– CHAPTER FORTY-ONE –

  INTRUDERS

  The impact made no sound, it passed judgment.

  Americ-Ana was spat out of the fissure and hit the ground hard, as if reality had lost its patience. The air went in wrong, her heart went wild, and the last image stayed nailed inside her head, Lacrimosa opening its mouth, the abyss swallowing everything, the universe with teeth.

  She tried to move and could not. Fear locked her body. It was pure post trauma. Her hands shook, her breathing came in short pulls, and her mind flickered between white and scream.

  Beside her, the GummyAir hovered low, steady, vibrating like a watchful animal that refuses to leave. It said nothing, but the "Fly" seemed to exist even in the silence, like a promise kept in reserve.

  Poppandacorn came down fast and went straight to Americ-Ana, urgent, far too small for the task, yet wholly inside it. His LED eyes projected readings, heartbeat, pressure, alert, and he touched Americ-Ana's wrist carefully, as if she were glass.

  "Mommy, look at Poppa." His voice came out shaky, but bossy, like an emergency protocol. "Breathe with Poppa. Slowly. Poppa takes care of you."

  Americ-Ana pulled in air. One. Then another. Two. Her throat burned. Her body began to release its locks little by little, as if returning from the bottom of a dark sea.

  Poppandacorn raised his little arm, still expecting to see the purple, and froze for half a second. His expression changed.

  "Mommy..." he whispered, and there was joy and disbelief mixed together. "Poppa's little finger is not glowing."

  Americ-Ana blinked for real. She looked at his finger. No purple. No pulsing. No guiding. The relief did not become peace, but it opened a slit of air inside her.

  "Gone?" she asked, her voice failing.

  "Gone." Poppandacorn confirmed, quickly, almost like someone giving a gift. "The cursed light... stopped."

  Americ-Ana braced a hand on the ground and rose slowly. That was when the place began to exist. Cave stone, rough and ancient, being invaded by polished white metal, cold and perfect, like a modern vault driven into a throat of rock. The silence there felt heavy, as if the entire structure were awake.

  She stared into the dark and squeezed Poppandacorn's little paw.

  "Poppa..." Americ-Ana whispered. "What place is this?"

  Americ-Ana kept Poppandacorn's hand trapped in hers for one second longer than she needed to, just to confirm that her body was still hers, and that the world had not ripped everything away.

  She took one step. Then another. The sound of her feet was small, dry, swallowed by the impossible mixture of stone and polished white metal. In some stretches, the rock seemed damp and alive, an ancient cave. In others, the metal was so smooth and clinical it made you want not to breathe near it. The contrast was not only visual, it was moral.

  The GummyAir floated beside her, keeping pace like a silent bodyguard. There was no wind there, but it vibrated lightly, as if always ready to catch a fall that had not happened yet.

  Poppandacorn raised his little finger again, just by reflex. No purple. He smiled faintly, trying to turn that into a psychological shield for Mommy.

  "Poppa is normal," he said, and the sentence sounded like a safety seal. "No cursed purple light."

  Americ-Ana nodded, but her attention was already on the space around them. The place had lines. It had cuts. It had intention. It was not just a hole. It was something built. A protected secret.

  She took a deep breath and asked, at last, in the way it hurt.

  "Poppa... where are we?"

  Poppandacorn tightened his little face for an instant, as if activating a serious mode. His LED eyes blinked with readings, incomplete maps, triangulation attempts in a place that seemed to hide even its own echo.

  "Mommy..." he said softly, and his courage trembled at the edges. "According to Poppa's sensors, we are inside the vault beneath the altar."

  The word "vault" entered Americ-Ana's chest like a new cold. She felt the memory of the sea of bones, the shadow of Lacrimosa, the shock of the beacon, everything trying to come back as nausea.

  "But Poppa..." she whispered. "Wasn't the original KING MatNat sphere supposed to be here?"

  Poppandacorn looked at her, then looked at the corridor ahead, and his answer was honest in the most dangerous way.

  "Poppa is not detecting any sphere here," he said. "Poppa is detecting... activity."

  Americ-Ana followed his gaze.

  Up ahead, the darkness was not empty. It was occupied. It was vast. And far away, at the bottom of that impossible vault, an irregular brightness pulsed, like reflection on metal, like sparks of labor, like life in motion.

