The sound was soft, yet it felt like it severed everything outside.
The sound of the gate closing was extremely light, yet to Ryan it thundered like a peal of thunder, shattering the last bit of composure he had been forcing himself to maintain.
Only after Lorne’s small, overly calm figure vanished into the shadows of the library did Ryan realize that his back was already soaked through with cold sweat. The silver-gray caster’s robe clung tightly to his spine, icy to the bone.
His once-steady breathing had turned short and erratic, and the hands that moments ago had precisely controlled glass needles were now trembling uncontrollably.
He didn’t leave. Instead, like a stone statue that had lost its soul, he stiffly leaned against the rough stone wall outside the library.
“What on earth am I doing?”
The thought gnawed at his reason like a venomous snake.
Lorne was only eight years old—even if he was a prodigy, even if he was preternaturally composed, before Sera, the “Harvester of Truth,” he was nothing more than a fragile mortal child. A god’s logic was utterly unlike that of mortals: a careless glance, a rash question, or even the mere existence of that “snowflake not of this world” in Lorne’s mind could be deemed a blasphemy against the sacred order.
Ryan closed his eyes, and the worst possibilities began to surface in his mind, beyond his control.
If Sera chose to mete out punishment… there would be no need to kill Lorne.
All the god would have to do was take back Lorne’s “capacity for understanding.” Imagine it: that clear-eyed child who could draw perfect straight lines walking out with vacant eyes—seeing words yet unable to read them, hearing speech yet unable to think, forever imprisoned in a wasteland of cognition.
At the thought, Ryan’s stomach churned.
If something like that happened, the Starcrown family’s wrath and retaliation wouldn’t even matter—Elise would go mad, the family would be thrown into turmoil. But he, Ryan, would never forgive himself. It was he who had pushed this child to the edge of the abyss with his own hands, all to satisfy a god’s cold curiosity.
“Come out, child… come out safe and sound.”
He prayed silently in the darkness, his fingers digging into the stone cracks from sheer force. Before that heavy wooden door, this powerful mentor felt true helplessness for the first time.
Before the authority of Atua, he didn’t even have the right to protect his apprentice.
—
The interior of the library was simpler than expected.
Towering bookshelves lined the circular walls, stretching upward and downward beyond sight. There were no candles, yet it wasn’t dark; the light seemed to seep from the pages themselves. The air smelled of paper, ink, and something cold and clean—like old knowledge freshly opened.
Someone was already waiting at the long table.
He looked like a human scholar.
A dark robe, a simple sash, neatly combed gray-white hair. His expression was gentle and attentive, as though always ready to listen to a question. He didn’t look young, nor did he appear old; his presence was deliberately tuned to be “just unremarkable enough.”
If Sera descended in a form closer to divinity, the gaze of the Sky God would fall immediately.
If He manifested His authority, it would be a direct violation of the God-King’s warning.
A suspension of direct contact with mortals—an order not meant to protect mortals, but to lure out the things that were beginning to stir.
Sera understood this.
And yet, He still came.
As the embodiment of knowledge, He could not refuse the unknown.
“Sit, Lorne,” Sera said.
The voice was not loud, but it landed clearly in the space, without echo.
Lorne sat.
He realized that he was in contact with a god.
Not through ritual. Not through a medium. Directly.
There was no oppression, no majesty—only an extremely pure sense of presence.
Like a book suddenly opening, every page filled with things you had never read, yet somehow already knew.
Sera did not speak at once.
He simply looked at Lorne.
That gaze held no warmth and no judgment, yet it was like an invisible ruler, measuring everything—from Lorne’s breathing, pulse, the faint fluctuations of his thoughts, to the fissure left in his cognition by that snowflake—one by one.
Lorne felt his heartbeat quicken, but it wasn’t fear.
It was the tremor of being completely seen.
Sera finally spoke, his tone as calm as a statement of fact.
“Tell me,” Sera said, “how did you know that pattern?”
Lorne didn’t hesitate.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“A dream,” he said.
That answer made Sera pause for the first time.
Not in surprise, but in calculation.
Dreams.
That meant Seren.
Sera’s thoughts unfolded rapidly: Were the boundaries of dreams thinning? Was information beginning to flow without order? Or was there something wrong with Seren himself—silent for too long, or awake too early?
For a brief moment, He even considered whether He should go directly to the Te Whare o ngā Atua Nui(The House of the Gods) and demand an emergency convocation.
But the conversation was not yet over.
The air changed.
