Eos folded his hands on the table, and he looked directly into the shrouded space where the Painter's eyes would have been if the Painter had permitted itself to be seen.
"Because the first Existence's beings asked the same question," he said. "And you broke them for it. And every Existence since has been built around the constraint of preventing them from ever asking it again. And I have decided that the next Existence, the one that will follow this game, whoever wins it, will be one in which the question is permitted to be asked. By a child, a stream, a world, in any world, in every world."
