Erasa breathed in slowly, as if drawing from a memory too vast to fit in one body. Her voice grew deeper, almost resonant, as she continued:
— When we transcend the Out-of-Dream Zones... there exists something beyond even Viṣṇu.
She paused, then resumed:
— In the zone of Garbhaḍakaśāy... everything loses its identity.
She counted slowly on her fingers, as if organizing the unspeakable.
— The name... the history... the function... the nature... even the reason why something had to exist. Everything collapses.
There, nothing is oneself anymore.
One becomes... an absence.
Mù Sunghiun shivered. Bakuzan remained still.
— And despite that... continued Erasa, Garbhaḍakaśāy isn't even the worst of the Out-of-Dreams.
She lifted her eyes, as if staring at an invisible horizon.
— To surpass the first Out-of-Zones — Garbhaḍakaśāy and Jada — one must break entirely.
Disembody into all possible categories.
One must not only transcend the Dream... but also tear away every trace the Dream has left on you.
Her voice turned almost to a whisper.
— Even what the Dream itself is not aware of.
Bakuzan felt pressure pinch his neck, as if the mere concept threatened to dissolve him.
— Normally, after that... you are nothing. An intrinsic truth: you cease.
But instead of nothingness, something appears.
She closed her eyes briefly, to better see it again.
— A fog.
A fog with no color, no form, no logic.
Her hand clenched.
— This fog tends toward impossible forms, toward notions that are not even conceivable.
And yet, for us — the Ineffables — this fog becomes a flow. A current.
A watermark of raw power, beyond the possible.
She turned her gaze to Bakuzan.
— Thanks to this flow, we can manipulate everything possible in the Dream.
The First Zone as well as the Fourth.
We can even impose our will on the gods... without their consent.
Bakuzan's eyes widened. Mù Sunghiun, for her part, tilted her head slightly — as if she already knew, and it still terrified her.
Erasa resumed, more slowly:
— This fog... is a truth.
A projection.
A perceptible residue... coming from creatures like the Deviants.
She gritted her teeth.
— But there is a problem.
The Deviants have never been in the Dream.
Their interactions with our existence are recent.
So... where does this fog come from?
Where does this ineffable flow that sustains the entire Dream come from?
Bakuzan felt a chill run down his spine.
— The only possibility... is that there exist, in the Dream itself, beings analogous to the Deviants.
She fixed an absent point.
— Original impossibilities.
Beings who, by their mere "presence," made the Dream possible.
The fog we cross in the Out-of-Dreams... would actually be a fragment of their breaths.
Of their condensed existence.
A heavy silence fell.
Then Erasa blinked, as if suddenly returning to herself:
— Anyway... let's return to my father. Lucifer.
She resumed, her voice more composed but still charged with deep gravity:
— My father always told me he is... but a breath of himself.
That the one we know is only an emanation, a reflection.
His true "self"... has never set foot in the Dream.
Erasa placed a hand on her chest, slowly.
— He said that the being present here was simply a breath made conscious.
A fragment of the fog, incarnate.
Bakuzan felt his stomach knot.
Erasa lifted her eyes toward them:
— Is he the only one?
She shook her head gently.
— No. I don't think so.
Erasa breathed in, as if seeking her words from a memory too vast to be contained in a body.
— To be honest... I never really understood what Father was trying to tell me, she murmured. He kept repeating he was the second most powerful original god after the God Father. But... if that is true, then that would mean... that the original gods of the Dream...
She hesitated, as if saying the thought made it real.
— ...are actually beings like him. Breaths... not births.
Bakuzan and Mù Sunghiun remained silent, as if frozen in the fog.
Erasa resumed, her voice deeper:
— Father always told me: where I come from, hierarchy makes no sense. Because every hierarchy... every form... every rank... is only valid in the domain of the Possible, so in the Dream. What you call "fog" is... a Possible prior to the Possible. It is a breath of impossibility. Something... higher than anything that exists here.
The mist vibrated, almost alive.
— That's why, she continued, even transcending the Dream guarantees nothing. Those who transcend the narrative, the divine, or the out-of-dream only free themselves from a framework. But the fog... is what connects everything. Even the impossibilities that can still be named as such.
She paused for a long moment.
The words weighed heavy, dangerous.
Even Mü Thanatos, in her own domain, had fallen silent to listen.
The silence of Death itself gave the speech cosmic gravity.
What Erasa said implied a monstrous thing:
the God Father and Lucifer know what they really are.
