Emerging from the Library of Existence, Bakuzan regained the breath of golden nothingness, then the gleam of the real.
Before him, Nihlorgue's crystalline scales rippled in the air, his draconic gaze vibrating with a millennial wisdom.
Bakuzan told him everything — the encounter with Isissis II, the revelations about the erased narratives, and the forbidden truth he had just brushed against.
A long silence followed. Nihlorgue, usually impassive, slowly closed his eyelids, and his voice echoed like a muffled thunder:
"If even the Library trembles at the mention of that name… then the situation is far more perilous than I imagined."
Bakuzan nodded, his gaze fixed.
"Anyway, I now know who holds those beings back… It is Lucifer.
Or rather, Azazel."
Nihlorgue half-opened an eye, a steel gleam reflecting in it.
"Azazel? The one who broke Enoch's Oaths?"
Bakuzan:
"Yes. Satan had already warned me about him.
She confided that long ago, Azazel sought to appropriate a fragment of the Divine, to distill it from mortals themselves.
His initial plan was abolished, but I doubt he gave up. He must follow another path now… a plan B, probably still based on those human echoes of the Divine."
He paused, his gaze lost in the daylight unraveling around them.
"What worries me, Nihlorgue… is what he truly hopes to achieve once he has gathered this 'Echo of the Divine.'
What kind of existence could be born from such blasphemy?"
The dragon remained silent for a moment, his pupils splitting the light like two blades.
"It's a legitimate concern, master.
Even I cannot foresee what a being like Azazel would try to shape by manipulating the Divine of mortals."
Bakuzan breathed deeply.
The weight of the world seemed to cling to his shoulders, but his gaze did not falter.
"No matter. I still have a place I must go."
Nihlorgue bowed his head, then his immense silhouette faded into the air, dissolving into a wave of shadow and light, like a submerged memory.
Bakuzan remained alone for a moment, eyes turned toward the sparkling vault.
The name of his next destination engraved itself in his mind like a silent prayer:
"…The Dhama."
An invisible wind rose, lifting around him the golden ashes of nothingness, as he resumed his path toward the place where causes and ends intertwine.
Beyond the giant dimensions, where the sibylline worlds fold into themselves in countless circles of light and shadow, lies the domain of the First Suargaloka — the Realm of the Omnigods I.
Here rest the true bodies of the great primordial mythic beings.
When a mortal transcends their flesh and becomes a Great Mythic Being, they rise above causalities and cycles of creation; their spirit wanders among realities, but their essence remains here, in this place where the gods' dreams take form.
The First Suargaloka is the threshold of the divine, the first rung on the cosmic ladder.
The Omnigods I reign there, and each of them, by dreaming, generates universes, giant dimensions, and sibylline worlds.
But transcending causality is not the end.
Beyond, there exist other peaks, other hierarchies among those who have already surpassed all law.
Next comes the Second Suargaloka — the domain of the Omnigods II,
those who transcend the first.
Their mere presence erases the mental structures of the lower worlds.
They govern the weaves of higher realities, regulating the flows of creation.
Then rises the Third Suargaloka, realm of the Omnigods III.
It acts as a mirror of the second, but its authority extends over a wider network of Giant Dimensions.
Although they dominate the Omnigods I and II, they remain bound by laws imposed by the Commanders of the gods, the Primordial gods, those gods before the gods.
Thus, the Omnigods III surpass the seconds, but do not transcend them; their power is of a different order, not superior, but complementary.
And finally, higher than all the Suargalokas, extends the Satyaloka,
the Realm of the Omnigods IV, the quaternary gods.
This domain is no longer simply above causalities: it is the culmination of Existence.
It transcends the three Suargalokas, contains them, and unites them in an inaccessible harmony.
The Satyaloka is the crown of Being, the place where Truth is no longer a concept, but a substance.
The entire World of Existence houses these four hierarchies.
It is the meta-reality of the quaternary gods, the base where the laws of all the worlds they govern—and surpass—rest.
But there is an unalterable rule:
beings of higher states cannot descend into lower levels in their true form.
Their mere presence would cause the dissolution of reality's layers.
Thus, they dream of themselves to incarnate in lower planes.
What mortals see of the gods… is never the god itself,
but the dream of the god.
