Despair turned to a sharp, desperate bargain in the dark of Enki's chamber that night.
"You have knowledge!" Lulal insisted, his hands clenched into fists. "You see the stress in a stone that no one else can see. You make water run uphill and grain grow where there was only dust. You have a power I cannot even name! Use it now! You saved four people from a collapse! Use that power now! For me!"
Enki looked at him, and the distance between them felt suddenly infinite. The air grew thick and still.
"I cannot." The words were simple, but they seemed to cost Enki a great effort.
"Why?" Lulal's voice broke. "Is it beyond you? Or do you choose to let them die?"
Enki opened his mouth to explain. To speak of viral mutations, of immune systems, of the fact that the knowledge in his mind relied on technology that was millennia away. But the Divine Interdiction activated.
The Stolen Breath. Enki's lungs locked. He tried to force the words out, but it was like trying to breathe solid stone. A sharp, silent gasp escaped him, his hand flying to his chest.
Lulal stared, confused and frightened. Was his master ill?
Gathering his will, Enki fought against the cosmic pressure. "The sickness... it is a... a..."
The Lie Tongue. The law twisted his intent. The truth—a novel pathogen in a genetically vulnerable, densely populated environment—was corrupted.
"...a judgment on Kur's arrogance," Enki heard himself say, his voice a stranger's. "His walls have stifled the spirit of the land. The air itself has turned against him. The cure is not in a herb, but in the fall of his pride."
The words were hollow, superstitious nonsense.
The Memory Echo. As the lie faded, Lulal was left not with understanding, but with a terrifying, formless impression—a ghost of concepts like "controlled burn" and "population correction" that felt cold and alien. It wasn't an explanation; it was a psychic wound. He recoiled, his face a mask of horror and betrayal.
"You... you speak like a priest of a cruel god," Lulal whispered, backing away. "You can reshape the world with a thought, but you see no way to save children from a fever? I do not believe you."
He fled, leaving Enki alone in the chilling silence, the taste of the enforced lie like poison on his tongue.