He fell through mirrors until there were no reflections left to catch him.
When he landed, the world had been reduced to pure geometry—planes of light, lines of thought.
There was no horizon, no distance, only the feeling of being inside a single endless idea.
A whisper came from everywhere at once.
"Erase the noise," said God. "Find the kernel."
The light around him condensed into shapes that looked like his own faces—dozens, hundreds, each speaking at once: apologies, boasts, fears, old confessions.
Every sentence was a hook in his flesh.
He tried to answer them, but each word only made another echo.
The space filled with argument, and argument turned to static.
"Reduce yourself," God said. "Become the thing that listens."
The scholar began to unmake himself.
He let go of his name; it fell away like a scab.
He dropped his ambitions; they shattered into dust that glowed briefly and disappeared.
He released memory after memory until only sense remained—the feel of breathing, the warmth of pulse.
He reached for that last fragment too, ready to dissolve it.
The universe brightened, a glare too wide for thought.
For a moment he wasn't sure there was a him to notice the light at all.
Then, from nowhere, a pulse of resistance—a net, invisible but solid, catching him at the edge of extinction.
It was made of small things: the taste of water, laughter in another room, the sound of pencil on paper.
Human things.
He stopped.
He didn't know how he knew to stop, but he did.
"Not yet," he said.
"I'll do it on my deathbed."
Silence spread like dawn.
For the first time in days—or centuries—he heard his own heartbeat separate from the cosmic rhythm.
God's voice returned, softer.
"Silence isn't empty. It's full of what you've refused to hear.
Keep enough of yourself to listen."
He opened his eyes, and the geometry rippled.
Out of the lines stepped a figure made of smoke wearing all his forgotten selves as cloaks.
"You've built this prison," God said. "Shrink any smaller, and you'll vanish into its wall."
The scholar stared at the figure—his perfect, voiceless twin—and understood.
To be alive was to occupy space.
To take shape.
To risk friction.
"Don't shrink to fit," God continued. "You weren't built for corners."
The twin dissolved, leaving only a single thread of light that wound around his wrist like a pulse.
The infinite plain began to tilt, folding itself into a downward spiral.
Below, he saw what looked like a city built from towers of thought, their rooftops scraping the void.
"Next gate," God said.
"The Prophet of Towers. Build wisely, or watch your gods collapse."
The scholar inhaled, and the spiral pulled him down into the light.