Salomeh stepped forward, upright, her gaze fixed on the Monitor.
"We are here to deliver a message…"
The Monitor raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
"Which one?"
"You are part of the Sovereign Monitors of this reality, aren't you? Then you certainly could not have ignored the appearance of the scale… the one that passed through several layers at once."
The Monitor brought a hand to his chin, his expression hardening.
"I have seen it, yes. We are already in communication with the other Monitors. Would you like to join our exchange?"
Salomeh shook her head, cutting that idea off immediately.
"That will not be necessary. We did not come for that… not now."
She was silent for a few seconds.
In her mind returned what Shylty had revealed to her: these gigantic scales had an unfortunate tendency to explode, fragmenting into billions of creatures which spread across countless space-times to sow undifferentiated chaos.
They were called the Abominables, because their mere appearance was enough to shatter a mortal's consciousness — sometimes even a spirit's.
Salomeh had never seen any, but she understood that would be her next stop.
The Monitor resumed, his voice oddly neutral:
"When we observed the scale… we immediately thought of Gijoth."
Salomeh, Bakuran, and Niyus⁵ exchanged a look, all three frowning.
The Monitor continued, his hands clasped behind his back:
"He was a Monitor, like us. He still is, in theory. But after losing a fight against a Deviant — Black Grief — several cycles ago, his ego was irreparably broken. He crashed into a Tree and… merged with it."
He paused.
"The result? The Tree devoured everything. It became a World-Tree, occupying an entire Sibylline Layer."
Bakuran furrowed his eyes further.
"A World-Tree?"
"Yes."
The Monitor nodded slowly, weighed down.
"By devouring everything, he absorbed life, causality, laws, notions, and even concepts of that layer. Nothing exists there anymore: no multiverse, no principles, no space, no time.
Just the Tree. Just Gijoth."
Niyus⁵ suppressed a shiver.
"And what did you do about it?"
The Monitor answered with cold simplicity:
"We froze it. We sealed the World-Tree in that layer, so it couldn't devour the others. This solution is not glorious, but it is… stable. For now."
Salomeh felt a weight fall in her mind.
A Monitor reduced to an entity so dangerous it had to be frozen in an entire layer…
And yet, even in this monstrous form, the World-Tree remained passive compared to what Raktabīja Rāvana's scale heralded.
The scale was only a tremor of the titan.
Gijoth, however, had been a total confrontation — and still had to be sealed.
Salomeh fixed her gaze on the Monitor, a worried furrow between her brows.
"To stop this Monitor turned World-Tree… you used the Sibylline Concepts?"
The Monitor gave a brief joyless laugh and shook his head.
"No. Even for us, manipulating a Sibylline Concept is neither simple nor without risks. A poorly wielded Concept can cause catastrophic consequences."
He gestured vaguely toward the shapeless expanse of the Realm, where the Concepts stood like masses of pure ideas.
"You've surely noticed: in the Sibylline Realms, these Concepts are carefully separated. This is no accident. Mixing them could lead to… let's say… complications.
A conceptual self-exchange, mutual annihilation, or even the complete collapse of a portion of realities."
Salomeh nodded slowly.
She now understood why Monitors, despite their proverbial arrogance, handled these entities with an almost sacred caution. They could do it, yes — but only at the cost of absolute control.
Manipulating several at once?
Madness. An act that could trigger chaos difficult even to conceptualize.
Only the Great Mythical Beings had the stability, essence, and authority necessary to wield these Concepts without everything tearing apart around them.
Salomeh also understood something else: despite their excessive pride, the Monitors indeed protected realities. They observed. They knew. They intervened when it became inevitable.
She and the others bowed their heads slightly in thanks.
Then, without another word, they turned away from the Monitor, the breach opening before them like a glowing scar.
Their next destination awaited:
the domain where the Abominables are kept, those creatures born from the scales of Raktabīja Rāvana.
A stop from which no one ever returned unchanged.
They emerged into a place that resembled neither a world, nor a space, nor even a layer of the Dream — but something stranger still:
an imaginary space, self-generated, accessible only to entities deemed incapable of posing a direct danger.
A kind of metaphysical airlock, perceptible only to those it tolerated.
Salomeh took a few steps, followed by Bakuran and Niyus⁵, when suddenly a colossal presence manifested before them.
A shirtless man had appeared, muscles sculpted by swirls of black ink that slithered over his body like living tattoos.
Isissis 3.
He smiled as he observed them, as if he had sensed their arrival long before they crossed the place's barrier.
