Driven by a final, desperate hope, Lulal hobbled to the periphery of Ava's vast garden. The walls were high, but he found a spot where the sound of falling water was loud, and the scent of loam and lotus was overwhelming. He called out, not for an audience, but into the silence, pouring out his story—of Uruk, of the plague, of Enki's refusal, of his family sealed behind a wall of perfect, logical stone.
There was no answer. Only the hum of insects and the endless, gentle splash of water.
But then, he heard voices. Not from the garden, but from a shaded portico just to his left, hidden by a screen of papyrus. The voices were speaking a language that was guttural, clipped, and utterly alien. Yet, in his mind, the words resolved into meaning. It was the language of the 30th century, a ghost on the air, and his soul, scarred by the Divine Interdiction, could somehow feel its shape.
"…another local petition. The usual tribal squabble. A plague in some northern city-state." It was a man's voice, flat and analytical. Seb.
A woman's voice, laced with a bored, aesthetic disdain, replied. Cleo. "Uruk. Kur's little experiment. The one with the fascinating structural flaws. A predictable failure. The density was a perfect vector for the novel pathogen."
Lulal froze, his blood turning to ice. Novel pathogen. The words were alien, but the cold, clinical concept slid into his brain like a shard of glass.
"Indeed," Seb said. "I'm tracking its progression. The mortality rate is holding at a steady 68.3%. It will burn itself out in another lunar cycle. Useful data for modeling the next demographic correction."
Demographic correction. Lulal's knees buckled. He leaned against the sun-baked wall, his breath caught in his throat. They weren't just refusing to help. They were watching. They were recording. His family's death was a data point.
"Should we have intervened?" a third voice mused. It was Ava. Her tone was not one of compassion, but of biological curiosity. "The strain has interesting properties. We could have isolated it. Preserved it in the archive."
"And done what, Ava?" Cleo snapped, her voice sharp. "Given it to them? Let them play with tools they can't comprehend? The last thing this ecosystem needs is a localized population developing advanced immunology. It would create an unstable node. A cancer. My art requires a controlled medium."
"The Prime Mandate is clear," Seb stated, his voice final. "No technological or scientific paradigm shifts. We observe the system. We do not repair its broken components. The Witness in Sumer understands this, even if he fights it. He lies to his pet mortal because the law forces him to. It's the only merciful thing to do."
The words hit Lulal with the force of a physical blow, shattering the last pillars of his world.
The Witness. Lies to his pet mortal. The law forces him to.
It wasn't a choice Enki had made. It was a law. A cosmic gag order. The cryptic, cruel oracle that had broken their partnership wasn't Enki's failure—it was his constraint. He hadn't chosen to let Lulal's family die. He had been forbidden from saving them.
The truth was infinitely worse than he had imagined. His master wasn't a reluctant god. He was a prisoner. And his family hadn't been sacrificed to a grand plan. They had been logged as a percentage in a cosmic ledger. 68.3%.
A low, wounded sound escaped Lulal's lips, a whimper of pure, absolute psychic collapse. He stumbled away from the wall, the voices of the Triad fading behind him, not as the words of gods, but as the humming of a vast, indifferent machine. He had his answer. It wasn't a cure. It was a diagnosis of the universe itself, and the prognosis was terminal.