  And only then, when her eyes began to distinguish shapes, did Americ-Ana catch her first glimpse.

  What Poppandacorn had called "activity" was not small movement. It was an entire world at work.

  Americ-Ana took a few more steps, and the space opened up, gigantic, as if the vault were a cathedral carved inside stone. The irregular rock formed an ancient womb around it, and embedded there within was polished white metal in beams, platforms, walkways, and structural rings, as if someone had driven clinical engineering into the heart of a cave.

  And at the center, the construction.

  It was not "a work site." It was a monument being born out of nothing with the haste of destiny. Broad foundations, columns being raised, walls climbing in geometric planes that seemed to want to reach a ceiling that did not even exist, and scaffolding occupying the air in layers, like the skeleton of an architecture being assembled while Americ-Ana watched.

  The most extraordinary thing was who was working.

  Thousands of demons.

  The demons moved like a colony, except it was a colony of nightmares. Some were too tall and too long, with arms like ropes and thin fingers holding bricks as if they were cards. Others were compact, muscular, with short thick horns, carrying buckets of mortar and concrete with insulting ease. There were creatures with glossy black skin like wet coal, others with skin pale as ash, cracked, with fissures leaking a warm glow from within, as if they had furnaces where blood should have been.

  Some demons flew with membranous wings, dirty feathered wings, wings that looked made of hardened shadow. They crossed the air carrying beams, ropes, tools, and descended at exact points as if obeying a blueprint no one had printed, but everyone knew. Others hammered, and the sound was not ordinary metal on metal, it was a dry "tac," repeated, a construction rhythm that made the vault seem alive. Others measured, pulling tapes that glowed as if numbers had been engraved in light. There were demons holding plumb lines, leveling stones, aligning columns with a precision that matched nothing infernal, and that was exactly why it was more frightening.

  And there was a smell. A smell of stone dust, cold metal, fresh mortar, and behind all that, a trace of sulfur so discreet it felt intentional, like the perfume of a threat.

  Americ-Ana stood still, swallowed by the scale. It was like watching a myth being built by hands that should not exist. The GummyAir floated closer, as if sensing her body leaning too far toward the abyss of curiosity. Poppandacorn rose a little onto his toes and ran quick readings with his LED eyes, trying to turn the impossible into a report.

  "Mommy..." he whispered, and his voice came out smaller than the place. "There are many demons here."

  Americ-Ana did not answer. She only looked. And the more she looked, the clearer and more absurd the idea became. This was not improvisation. This had command.

  Then a human voice cut through the noise of the construction, coming from somewhere ahead, firm and aggressive, like someone who accepts no intruders, not even in a dream.

  "Hey, you!"

  The human voice made the whole vault feel more dangerous than the demons.

  Americ-Ana took one step back on reflex, her body reacting before her mind. Poppandacorn moved in front of her at once, small and brave in the most absurd way, spreading his little arms as if he could become a wall.

  "Mommy, stay behind Poppa," he said, and the sentence came out like an order and a prayer at the same time.

  The GummyAir hovered beside them, higher now, closer, as if ready to rip both of them out of there at the first sign.

  The voice came again, nearer, with the irritation of someone used to giving orders even in hell.

  "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

  Between the scaffolding and the traffic of creatures, a human silhouette began to stand out. A man was walking toward them with controlled haste, weaving around demons as if all of that were only logistics. He was not running, but he was not hesitating either, like someone who had already seen worse things and decided fear was a waste of time.

  Americ-Ana tried to speak and her throat locked. The post trauma was still in her, but now it came mixed with a new kind of panic, the social panic of being in the wrong place before the wrong person.

  "Calm down," she whispered to herself, and it did not help.

  The man kept coming closer. Even from a distance, it was possible to make out the scientist's uniform, pale fabric, clean cuts, details that looked like laboratory, not bunker. His face was still hard to see because of the contrast of light, but his posture was clear. Authority.

  Poppandacorn looked at him with his LED eyes blinking, analyzing him as if he were a threat and a patient at the same time. His little arms remained spread open.

  "Mommy..." he repeated, without taking his eyes off the man. "Behind Poppa."

  The man stopped a few meters away, evaluating the two of them as if he were fitting an unexpected piece into a plan that was already in motion.

  "I asked who you are," he said, and his voice was dry, but not hysterical. It was the voice of someone who had power there, and knew it.

