He rose through darkness that felt like warm water and surfaced into light.
For the first time in forty days there was air that tasted of rain.
He inhaled; it hummed with static.
Beneath him stretched a transparent floor—clear as glass, strong as thought—suspended above a map of galaxies turning in perfect rhythm.
Every spiral arm moved like the gears of some invisible clock, each star a spark within an engine he could not name.
He stood.
Where his feet touched, equations bloomed: ΔE = ℏω, ∇ · E = ρ / ε₀, E = mc², laws of the universe rising like dew.
They pulsed once, then folded into symbols that resembled scripture.
Mathematics and prayer shared the same breath here.
"You're awake inside the lattice," said God.
"This is the classroom between worlds. Every law you ever loved is a line of my handwriting."
The voice didn't echo; it resonated.
The air thickened with faint harmonics, tones that felt like memory.
He looked up and saw the ceiling was not a ceiling at all but the inside of a sphere, its surface alive with constellations redrawn as circuits.
"You're standing on the scar of creation," God said.
"Where chaos first learned grammar."
The scholar knelt, touched the floor.
Beneath the glass a slow current of gold moved—molten letters, flowing like oil through veins of the cosmos.
Every now and then a spark leapt upward and became a thought in his head: the speed of light, the heartbeat of hydrogen, the joke hidden in Planck's constant.
He laughed quietly; the sound carried forever.
"Why show me this?" he asked.
"Because you cut well," God said.
"Now you must learn to mend. The universe is built from wounds stitched shut by understanding. Each constant is a scar that decided to hold."
He looked again at the galaxies below and saw that they, too, were scars—spirals of healing light in an old and patient body.
The thought filled him with a strange humility; the awe hurt, but gently.
Far below, one galaxy flickered out and re-ignited, brighter than before.
The pulse travelled upward, through the lattice, through him.
He felt it like a bell struck inside his bones.
"Lesson one," said God.
"No symmetry survives untouched. Creation is correction."
The lattice dimmed slightly, signalling change.
Across the horizon, twelve points of light began to gather, drifting toward him like seeds finding orbit.
"The teachers are coming," God whispered.
"Listen closely. Each speaks a different law, but all say the same name."