Not with vibration or pressure, but with an extremely subtle sense of being watched. Like shadows suddenly sharpening for an instant under a clear sky.
The gaze of the sky had descended.
Sera acted immediately.
The space between the shelves was redefined; layers of knowledge overlapped and folded like pages.
Sera hid both Himself and Lorne within the inner structure of the library—this was His domain. He could do it.
The gaze swept past.
It did not strike directly.
However, Sera overlooked one thing.
Valian City was Vali’s holy city.
Any abnormal “gap,” even a momentary concealment, would be recorded, magnified, and scrutinized again and again.
The sky may not have seen them.
But He saw what should not exist—a blank.
In that instant, the authority system of the entire city began to adjust, silently, like a snake changing direction in the grass.
Sera noticed.
He showed no emotion, only murmured softly, as if to Himself:
“…As expected. Too conspicuous.”
Lorne remained seated, unmoving.
He didn’t know what had happened, but he would know—this meeting could no longer leave no trace.
Upon the throne, the Sky God opened His eyes.
It was not an action.
More like a shift of state.
In that moment, the sky became “readable.”
Not clouds, not light and shadow, but layers upon layers of causality, will, and possibility, spread out like an unfolded map, all existing at once within His vision. The world had no near or far—only clarity and obscurity.
His gaze swept across the land.
Cities were scattered like star clusters, lighting up and fading; the borders of kingdoms were not lines, but tensions being tested and eroded. A mortal life was no more than a brief pulse—birth, movement, choice, end—so continuous there was scarcely a pause.
The light of the gods was brighter.
The sun’s path was steady and confident; the depths of the sea churned with discontent and patience; dreams piled up at the boundaries like unorganized pages. The flow of knowledge should have been orderly, yet now there was a barely perceptible reversal.
He saw it.
Their meeting. Their hesitation. Their private motives and instincts hidden behind divine offices.
The covenant was like an old scar—no longer painful, yet still restrictive.
He also saw the shadows.
Probing from deeper dimensions, whispers not yet formed, schemes that didn’t even have names. They were cautious, avoiding light, avoiding order, avoiding being named.
Some of them concealed themselves deliberately.
Symbols broken, causality twisted, traces covered by dreams—some even borrowed the hands of gods to create legitimate noise.
He did not stop.
Concealment itself was not important.
The Sky God never demanded omniscience—only sufficiency.
As long as the world remained within His load-bearing limits, as long as the skeleton of order had not broken, those deviations, veils, and private actions were nothing more than dust in the wind.
His gaze passed over Valian City.
The holy city remained stable, the flow of authority precise as interlocking gears.
Then—for a single instant—there appeared a blank that should not exist.
Extremely brief.
Extremely small.
Like a punctuation mark that had been erased.
He saw it.
The vision spread across the world began to curl back, like countless pages being closed by an invisible hand, leaving only one page open.
That page was Valian City.
The holy city was magnified in His sight.
Not spatially, but in weight. Streets, towers, and temples surfaced one by one; the faith, oaths, and bloodlines flowing through the city wove into a dense net, layer upon layer, with hardly a gap.
And then, the blank appeared.
It belonged to no structure.
It bore no faith, answered no vow.
Like a small piece deliberately gouged out of a complete picture.
His gaze stopped there.
The world did not shake. The sky did not thunder.
But the weight fell.
Deep within the library, Lorne felt the change first.
The air grew viscous, compressed inward by an invisible hand. The light did not dim, yet it lost its warmth; the faint rustling between pages fell silent one by one, even the flow of time seeming to slow by half a beat.
Sera’s presence grew “heavy.”
Not fear. Not pain. But the pressure of being completely laid bare—the burden brought by the Sky God’s gaze.
Lorne could feel it.
That pressure did not fall directly on him, but like a transparent mountain pressing against the edge of Sera’s consciousness. The flow of knowledge slowed; every thought had to detour around that gaze, avoiding any unnecessary ripple.
No words.
The gaze only measured.
Measured whether the blank was expanding.
Measured whether it would affect the structure of the holy city.
Measured whether it was worth interrupting the established design.
Time lost its meaning.
And then—
The sky withdrew its gaze.
Not a sudden retreat, but like a receding tide. The weight lifted layer by layer, order dispersed again, and the world returned to its original scale. Valian City rejoined the stars, the blank rewrapped into the vast whole.
In the library, the air began to move again.
Lorne exhaled, only then realizing he had been holding his breath.
The pressure on Sera eased abruptly. Knowledge flowed once more, inferences reopening like a loosened string, still trembling from having been stretched to the limit.