  Americ-Ana took a deep breath, pulled a piece of courage from the place where the purple had vanished, and answered in the only way that made sense in that universe.

  "I am a KING MatNat player."

  The man did not seem impressed by the sentence. He seemed interested, which, in that place, felt worse.

  "A KING MatNat player..." he repeated, as if testing the taste of the words. "That explains some things."

  Americ-Ana kept her body rigid, trying not to show how much she was still trembling inside. Poppandacorn remained in front of her, his little arms spread open, like a stubborn plush shield. The GummyAir hovered beside them, silent, alert.

  The man tilted his head, assessing. His gaze passed over Americ-Ana, then Poppandacorn, then the GummyAir, and returned to her with the organized coldness of someone who had already seen the impossible and put a label on it.

  "Interesting," he said. "With you here, you are already the second unexpected visit."

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach tighten.

  "Second?" she asked, automatic, already hating the word.

  The man nodded, and his tone grew more serious, less curious.

  "Before you, a man came," he said, glancing toward the construction in the background as if all that were only scenery. "Grim. A courtroom stare. And he had a birthmark on the left side of his face."

  The sentence had not even finished echoing before it had already turned into a blade.

  Poppandacorn's LED eyes widened, and his voice came out in an alarmed whisper, as if memory had bitten.

  "A birthmark... on his face?"

  Americ-Ana looked at him. Poppandacorn looked at her. And, for one second, both of them said the same thing, without planning it, as if the name were an instinct.

  "Patron Uvo."

  The man did not react with surprise. He reacted like someone confirming a hypothesis.

  "So you know," he said, and his voice carried a strange weight, as if the mere mention of the name made the air denser. "Excellent. That saves time."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard. She studied that man's face more carefully now, the pale clothing, the technical way he moved, the posture of a laboratory inside hell. And an uncomfortable feeling grew, like memory trying to fit a face she had already seen in another context, in another kind of reality.

  She squeezed Poppandacorn's little paw, feeling her own pulse quicken again, and asked with the courage she had left.

  "Who are you?"

  The man held her gaze as if the question were legitimate, but inconvenient.

  "Who I am is not what matters most right now," he said, with controlled calm. "What matters is where you are. And what is happening here."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard, still trying to keep her body steady behind the plush shield.

  "Then tell me," she said, pointing with her chin toward the absurdity in the distance. "What is all this?"

  The man turned his face toward the construction, and for an instant his manner became almost reverent, like someone speaking an ancient name.

  "It is a temple," he replied. "The most famous and coveted one that ever existed. A place that crosses generations and still makes people tremble just from hearing the title."

  He started walking toward the construction site as if it were the most normal thing in the world to stroll through an organized hell. Americ-Ana went with him, with Poppandacorn glued to her, and the GummyAir hovering at her side, following every step.

  "And why build a temple down here?" Americ-Ana asked, feeling the question leave her with anger and curiosity mixed together.

  The man pointed upward, not toward a ceiling, because there was no ceiling, only an "above" that seemed to exist by rule.

  "Because up there is the Solomon Coliseum's 'X'," he said. "The point where everything begins. Pacts. Apparitions. Offerings. Seractcubes meeting. Decisions that bend the game and sometimes bend reality."

  Americ-Ana felt a shiver, because it made a kind of sense she hated.

  "This place is a knot," he continued, gesturing like a scientist and a priest at the same time. "A crossing of force. If you prefer an old metaphor, call it ley lines. If you prefer a modern one, think of it as a resonance point, an intersection where energy and information circulate with less resistance."

  He looked at the columns being raised and added, practical.

  "In ordinary engineering, vibration already speeds up work. Concrete is compacted with vibration to become denser, stronger, quicker to stabilize. Now imagine a place where reality itself vibrates, where pacts open fissures and Seractcubes align like living compasses." His voice dropped lower. "Here, construction does not merely rise. It is pushed by the field."

  Americ-Ana stopped for half a second and frowned, because she heard a sound that did not belong with hammer and stone. A heavy metallic drag, like chains moving somewhere.

  "Did you hear that?" she asked, tense.

  The man did not even blink.

  "I heard nothing," he replied, simply, as if the sound were something in her head.

  Americ-Ana did not like the answer. The whole place did not look like "something in her head."