The First Suargaloka is therefore the dream of the entities of the Second and the Third.
The Giant Dimensions, the Sibylline Worlds, the Universes and the Causalities are only dreams woven by the Omnigods I.
And those of the Satyaloka dream of them all — the Omnigods I, II, and III, and all that causality can conceive.
Beyond these realms extends the Outer Void,
the expanse before the creation of worlds.
It does not transcend the worlds: it contains them, supports them, nourishes them.
A being from the Satyaloka — or even the First Suargaloka — can go there,
for the Outer Void spans several levels of reality,
linking the bottom and the top like an inverted abyss.
And beyond this Void…
rises the Dhama Void.
A domain that even the Outer Void cannot contain.
It transcends not only the world of creations, the other lower worlds,
but also the realms of the quaternary gods.
The Dhama is the kingdom of the Tertiary Gods,
those who surpass the Omnigods and contemplate the World of Existence as a mere dream layer.
It is the space where creation ceases to be,
where light and shadow are abolished,
and where remains the secret of the first movements of the divine Will from the domain of creations.
The journey began.
Bakuzan tore through the layers of causality as one tears the veils of a dream.
The threads of cause and effect broke one by one, twisting into shards of golden light that faded behind him.
He advanced, impassive, while the very fabric of reality bent beneath his step.
Each cosmic law that tried to chain him dissolved into dust of light.
Thus, he surpassed the spheres of matter, then the worlds of the gods, and finally arrived in the First Suargaloka.
It was not a place — but a shard of frozen dream.
An infinite expanse, horizonless, made of liquid gold and singing light.
Suspended realms floated in the void, star citadels lazily spinning around a luminous heart.
The winds whispered forgotten prayers there, and each breath of air seemed to contain the memory of a vanished universe.
Bakuzan stepped onto this light.
But his gaze did not lose itself in the beauty of the place.
He knew it was only a stage.
A dream within an even vaster dream.
He raised his eyes.
Above him, light folded into circles, forming rings of superimposed realms — the Second Suargaloka, then the Third, then the Satyaloka.
Worlds vanished the very moment he beheld them, as if their existence depended on the gaze of those who still remembered them.
Then Bakuzan rose again — and everything collapsed around him.
The skies began to melt like wax.
The worlds crumbled like mirages caught in the light of the real.
And he, alone, continued forward.
He passed beyond the First Suargaloka, then the Second, the Third, the Satyaloka, and finally the Outer Void.
Each plane dissolved behind him like an exhaled breath.
Until he reached the ultimate state.
The Dhama.
Here, no word sufficed.
It was neither nothingness, nor fullness.
It was what exists before even the Outer Void could be possible.
The ground — if it could be called that — resembled a strange matter, between liquid and dust.
An orange void, almost blood-red, pulsed gently, as if breathing.
This substance vibrated with a sickly light, an echo of contaminated existence.
A desert of unreality, infinite and silent.
Bakuzan walked there, his steps leaving no trace.
Here, movement made no sense.
He knew that what he had to reach was not a place — but a point of being.
Each domain is only a dream contained by a greater dreamer, he thought.
And I, with Isissis's essence, am beyond these dreams… far beyond those who dream them.
He closed his eyes.
And in the absolute silence of the Dhama, his mind anchored.
The void trembled.
When he reopened his eyelids, the world had changed.
The orange ground had vanished.
Before him stretched a black void, darker than anything — a black so dense it devoured even the thought of color.
It was no longer a space, but a conscious absence.
An abyss of silence where being itself doubted it had ever existed.
Bakuzan walked.
Or rather: he was in motion, without moving.
And suddenly, a form rose before him.
A silhouette—human, indistinct, yet obsessively precise.
He stopped.
His eyes narrowed.
It was himself.
Bakuzan: Tsk… Where is the zone that maintains the…
But he had no time to finish.
The silhouette slowly distorted, began to tremble like an inverted flame.
Contours bent, twisted, and another figure emerged.
A familiar face.
A calm, ancient, unfathomable gaze.
Isissis.
Or rather: Isissis 3, the Guardian of this domain.
Her voice was not a sound.
It was a vibration that traversed the entire Dhama — a resonance that made existence itself tremble.
Bakuzan smiled.
Bakuzan: At last, here you are.
Isissis 3: At last, here I am, you say?