Sera was silent for a while.
Not weighing right or wrong, nor calculating risk—but recording. Lorne could feel the difference: knowledge being sealed, archived, placed into a layer beyond mortal time.
Then Sera spoke.
“Our conversation ends here.”
His voice was calm, like placing a period at the end of a completed argument.
Lorne showed no confusion, only nodded.
Sera looked at him. The gaze was no longer that of a scholar examining material, but something closer to acknowledgment.
“You owe this world a future,” He said. “And I owe you a piece of knowledge.”
Lorne lifted his eyes.
Sera raised a hand. A sigil formed of pure concept briefly appeared in the air, then vanished, as though the necessary transfer had already been completed.
“The structure you created,” Sera continued, “will be submitted to the Church of Knowledge for full analysis, deconstruction, and verification. It will be officially registered, in your name, as a patented independent system.”
His tone was even, as if stating something entirely ordinary.
“All procedures, costs, and risks will be borne by the Church.”
“The proceeds will be yours.”
Lorne did not respond at once.
Sera added another line, as if filling in an overlooked condition.
“That income will be sufficient to support you—even if you lose the protection of the Star-Crown family—to live an entire lifetime without restraint.”
Not survival.
Indulgence.
Lorne’s fingers tightened slightly, then relaxed.
“In addition,” Sera said, “until you choose to make it public yourself, your identity will be completely concealed. All literature, records, and discussions will point only to an anonymous source.”
The light in the library did not change, yet Lorne felt the surrounding space loosen a little.
Sera looked at him and paused for a moment.
Not hesitation, but deciding whether to say it.
In the end, He did.
“One more thing.”
Lorne looked up.
“When the day comes that you perform a summoning ritual,” Sera’s voice dropped slightly, “if you choose to call—”
He did not finish the sentence.
The meaning was clear enough.
The library grew quiet again.
Sera’s figure began to fade, absorbed by the shadows between the shelves. He did not look at Lorne again, as though everything that needed to be delivered was already complete.
Only before disappearing entirely did He leave one final line.
“You don’t need to rush your choice, Lorne.”
“Knowledge will wait until you are ready.”
The light returned to its original place.
Lorne remained seated, unmoving for a long time.
He knew that from this moment on, some things could never go back.
And he, too, was no longer who he had been.
Divine Rank: Atua Whakapapa (Genealogical Deity / Derivative God)
Affiliation: Te Whare o ngā Atua Nui (The House of the Great Atua / The Great Hall of Gods)
Domains: Knowledge, Records, History, Writing, Understanding, Astrology, Preservation and Manifestation of Memory, Logic, and Prophecy.
-
The Scroll: The Ever-Unrolling Astral Scroll, symbolizing that knowledge is eternal and infinitely expanding.
-
The Torn Page: A single, detached leaf symbolizing that "knowledge is never complete, yet it must always be preserved."
-
The Quill: A silver-white feather quill, its tip forever dipped in starlight ink.
-
Te Tai o ngā Whetū (The Star-Track Records):
-
-
Ngā Hapa o te Tangata (The Errors of Mortality):
-
-
-
The Burden: Readers are overwhelmed by "endless frustration and self-reproach"; few can finish a single chapter.
-
-
Te Whārangi Kore (The Page of the Unknown):
-
-
Tapu (sacred restriction). Anyone attempting to force it open instantly loses the "ability to understand" forever.
-
Atua. She does not respond to mortals with anger or mercy, but only with Truth.
-
Philosophy: She believes "Ignorance is the ultimate chaos." Consequently, she treats all true seekers of knowledge equally.
-
The Equalizer: Whether it is a devout priest, a curious scholar, or a heretic seeking to topple order, if their desire to know is genuine, she will grant revelation.
-
The Sentence: However, she is ruthlessly strict. Those who gain knowledge only to abuse, distort, or willfully forget it are stripped of their "capacity for comprehension," leaving them trapped eternally in a state of confusion and cognitive static.
-
Primary Sanctum: The core of the Scholarly City of Gnosis—Te Whare o ngā Pukapuka Whetū (The Sacred Treasury of Astral Scrolls).
-
The Faithful: Mostly scholars, scribes, astrologers, navigators, and seers. They are characterized by a calm, rational demeanor and a deep-seated loathing for "wasteful ignorance."
-
Rituals: They do not burn incense or sacrifice animals. Instead, they offer "Newly Discovered Knowledge"—rare observations or solved enigmas—as their highest form of worship.
Te Whare o ngā Atua Nui