  She took a deep breath and pulled on the subject that had been burning ever since Poppandacorn said "vault beneath the altar."

  "Poppa said this was where the original KING MatNat sphere was kept," Americ-Ana said. "Is it here?"

  The man shook his head.

  "The sphere was taken elsewhere, to safety," he said. "And, to reinforce this sector, they brought in an Ophanim."

  Americ-Ana felt her blood turn to ice. The word "Ophanim" carried the weight of a courtroom and a nightmare.

  "An Ophanim?" she repeated, quietly. "Why that much?"

  The man looked at her as if he were about to open a door that is not opened for just anyone.

  "Do you know what a Jump Kairos Trip is?"

  Americ-Ana froze.

  The name came to her mind like delayed lightning, because the question was not "technical." It was a signature. It was a password.

  "Jump Kairos Trip..." she repeated, and her voice came out low, as if the vault were listening. She looked at the man again, his manner, the cold authority, the calm of someone who walks through the impossible as if it were a laboratory corridor.

  And the memory clicked into place.

  "I knew it," Americ-Ana whispered, and her eyes widened. "I knew I recognized you..."

  Poppandacorn turned his little face toward her, alert.

  Americ-Ana drew in a breath, like someone about to speak a heresy.

  "You are King Solomon."

  The man did not deny it. He merely inclined his head, accepting the name as if it were an old weight.

  "You saw me before," he said. "But you did not see me as myself."

  Americ-Ana frowned, confused and indignant at the same time.

  "I was in your palace," she replied. "With my friends. In the KING MatNat History Museum. Through the Jump Kairos Trip."

  King Solomon walked a little farther, gesturing as he spoke, as if stitching science and myth into the same point. Around them, demons crossed the air with beams and buckets, hammers striking, ropes pulled taut, the construction ignoring the conversation as if time there were another thing entirely.

  "The Jump Kairos Trip is not a window," he said. "It is a forge of visits."

  Americ-Ana squeezed Poppandacorn's little paw, as if that were the only truly reliable object in that place.

  "What you saw in the museum was a variable," Solomon continued. "A projected reality, individual, shaped by your presence. Even when ten people visit 'the same coronation,' each one falls into a different version. The real event exists, but the Jump Kairos Trip, by touching it repeatedly, creates branches. Similar scenes, not identical."

  Poppandacorn lifted his little face, curious, trying to follow, the LEDs in his eyes making small maps as if he wanted to draw the explanation in the air.

  "So... I saw a copy?" Americ-Ana asked, still suspicious.

  "You saw a reenactment," Solomon replied. "But the secret is this, and this is why this temple is being reborn."

  Americ-Ana frowned, because the phrase "temple being reborn" hurt like an incomplete clue.

  "Reborn why?" she asked, still trying to keep courage inside her body. "If the sphere was taken somewhere else... what are you trying to do down here?"

  Solomon held her gaze for a moment, as if deciding how much of that secret could fit inside a teenager without breaking her from within.

  "You think the sphere is the end," he said. "But the sphere, by itself, is only a vessel. An empty chalice. A symbol that lights nothing."

  Poppandacorn tilted his little head, attentive, the LEDs in his eyes blinking in serious mode, as if that sentence were first aid instructions for the soul.

  "What gives the sphere power," Solomon continued, "is not the metal, nor the shape, nor the name. It is the Glory of God. It was the Glory of God that descended, that manifested, that burned the air, and that transformed the sphere into dominion. Without the Glory of God, you can hold the sphere in your hand and still be holding only silence."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard. The words "Glory of God" fell into place like a piece that fits and terrifies.

  "And today," she ventured, "that does not happen anymore?"

  "Today," Solomon said, and his voice grew rougher, like stone scraping, "THE-IMPERIUM has the original sphere. But it does not have the completeness."

  Americ-Ana felt the back of her neck go cold.

  "There are only 71 seals," Solomon said. "One is missing. And without the full set, the path does not close. Without the full set, the final door does not open."

  "One of the seals was stolen," he added, unhurried, like someone pronouncing an ancient sentence.

  Americ-Ana and Poppandacorn looked at each other at the same instant, as if the name had already been waiting behind both their eyes. And they spoke at the same time, as if the sentence were a reflex.

  "Rabbi Worse Devil stole the seal of Astaroth."

  Solomon did not seem surprised.