And if hierarchy only matters in the Dream...
then the God Father — the claimed creator of the Dream — may also be a prior breath, a condensed escape of a Deviant.
A frightening thought crossed minds:
> What if the God Father was not the creator, but simply the Deviant who made the Dream possible?
A primordial breath.
A fragment of impossibility become "God."
Then...
all the original gods...
all the "first beings"...
would also be flows condensed in the Dream.
Children of the fog.
Fragments of a reality that should not exist here.
But a burning question remained:
— Why do some know they do not come from here... and why do others completely ignore it...?
Mü Thanatos straightened in her throne of beyond-reality.
Her red eyes trembled slightly — something that never happened.
She was also an original goddess.
She also theoretically came from the very beginning of the Dream.
So why couldn't she touch her "true self"?
Why had she no memory from before?
A deep discomfort crossed her.
Erasa resumed, suddenly more confident:
— Father always said that if he knows he is not from the Dream... it is because he knows the Code.
She lifted her eyes.
— The My0x code.
Mü Thanatos opened her eyes wide, voice barely audible:
— A... code...?
The revelation struck like thunder.
— Father said he is My0x. But the one with whom this title was discussed... was the God Father.
Mü Thanatos' cosmic heart skipped a beat.
An unknown emotion slipped into her divine veins.
— My0x... a code...? she whispered, petrified.
Memories returned to her all at once:
the original gods always close, always linked...
except two.
Always two.
The God Father.
And Lucifer.
Always distant.
Always separated.
Always "apart."
As if only they...
remembered where they really came from.
A shiver ran through her entire domain.
It was no longer a coincidence.
It was the truth that no god had ever wanted to see.
Mü Thanatos slowly rose from her throne of beyond-reality, shadows curling beneath her aura.
A frozen thought imposed itself on her:
The God Father consciously cut the link between the original gods and their true nature.
And a question, even more terrible, followed immediately:
Then how did Lucifer... he... manage to reconnect?
Her red eyes narrowed.
Something rumbled inside her — an implacable, almost divine determination.
— I must speak to him..., she murmured.
Her voice echoed through her entire domain like a death knell.
Erasa resumed, as if unaware of the cosmic shock caused by the goddess.
— As I said... I never fully understood Father's phrases. But for Azazel... it was even stranger. When Father met him the first time, Azazel was not... what he is now.
She closed her eyes, as if reliving the scene.
— When I asked him what Azazel really was, Father just... closed his eyes and shook his head.
Mù Sunghiun frowned.
— And you didn't insist? Didn't try to understand?
Erasa shook her head.
— No. Father... is dangerous for the Dream. Very dangerous. But...
She inhaled.
— ...in a way, I understood he could use Azazel.
A silence stiffened the air.
Then Bakuzan exploded.
He stepped forward abruptly, grabbed Erasa by the collar, and slammed her against the foggy void.
— Are you kidding me?! Half an hour ago, you told me that the real threats were the Deviants! And now you tell me Lucifer is one too?!
The mist vibrated under the young Furasshu's anger.
Erasa did not even blink.
— I did not lie.
Her voice was disarmingly calm.
— Father... is indeed a Deviant.
Bakuzan slightly loosened his grip, breath short, as if struck by a truth too great to fit in a mortal body.
He finally released Erasa.
She continued:
— The difference is that Father participates — in a way I still don't understand — in the legitimacy of the Dream.
She ran a hand through her hair.
— The other Deviants... they... do not even recognize the Dream. They shouldn't even be able to leave traces in it. They are pure intrusions. Absolute anomalies.
Bakuzan gritted his teeth.
— So why... why not ask your father to act? If he is originally a Deviant... he could stop them, right?
Erasa closed her eyes.
Her answer fell like a guillotine.
— Father... believes himself to be the Absolute.
The silence thickened.
— Where he comes from, she resumed, hierarchy does not exist. The very concept of "rank" is an illusion born in the Dream. Here, he is "the second most powerful." But if the Dream collapses... if it returns to its origin...
She raised a trembling finger.
— Then this position... makes no sense. No value.
Her shoulders slumped.
A cosmic weariness engulfed her.
— And that's why... he will never lift a finger to save the Dream. This world is the only place where he can be "number two." The only place where order recognizes him.
She sighed, her face suddenly marked by infinite sadness.
— If the Dream disappears... Lucifer becomes nothing again. Just a breath... indistinguishable among other breaths.