloud.
Ñout resumed, her voice heavy with bitter sincerity:
— Yes. She broke the established order by striking a group of gods… among them, one called the god of Destruction.
Sakolomé, breath short:
— She… she killed gods?
Ñout shook her head slowly:
— Not as you imagine. She sent them back to the Source… to the Madhurya, so that they could be reborn later. But that day, Zeus and I glimpsed a part of her true nature. What we saw in her… froze us. So we chose exile.
Apollon, grave, added:
— Understand well, Sakolomé. The Mü Thanatos you pursue… the one wandering, conceptualized, in the twists of the dream… is not within anyone's reach. She has hidden her brilliance, veiled her own perception, even blurred the trace of her radiance. Even for us, she is unfindable.
Sakolomé, still silent, felt his thoughts swirl. Was it possible… that this exile, this rejection by Zeus and Ñout, had sowed in her a grudge capable of tearing apart the very order of the gods?