  "Yes," he said. "And without the 72, the game is amputated. Without the 72, you do not reach Lucifer. The path demands the complete circle, and when one piece is missing, reality itself treats it as a failure."

  Poppandacorn squeezed Americ-Ana's hand hard, as if he wanted to keep her heart from falling again.

  "Then why build the temple?" Americ-Ana asked, her voice coming out lower. "What does that solve?"

  Solomon turned his face toward the construction site and answered like someone explaining something far too simple to be comforting.

  "Because THE-IMPERIUM is not trying to 'find' the missing seal," he said. "It is trying to repeat the instant when the Glory of God descended. And when the Glory of God descends, it does not come because of an object. It comes because of the right place, the right arrangement, the right address in the fabric of the world."

  He made a short gesture in the air, as if sketching an invisible logic.

  "Think of it this way, child," Solomon continued, didactic, firm. "The sphere is like a lamp. But a lamp commands no one without electricity. The Glory of God is the current. It is the living fire. It is what turns the light on. And it was when that light came on that I held dominion over the 72 demons, over the seals, over what men call the impossible."

  Americ-Ana felt her chest tighten, because suddenly the entire construction seemed more threatening than grand.

  "So they want God to appear again," she whispered, almost without air.

  "They want the Glory of God," Solomon corrected, with precision. "They want the manifestation. They want the same weight in the air. They want the same shock in reality. Because if the Glory of God manifests here again, the sphere stops being an empty chalice and becomes dominion again. And complete dominion means 72. It means a new closed circle. It means a path remade."

  He pointed at the construction, at the columns rising, at the blocks being set with almost insulting precision.

  "In exceedingly rare trips, a variable is not entirely holographic," he said. "In exceedingly rare trips, the Jump Kairos Trip touches the real core of the past and... a true fragment appears in the middle of the simulation."

  Americ-Ana felt a shiver.

  "A true fragment," she repeated.

  "A cup," Solomon said. "A brick." "A fiber of cloth." "A grain of sand." His voice dropped lower, but it did not lose its thread. "It is not a replica. It is not a projection. It is the original."

  Poppandacorn opened his mouth into a small "o," almost a sigh.

  "And can it be taken?" Poppandacorn asked, the way someone asks whether lightning can be kept in a pocket.

  Solomon looked at him as if he respected the simplicity of the question.

  "It can," he said. "And it has a price."

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach tighten.

  "A heist... only temporal?" she whispered, making the analogy like someone remembering a crime.

  "Yes," Solomon confirmed. "The extraction ruptures the purity of the instance. Sometimes it invalidates the trip. Sometimes it collapses the entire scenario. But the true element remains. And when you understand that... you understand the madness being carried out here."

  Solomon extended his hand toward the temple.

  "Every part you see is the result of trip after trip," Solomon said. "Piece by piece. From block to dust. From ornament to foundation. Because this temple is not only form. This temple is a sum of originals."

  Americ-Ana stared at the construction again, and the scale gained another kind of horror, an intelligent horror.

  "So you... rebuilt the original Temple of Solomon... I mean... your temple?" she said slowly, as if the words would not fit in her mouth. "Grain by grain?"

  Solomon nodded.

  "And collecting is not enough," he continued. "It has to be raised in the right place. At the right knot." He pointed upward again, toward the "X" that existed as idea and magnetism. "The line. The intersection. The point where pacts were proposed and Seractcubes aligned like living instruments. Here, reality vibrates. Here, the past accepts touching the present with less resistance. Here, the original has a chance to behave like the original."

  Americ-Ana fell silent for a few seconds, absorbing everything like someone swallowing a constellation.

  Poppandacorn squeezed her hand, softly, like an anchor.

  "Mommy..." he whispered. "This is very big."

  "I know," Americ-Ana replied, and her voice came out almost without air. "This is too big."

  Solomon started walking again, guiding them without haste, as if it were natural to take someone for a walk inside a criminal miracle. Americ-Ana went with him, still watching the demons at work, hypnotized and afraid, as if her mind were trying to choose between faith and panic.

  That was when the polished white metal gave way to a finishing area, and something immense appeared at the side of the worksite, round, heavy, with the dark sheen of unfinished bronze.

  Americ-Ana stopped, her eye caught on it.

  "This..." she murmured. "Is it a pool?"