"I felt vibrations in the air…" he said before fixing his gaze on Salomeh.
An even wider smile spread across his face.
"The Apostle of Morlük himself comes to visit us."
Salomeh did not answer. The place took care of it for her.
For here, every breath seemed to contain a millennial echo.
Isissis 3 advanced, tacitly inviting them to follow him.
"This place is a prison for mythical recalcitrants," he explained as he walked.
"It's infinitely vast. There will always be room to imprison those who threaten the order of the Dream."
They were in the domain of the Third Zone of the Dream of the Father God, a region ruled by two masters:
Isissis 3 himself
and Shylty 3, the silent sovereign of this original void.
Around them orbited other Great Mythical Beings, operating in shadow, watching over the balance of this entire dream level.
Niyus⁵ walked behind, uncomfortable.
He knew he normally would never have had the level to set foot here.
But his status as Bakuzan's apostle-prisoner granted him certain privileges — doors that otherwise would have shattered simply by sensing his existence.
Finally, Isissis 3 led them to a room unlike any other in habitable realities.
The Infinite Room.
A chamber woven by the collective consciousness of all the gods of this Zone, created for one purpose:
to detain, freeze, or condemn mythical recalcitrants forever.
When Salomeh and her companions crossed its threshold, they were immediately overwhelmed.
A disconcerting vision stretched before them.
Gods inspected endless rows of cells, each housing a mythical creature.
Ancient demons.
Deviants too unstable.
Entities who, once, had sought to spread chaos in the Sibylline Realms and beyond.
Some grates enclosed figures that no longer seemed to possess any definable form.
Others contained beings with burning eyes, creatures who had defied laws, concepts, dreams themselves.
Bakuran had stopped, mesmerized.
His gaze swept over the countless cells… then his face hardened.
He understood.
These creatures were not just prisoners.
They were condemned.
None of them would be allowed to continue existing.
They were too dangerous to be released into any reality.
Here, two outcomes existed only:
be erased…
or remain frozen for all eternity.
An eternity even gods sometimes turned their gaze away from.
They all knew they were going to die… or stay here forever. Some had already undergone their sentence, others still waited, motionless, resigned.
They were millions, suspended in this in-between, each waiting for their end.
When Bakuran scanned the room, several creatures turned their extinguished eyes to him.
Some showed an almost human gleam — a spark of sadness behind their dimmed pupils.
Their wrists were chained with metal forged from divine mana, yet it seemed they trembled… as if this time they feared dying for real.
Others showed nothing: the void, total indifference.
And a few smiled slyly, fully aware, as if they had already accepted their extinction.
Bakuran:
— "They almost make me feel sorry for them…"
Isissis 3 replied calmly:
— "They shouldn't. These creatures committed unimaginable atrocities across realities. If given the least chance, many would do it again without hesitation. They are dangerous… each one could plunge an entire reality into chaos."
He pointed ahead, indicating a dark corridor.
— "The Abominables' Quarter is further on. We couldn't allow mixing them with the others."
When they stepped into this sector, a heavy metallic smell filled the air.
It was a sinister, suffocating place, where misshapen creatures were locked in sealed cages.
Some had no heads.
Others were so thin their bones vibrated beneath their skin, as if starving for centuries.
Others still were nothing but a nightmarish assembly of living flesh:
viscous masses with gaping mouths on their backs, a single eye beating like a heart at the center of their bellies.
Bakuran narrowed his eyes.
— "So… this is what comes out of the massive scales of Raktabīja Rāvana when they explode?"
Isissis 3 nodded slowly.
Isissis 3 resumed, in a tone that left no doubt:
— "There are billions here. And all have only one goal: to unleash an apocalypse."
Salomeh, Bakuran, and Niyus⁵ widened their eyes, struck by the scale of the number.
Another voice echoed in the sector's darkness, grave, almost vibrating:
— "And the worst… is that each scale already contains billions of creatures.
Here, we have gathered the equivalent of sixteen scales.
Imagine, for just a moment, the number of beings trapped in this place."
All instinctively turned toward the voice's source — all except Isissis 3, who already knew who stood there.
It was Shylty 3.
His face entirely bandaged in black cloth, through which nothing showed — neither his eyes nor expressions.
His golden hair fell in smooth strands over his shoulders, contrasting with the divine armor he wore, marked with burning glyphs.
— "If you are here…" he said as he stepped forward,
— "…it is to help us face them, isn't it?"