Deep beneath the Ark Academies, the lower levels burned.
Alarms screeched through the corridors—**REEEEEEE—REEEEEEEEE**—their rhythm broken, struggling against the internal damage. Red emergency lights blinked overhead, barely functioning.
Smoke pooled along the ceilings in long, languid coils. Thin, choking, chemical.
But that was outside the room.
Inside, the world had been rewritten.
The reinforced laboratory Arias had stood in moments ago no longer existed in any recognizable form.
It looked like the aftermath of a divine miscalculation—where matter and energy had tried to shake hands and instead bit each other's throats out.
The walls were blackened beyond recognition. Structural panels had warped and melted, forming stalactites of half-liquid metal that dripped slowly from above—plop... plop...—each drop hissing on contact with the shattered floor.
The control systems were gone. Not damaged. Gone. Replaced by cooling puddles of alloy and half-charred circuitry that clung to the floor like metallic sludge.
The thick observation glass was obliterated. Not shattered—cooked. It had bubbled and cracked until it failed completely, fragments spread across the scorched tiles like brittle shells.
Smoke also clung low to the ground, lit faintly by the amber glow of molten runoff. Thin mist curled upward in spirals, struggling to rise through the hot, heavy air.
Arias stood in the middle of it all, unmoved.
His hands were clasped behind his back. His expression, relaxed. Almost entertained.
The smoke reached his knees, but he walked forward as if wading through dry air. Even molten patches of floor bent reality for him, supporting his steps like dry marble. He left no footprints. Nothing dared cling to him.
He came to a halt just below the space where the pod had once been suspended.
And there she was.
Galatea.
Laid bare across the floor like a fallen god. Steam rose from her skin. Her muscles were still, slack—but nothing about her looked fragile.
She was enormous. Sculpted without concern for beauty. Built like nature's idea of a weapon. Even unconscious, she looked prepared to kill anything that touched her.
Arias gazed down in silence.
Then, he spoke. Quietly. Flatly.
"She's flawed."
He wasn't referring to aesthetics. Or strength. He was seeing something else. Something no instrument, no scientist, no mind still bound to Euclidean thought could begin to perceive.
And then—her voice came.
Not Galatea's.
Apeiro's.
Not spoken. Not audible. Not even mental in the traditional sense. It pressed into reality like gravity itself had whispered.
"All creation is flawed, Ari."
Her voice was too calm. Too distant. Like a star speaking through a dream.
"But there is balance in all things. You know this."
Arias stood motionless, eyes still on Galatea's body.
Apeiro continued.
"Life born not of womb lacks origin. It lacks soul. Not truly... but inherently. Because it has no thread. No umbilical passage through suffering. No roots in the fluid of memory."
Her words curved through the space, wrapping around him like quiet weight.
"This form you've made—it has power, yes. It has structure. But it is empty. It needs want. It needs memory. It needs pain."
She paused, before adding, "I will give her one."
Arias blinked once.
He didn't protest. But curiosity stirred faintly in his voice.
"Why?" he asked. "You've said you don't wish to meddle with mortals."
Apeiro answered, immediate and unimpressed.
"I don't."
"But this isn't mortal."
Her voice moved closer, though she remained nowhere and everywhere.
"She is a synthesis. A convergence of your making and mine. She is closer to what we are than anything crawling through that meat-clad world."
Arias raised an eyebrow slightly. "So... you'd like to see her as something of ours?"
There was a pause.
Then her voice returned, dry.
"Do not insult the concept by calling it our child. That's a petty word for what this is."
"I see," Arias replied, with just enough sarcasm to coat the edges.
Apeiro exhaled—not in air, but in intent.
"I do not appreciate your undertone."
"But I'll ignore it."
The air above Galatea's face shifted.
Two shapes emerged from the mist—delicate, impossible. Like hands sculpted from gossamer fog, forming and reforming without ever solidifying.
They hovered just above her forehead.
Arias watched.
Then something struck him.
Not pain.
Not pressure.
Just—change.
His vision bent.
Everything around him warped, folding inward like a dying star. Light fractured. Color twisted. Sound flattened into a hum that buzzed inside his skull like a wasp sealed in glass.
He wasn't falling. Or rising.
He was shifting.
And reality, in all its sacred geometry, made room.
When Arias's vision finally settled, he was no longer standing in the scorched ruin of the Ark Academies' lower chamber.
He was on a hill.
The air was heavy with stillness. Not peace—just absence. Below him, fog blanketed the land in a way that defied logic. It didn't roll or rise or shift. It simply was. Dense. Featureless. Obedient only to whatever force had shaped this place.
A single house sat at the hill's peak. Old wood. Faded paint. The kind of building pulled from a dream someone forgot to wake up from.
No lights were on. No signs of life in the windows. Just the creak of the wind pressing against its slanted frame.
Beside it stood a single tree. Thin. Quiet.
Its branches were half-bare, twitching gently in the breeze.
Attached to one of the thicker limbs was a rope swing, the kind tied by hand long ago and left to weather.
Arias didn't flinch.
He turned slowly, eyes tracking the landscape. No horizon. No sun. Just the house. The hill. The tree.
A construct.
He didn't need to ask who had made it.
From the mist behind the tree, two figures emerged.
The first was a man—his exact likeness. Same height, same features, same calm posture. But his gaze was softer. His expression warm in a way Arias had never practiced.
The second figure was a child.
Galatea.
But smaller. No more than five. Hair short, uneven, tousled by wind. She laughed freely as the other Arias pushed her back and forth on the swing.
"Weeee!" she shouted, giggling between words.
"Faster, daddy! Faster!"
Her little legs kicked at the air. Every arc of the swing made her hair whip about like a flag in a storm.
The other Arias gave a patient smile. "I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself, dear."
The child puffed out her cheeks. "I'm indisturkible!"
He chuckled. "It's indestructible."
"That's what I said!" she hollered, doubling down with childish offense.
The swing rose higher, and both figures faded like sand slipping through open fingers.
The fog swallowed them.
Arias's vision shifted again.
Darkness.
No form. No space. No floor. Just black.
And then—voices.
First soft. Then layered. Echoed across nothingness.
Galatea's voice, younger again: "Daddy? Where did I come from?"
Arias's voice replied, calm and certain: "You were created in a special way, in a special place, dear."
Her voice aged slightly: "Daddy? How come we never leave this place? What's down the hill?"
"Nothing, dear. You're trapped here. But Father will save you."
The voice deepened again—adolescent now: "Who trapped me here, Daddy? What is this place?"
"It's your mind, Princess. You're asleep in a very bad place. But don't worry—Father will rescue you. He'll get rid of all the bad people."
Then came laughter. Not cruel, not broken—pure.
"When I wake up, will you take me to the places you talk about in stories, Daddy?"
"Of course, dear. That and so much more."
Finally, the voices faded like the final echo of a song no one remembered starting.
And with it, the darkness unraveled.
The scorched remains of the chamber returned.
The smoke still hung around Galatea's body. But it no longer moved passively. It curled with intent—rising, shifting, coiling above her like something ancient trying to form shape.
Then—Apeiro's voice emerged from it. Quiet. Unhurried.
"What will you name her?"
Arias didn't blink.
He didn't pace. He didn't ponder.
He just answered.
"Nearithea."