  Solomon did not even seem offended by the question. He only looked at the bronze structure as someone recognizes an ancient symbol, and answered with an almost irritating calm.

  "It is not a pool."

  Americ-Ana blinked, her heart still trying to reorganize itself after Lacrimosa, after the universe blinking. She took one step, then another, obeying his gesture more than her own courage. Poppandacorn stayed glued to her side, as if he could hold reality together with his little paws. The GummyAir hovered beside them, silent, alert, floating low as if it too were showing respect.

  The bronze was too large to look like an object. It looked like a piece of world being assembled.

  The first thing Americ-Ana saw was the rim. Still unfinished, still marked by casting, with some sections polished and others raw, as if the metal were in the middle of becoming sacred. The inside was empty, only the echo of her own gaze.

  The second thing Americ-Ana saw was what held the whole thing up.

  Twelve bronze oxen.

  Or bulls, or something between the two, because the exaggeration of the muscles made each one look like a statue built to bear more than weight, built to bear destiny. They too were still in the finishing phase, with visible joints, tool marks, parts still dull. But even incomplete, they had presence, like sentinels of an ancient rite.

  Americ-Ana stood staring, unable to decide whether it was beautiful or offensive.

  "This is the Bronze Sea," Solomon said. His voice shifted a little, as if the word carried a personal memory. "Some call it the Molten Sea."

  Americ-Ana frowned.

  "Sea?" she asked. "But it's dry."

  "Because it is still being born," Solomon replied, simply. He touched the rim with two fingers, like someone testing the temperature of a past that had returned. "When it is ready, it will be filled with water. And not for swimming, nor for play. For preparation."

  Poppandacorn looked inside, curious, and then looked at the oxen again, counting in silence. The LEDs in his eyes blinked as if his mind were putting everything in order.

  "Twelve," he whispered, more to himself than to the others.

  Solomon nodded, and then pointed, indicating the orientation of the oxen.

  "Three facing north. Three to the east. Three to the south. Three to the west," he said, as if reciting an architecture that was also a law. "Four directions. Twelve supports. The whole world around it sustaining the rite."

  Americ-Ana walked slowly around it, realizing that it had not been placed there carelessly. Even down there, in that hybrid vault of cave stone and polished white metal, the logic of "positioning" existed, and it was rigorous.

  "The Bronze Sea stands in the courtyard, not in the closed center," Solomon continued. "It stands before. At the threshold. Where you are still too human for what comes next."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard. The word "threshold" sounded far too wrong in that place, as if the vault beneath the altar were an altar beneath the altar.

  "And what is it for?" she asked, and the question came out with a naked honesty. Her mind needed to know the purpose, because without a purpose, that would turn into pure delirium.

  "Purification," Solomon replied. "The priests washed their hands and feet. It was the practical passage between the common and the sacred. You do not come near the center carrying the dirt of the world on your body and in your intention. You cross clean, or you do not cross."

  Americ-Ana looked into the empty, dry interior of the Bronze Sea and, for one second, imagined water there, not as a pool, but as a barrier, as a rite, as a warning. The rim had a design that recalled something floral, almost as if the bronze wanted to pretend at delicacy, even while being weight.

  "And why call it a 'sea'?" she insisted, because that word would not let go of her chest.

  Solomon looked into the vessel, as if seeing water where there was none yet.

  "Because sea is frontier," he said. "Sea is passage. Sea is that which separates. Before the center, you cross the sea."

  The sound of the demons working around them never stopped. Hammers, the drag of load chains, the dull thud of pieces being set in place. The construction breathed in the rhythm of a city. And even so, there, beside the Bronze Sea, Americ-Ana felt she was standing before something that was not only construction. It was intention.

  Americ-Ana pulled her gaze away from the Bronze Sea's twelve oxen and looked at the thousands of demons flying and hauling materials as if they were laborers in a well organized hell.

  The next question came on its own, inevitable, because it carried venom and fascination at the same time.

  "King Solomon..." Americ-Ana said, slowly. "Did you really have their help? Did you have the demons' help?"

  Solomon did not answer at once. He only looked at the worksite the way one looks at a memory that never grew old. Around them, the demons kept carrying weight, setting blocks, tightening ropes, measuring angles, flying in short, efficient lines. The noise was constant, yet it seemed far away, because his answer, when it came, cut through everything like a blade.

  "I did."

