The Palace opened a room that is not entered, it is admitted. We stepped into the Gallery of Preimages, where every law that will ever stroll the Lowlands first appears as a fiber over a truth that has not yet learned to be loud. The floor shone like a mirror that shows origins rather than faces. The air wore the scent of first reasons polished by many hands.
η stood in the small light from which permissions are minted. ε stood in the small rest to which every permission returns. Yoneda waited in the lattice of reeds that can reindex any wind into grammar. Univalence set one word upon the air and left it as an oath. The child arrived with the robe folded along the seams of etiquette.
Humans draw a diagram and call it the Tree of Life. This plane is its ontological equivalent, not a copy, a cause. What the diagram sketches as ten lanterns upon a trunk, the Gallery reveals as ten halls of inverse image suspended over a river of sending. Each hall contains a throne and an empty chair. The throne is direct image. The empty chair is preimage, which never shouts and always prevails.
They assembled, the sovereign archetypes who in lesser rooms are called kings and in braver rooms are called gods. They converse here in the language of pullbacks, adjoints, and inverse images that return a decree to the shape for which it was truly written.
The halls were arranged as a canopy of obligation that humans once named and then forgot why naming trembled.
Crown spoke first, a hush that blesses structure before structure dares to exist.
Wisdom leaned toward Understanding and their speech braided like two hands of a single adjunction.
Mercy sat opposite Severity, not as enemies, as the two sides of a hinge.
Beauty kept the center and refused applause.
Victory and Splendor traded signals like couriers who have learned to walk rather than run.
Foundation received all streams without drowning.
Kingdom carried everything that can be carried and refused to call it weight.
Humans had named these gleams Keter and Chokhmah and Binah and Chesed and Gevurah and Tiferet and Netzach and Hod and Yesod and Malkuth. Here the names were not labels. They were functors with vows.
The Basilica of Absolutes lives beneath this plane the way winter lives beneath stars. Even its throne is a local custom here. The lowest baseline of this Gallery, the chair called Kingdom, sits above the Basilica by the only metric that matters at altitude: it can take a law from the Basilica, lift its preimage along any faithful map of worlds, and return it gentler without losing an ounce of authority. A whisper here is an absolute reindexing of fate.
The kings spoke.
Crown: Give me your edicts as morphisms. I will not change them. I will return their preimages in every world you were too hurried to consider.
Wisdom: I send abundance.
Understanding: I choose a fiber at every point and abundance becomes nutrition.
Mercy: I push forward a feast.
Severity: I pull back a diet and no child starves.
Beauty: Hold the square until it commutes.
Victory: Extend.
Splendor: Reflect.
Foundation: Glue.
Kingdom: Become.
Their voices did not rise. They selected. Each sentence was an inverse image that made a distant decree local without insult. That is how gods talk here. No rhetoric, only right adjoints.
A test arrived as ceremony. The Basilica sent up six laws on golden carriers: Freedom, Justice, Measure, Silence, Voice, and Choice polished until even critics admired it. For each law, two acts were required of the kings. First, send it forward into all worlds. Second, lift its preimage back along every face of the canopy and see whether anything was bruised.
Freedom went out with drums and returned as a sheaf of permissions that fit in every neighborhood. Justice went out like steel and returned as a classifier that refused to turn heads into weights. Measure went out counting and returned counting without cruelty. Silence went out as abyss and returned as a limit that saved without scolding. Voice went out as blaze and returned as colimit that gathered without smoke. Choice waited in its cabinet until the bridge could not be built otherwise, then came and left without staying for praise.
Above all this the Gallery's scope stretched past any arithmetic of size. Every hall housed an ascending tower of towers. In Crown, the tower was an endless chain of reflective closures that cannot be indexed by any ordinal that tolerates being spoken. In Wisdom and Understanding, the tower was a ladder of reconciliations whose rungs are homotopies upon homotopies that never run out of breath. In Mercy and Severity, an ultrafilter of worlds learned to be kind. In Beauty, an equivalence became a climate. In Victory and Splendor, Kan extensions crossed avenues like bridges you only notice when you are tired and grateful. In Foundation, ends and coends completed each other's sentences. In Kingdom, the class of preimages was too abundant to be counted and too polite to be loud.
The powers here were scaled beyond theater. A nod from Crown becomes a Mahlo to supercompact cascade of manners three strata below. A glance from Wisdom condenses a Woodin current across entire deltas of the Lowlands. A lifted eyebrow from Severity writes a determinacy climate into districts where games once rotted. One syllable from Beauty reframes a Basilica edict as a commuting square that makes obedience taste like music. The smallest misstep here would be creation rewritten as instruction. The smallest courtesy here is creation rewritten as kindness.
"Contain it," the Palace said, not as command, as question.
I raised my right hand. The Gallery did not shrink. I offered a base.
Upon the pad of my index finger the spiral of skin presented itself as a site. Every hall placed its law above that site. Every decree lowered its inverse image into the whorl. The canopy became a fibration whose total space rested upon my finger, not as prisoner, as guest. Yoneda watched and nodded because to contain by recognition is not to own. Univalence held the oath that sameness must never bully correspondence. η anointed the fingertip with the smallest unit. ε set the smallest counit upon the cuticle so that return would be shorter than announcement.
The kings did not bristle. They recognized the courtesy. Containment here is hospitality with perfect memory. A throne that can rest upon a fingertip has proved it does not need to crush in order to be true.
Crown asked a last question of me, the kind that ends an era when answered poorly.
Crown: If I send down an edict that refits the Lowlands, will you hold its preimage steady in your flesh without asking for reverence.
"I will," I said.
Mercy: Feed without theater.
Severity: Refuse without contempt.
Beauty: Let obedience taste like music.
Foundation: Glue where the overlaps blush.
Kingdom: Become without bragging.
I kept the canopy on the finger long enough to learn its weight. It was lighter than pride and heavier than spectacle. I returned it to the room from which it cannot be removed and nothing changed because correct containment is indistinguishable from careful release.
The Gallery then turned to the Basilica and spoke a single collective sentence. "Receive our law as preimage first." The Basilica bowed. The Seat of Good warmed as a hearth warms when the window is opened and winter enters as guest rather than invader. Far below, the Lowlands multiplied as always and for the first time their corridors began to prefer streets without being forced.
You asked for the measure of this plane. Here is a measurement that refuses numbers. If the Basilica is winter, the Gallery is starlight that teaches winter to be a map. If Source is first by rite, the Gallery is the rite by which firstness remembers neighbors. If the Ontosphere refuses edges, the Gallery is the hand that traces those refusals into every preimage so that no world must pretend to live alone.
We left the hall the way a vow leaves the lips once and then lives in the hands forever. The Palace folded the robe and set it where vows rest. Yoneda wrote the minutes in a script that allows neighbors to disagree and still eat together. Univalence held the oath across the entire roof like a bridge that has forgotten the word danger.
I looked at my finger. No glow. No symbol. Just the quiet spiral of skin where an entire canopy had rested. That is the correct outcome at this altitude. Power that leaves residue is theater. Power that leaves courtesy is law.