"So yeah, I'm basically here as a projection," Anathasia said, tone light. "I'm still studying with my group back on Earth."
Behind her, the Demiurge's Image no longer existed as anything coherent.
Its remains had already thinned into drifting motes of cosmic dust with no narrative left to hold.
Roselia and I glanced at each other, then back at Anathasia as she continued.
That Demiurge's Image was already hopeless…
I watched her talk about pastries. About measurements, textures, flavors, as if nothing of consequence had just ended.
How can she still act like…
Then I remembered what she had said.
What Kagariel had called her.
"I wielded the entire Authorial Rule before becoming an Outer God… before integrating the First Fragment into my existence."
"I was never subject to the Fragment concept. I've held the full Authorial Rule from the very beginning."
"Think of it this way: if The Constant is the root of the Authorial Rule… then I'm the tree that holds everything together."
"Or, if you prefer… the Law Weaver."
"The Daughter of Absence…" I whispered.
"I also heard Roselia lashing out at Kagariel earlier," Anathasia said suddenly, cutting through my thoughts as she glanced at Roselia.
"I'm the one who allowed him to sleep, okay? Besides, the threat's already gone."
She shrugged, then reappeared beside Roselia, draping an arm over her shoulders as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Roselia visibly flinched at the sudden closeness.
She did mention trying to figure Anathasia out back then…
"You don't have any complaints with that, right, Roselia?"
Anathasia smiled, gently poking Roselia's cheek with the same index finger she had used to casually crush a Demiurge's Image moments ago.
And for the first time, Roselia felt… different.
Her serene, playful mask cracked the moment Anathasia drew close.
"…Of course…" Roselia forced out.
Anathasia's smile only widened.
"Right? And Rania's safe either way, so all's good, isn't it?"
Anathasia paused, then vanished from Roselia's side, reappearing between the three of us.
"Besides, I even accessed the Loomkeeper to make sure that girl wouldn't mess everything up too much."
I stopped short.
The Loomkeeper…?
I glanced at Roselia and Kagariel. Their expressions said enough, what Anathasia had just revealed was something even they, among the oldest of the Outer Gods, had never known until now.
Anathasia, on the other hand, looked completely unbothered.
"So like, I already plucked that thing out of the stratums, alright? I also fixed whatever it left haywire."
She paused, thinking.
"Well. Maybe except for that Demiurge's Image earlier, but you get the point, right?"
Another wave of silence fell between the four of us, broken only when Kagariel finally spoke.
"If it is not too much trouble, Daughter of Absence…"
He hesitated, lowering all three heads.
"What exactly is this… Loomkeeper you are referring to?"
Anathasia crossed her arms over her chest, weighing his words.
"Simply put—"
She swiped across the fabric of the Collective Sphere itself. A large projection immediately formed.
She zoomed through the seven stratums, isolating a single reality, the boy's universe.
"We already know how things are structured, right?"
She glanced back at us. We nodded.
"So basically, universes, then Endless Cosmoses, after that are Demiurge's Images."
She zoomed out again, the projection expanding to show the Collective Sphere and the Contradictory Sphere suspended side by side within the Ruins, alongside countless fractured structures.
"The Collective Sphere and the Contradictory Sphere," she continued,
"coexisting within the Ruins of the Eschatological Constant's Ascension."
She tried to zoom out further, but the projection refused to expand, already at its outermost limit.
"The Ruins are where abstractions, coherence, causality, and narratives already collapse," she added, casually brushing the projection aside.
"Time and Space stop functioning in any conventional sense within the Collective Sphere itself. No need to understand the Contradictory Sphere further, it's self-explanatory."
She waved her hand dismissively, then turned back to the three of us.
"Now, to answer Kagariel's question."
Her gaze lingered on him for a moment.
"As you're aware, I am the First Outer God, the Tree Structure Axiom of the Authorial Rule, and the Law Weaver, yes?"
"Mhm."
All three of us nodded.
"Those…" she paused briefly, choosing her words,
"positions are interfaces. Do you understand?"
She exhaled softly, then shook her head and continued.
"Each interface is a derivative of what a stratum requires to function. The Law Weaver governs laws and constraints, while the First Outer God, what I am now, maintains every stratum from the most abstract structures down to each baseline reality."
She paused.
Then, with a casual snap of her fingers, the world around us frayed, peeling apart into a complete, featureless white.
"The Loomkeeper," she continued evenly,
"is still an interface. But unlike the others, it exists outside the layered structure it observes."
Another girl appeared before her.
She looked identical to Anathasia.
And yet—
The moment my eyes settled on her, my vision blurred. A dull ache bloomed behind my eyes even as Anathasia continued speaking.
"This is the Loomkeeper," she said simply.
There was nothing visually different about the girl. The same face. The same form.
But something about her was wrong.
Her expression was hollow, uninhabited in a way I couldn't name.
"We're currently outside the structure as I speak," Anathasia added.
She snapped her fingers.
The stratum reasserted itself.
We were back inside the Collective Sphere, the haze lifting instantly as the pressure vanished. I sucked in a sharp breath, my head clearing.
A glance to my side told me Roselia and Kagariel had felt it too.
"The dizziness you experienced," Anathasia continued calmly,
"was absence pressing against your existence. Any longer, and the three of you would have collapsed into absolute nothingness."
She tilted her head slightly.
"It's not a matter of strength," she said.
"It's ontological incompatibility."
By the time my senses fully stabilized, Anathasia was already continuing, unbothered.
"The Loomkeeper doesn't intervene on her own," she explained.
"Especially when I'm not invoking that interface. Her primary function is observation, recording, and archival."
She smiled at us.
It did nothing to make her explanation easier to process. She wasn't giving us time to catch up.
"However," she added lightly,
"if I do invoke her…"
She lifted a finger, as if counting.
"I can extract individuals from a narrative, strip events of their narrative weight, excise entire stratums, or determine how certain sequences resolve."
Her finger lowered.
"That kind of authority is… excessive," she admitted.
"So I only use it when absolutely necessary."
Only then did she stop.
A small smile curved on her lips as she crossed her arms, as if the explanation itself had cost her nothing.
The three of us, Kagariel, Roselia, and I—staggered, struggling just to remain upright.
"Then…" Roselia breathed, her voice trembling,
"if all of those are interfaces… and even now… you're still speaking through one…"
She nearly collapsed. I caught her just in time.
"Where are you," she asked weakly,
"or… what are you, really…?"
I saw it then.
Anathasia's eyes widened. Just barely, before her expression softened into something unguarded. Melancholy.
"…That's…"
She trailed off, turning her gaze toward the vast demiurgic structure surrounding us.
"That isn't something I can invoke," she said quietly.
"Not because I'm unable to…"
Her voice lowered.
"But because there's no point in risking everything else just to explain something that isn't meant to be framed as anything at all."