  Americ-Ana felt her chest tighten. It was not pure fear, it was that horrible mixture of fear and curiosity, the kind of curiosity that makes a person step closer to fire knowing it will burn.

  "I remember it as if it had just happened," Solomon continued, and his voice grew deeper, less "scientist" and more "king," as if history itself were a mantle he put on without effort. "In that time... the God of Israel came to me."

  Poppandacorn went still, as if even his circuits had held their breath.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Jehovah," Solomon said. "Yahweh. The one and true God, as I knew Him."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard, attentive to everything King Solomon was saying.

  "God gave me the sphere," Solomon said, pointing to the temple being raised again as if the gesture itself were proof. "The KING MatNat sphere."

  Americ-Ana felt the word "sphere" strike inside her with physical weight, as if she had seen its shadow somewhere in a corner of her own destiny.

  "With the KING MatNat sphere... I had dominion," Solomon continued. "Not dominion of speech. Dominion of command. Dominion of seal."

  Poppandacorn's eyes blinked, and he raised his little paw without noticing, as if counting.

  "Seventy-two?" he whispered.

  "Seventy two," Solomon confirmed, and the number rang like a bell. "I summoned the 72 demons. I brought them under my dominion. One by one. Interrogation by interrogation."

  Americ-Ana frowned, holding her breath.

  "Interrogation?" she repeated.

  Solomon made a short gesture with his hand, as if remembering a closed room, a circle on the floor, an air heavy with sulfur and truth.

  "I forced them to speak," he said, simple, without ornament. "And they spoke."

  The demons around them did not seem to react to his words, but Americ-Ana felt something worse than reaction, she felt normalcy. As if that were an old contract still in force.

  "The 72 demons taught me," Solomon continued, and his gaze traveled across the columns, the bases, the rising geometry. "Not only the technique of this construction, but the secrets of the world. Measures. Proportions. Rhythms. Names. Correspondences. Things men pretend do not exist until the day they appear and change everything."

  Poppandacorn drew in a little, instinctive, but not out of cowardice. Out of respect. He seemed too small before that scale.

  "And that was how I became..." Solomon stopped for an instant, as if he were ashamed to say it, or as if pride itself were something he had already paid for, with interest. "...the richest and wisest man of all time. With the most prosperous kingdom."

  Americ-Ana said nothing. Her mind ran to the word "prosperous" and to the image of the demons around them carrying stone like those carrying a sentence.

  "Because my God gave me authority," Solomon concluded. "And because the KING MatNat sphere obeyed. And because the seventy two demons obeyed."

  Solomon opened his hand toward the entire worksite, as if presenting a living proof of what he was saying.

  "They are here now," Solomon said, and the sentence carried neither pride nor guilt, only fact. "Working, as they promised. As they were compelled."

  Americ-Ana felt a shiver climb the back of her neck, because the way he said "compelled" was far too calm.

  Then Americ-Ana remained silent, looking at the worksite the way one looks at a wrong miracle. The sound of tools, the beating wings, the blocks being fitted into place, everything seemed like an organism working, breathing, accelerating. She was about to say something, but the sentence died before it was born, because a shadow passed too fast overhead, and a rough voice cut through the noise like an instinct warning.

  "Watch out down there!"

  The shout came from somewhere above, mixed with the noise of the worksite, and Americ-Ana only had time to lift her face before understanding. A brick, large and dark, was plunging in free fall, spinning through the air like a verdict.

  Her body froze, not from stupidity, but from post trauma. Her mind was still one second behind the danger, as if fear needed subtitles before it could react.

  Poppandacorn threw his little arms open in an absurd reflex, trying to become a shield with a body far too small.

  "Mommy, Poppa..."

  He did not have time to finish.

  Solomon moved.

  It was fast, sharp, without a hero's pose. He yanked Americ-Ana to the side with surprising strength and, in the same motion, turned his body, placing himself between her and the falling brick. The brick passed scraping the air, and hit the ground with a heavy sound, breaking into a rain of fragments.

  Americ-Ana felt the impact in her chest as if it had struck her. Her breath came short, wrong. She looked at the shattered brick and then at Solomon, trying to process that he had, in fact, saved her life.

  Poppandacorn was trembling, clinging to Americ-Ana's leg, the LEDs in his eyes blinking on alert. He wrapped his little paws around her waist as if he were hugging the world.

  "Mommy, Poppa is here. Poppa takes care of you," he whispered, and his voice was an anchor.

  The GummyAir hovered closer, vibrating low, as if it had taken offense at the idea of letting her fall again.

  Solomon let his breath out slowly, like someone who had seen too many dangers to make a spectacle of it. But when he straightened again, Americ-Ana saw the detail that froze her spine in a way different from fear.

  On Solomon's ankle.

  There was something fastened there.

  It was not an iron chain. It was not an ordinary shackle. It was an ethereal lattice of light, branching, like tree roots made of light, thick enough to seem impossible, alive enough to seem conscious. The structure split into filaments and then joined itself again, pulsing at slow intervals, as if it breathed with him.

  Americ-Ana lowered her gaze and followed the lattice. It did not end in him. It stretched across the ground and through the air in multiple directions, branching like a nervous system, and each branch seemed to find a destination. One demon carrying stones, another hammering, another measuring, another flying with a bucket, all of them, all of them, connected by some branch of that same light.

  Americ-Ana's eyes widened.

  "King Solomon..." she murmured, feeling her throat go dry. "Are you... trapped? Trapped to all these demons? Trapped in THE-IMPERIUM?"

  Solomon looked at his own ankle the way one looks at an old scar. Then he let out a short laugh, almost a breath, and the laugh held no humor. It held acceptance.

  "I am," he said, with brutal simplicity.

  Americ-Ana looked again at the luminous lattice and then at the demons, and understood the scale of what she was seeing.

  That was not only his prison.

  It was a collective prison. A binding of will. A pact turned into infrastructure.

  And in the middle of that impossible worksite, with demons laboring and the temple rising, Americ-Ana felt she had arrived in the kind of place where even freedom was a negotiated detail.

  Americ-Ana kept looking at the luminous lattice, and the more she followed its branches with her eyes, the more the entire worksite seemed to share a single pulse, as if the construction were breathing along with that prison.

  "But why?" she asked, her voice low, without accusation, only shock. "Why accept this?"

  Solomon lifted his face and looked at the temple being raised as one looks at an inevitable destiny. There were a thousand sounds around them, hammers, wings, stones, ropes, but in him there was a particular silence, the silence of someone who has already spoken with things too vast to be denied.

  "Because I learned early, from the 72 demons," he said, "that the universe does not move in a straight line."

  He lifted his ankle just a little, enough for the light to react, and the lattice answered with a slow glow, almost irritated, as if it were aware of the attention.

  "There are the 7 Laws of the Universe. And within them, there is one Law," Solomon continued, and the word "Law" came out with weight, as if it were a block of stone. "The Law of Rhythm."

  Americ-Ana frowned, listening.

  "What rises... falls," Solomon said, and pointed to his own chest, as if the sentence had already happened there inside him. "What expands... contracts. Everything goes and returns. Everything swings. Like a pendulum."

  His hand traced an arc in the air, simple, didactic, and the gesture matched the entire worksite. Ropes going and coming. Demons crossing the space in repeated trajectories. The temple rising in layers, as if obeying an invisible tempo.

  "I lived the glory," Solomon said, and for the first time his voice turned darker. "I lived the impossible that a man can live without going mad."

  He began to list it as if opening a book he did not want to reread, but had to.

  "I heard the secrets of the Celestial Monarchy and the Infernal Monarchy. I interrogated kings and princes of the abyss. I saw angels up close. I saw the weight of God's name crush the air. I felt the KING MatNat sphere burn like a sun inside my hands. I was the richest man, the wisest, the most feared, the most celebrated."

  He stopped for an instant, and his face, for half a second, looked like the face of someone who had once been loved too much by an entire people.

  "And then," he continued, lower, "the pendulum returned."

  Solomon looked at the luminous lattice on his own ankle without anger. Without shame. Without theatrics.

  "I do not resist," he said. "Because resisting only drives the pendulum harder. I know how it works. I know that everything I lived has another face. And now I live the misery."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard. The image of him there, trapped, surrounded by demons, in that vault, in that place, struck her like a cosmic irony.

  "So you accept... being a prisoner?" she asked, still unable to believe it.

  Solomon shrugged, almost gently.

  "I accept the rhythm," he replied. "I do not know how this prison ends. I do not know when. But I know it ends. Because the pendulum does not stay forever on only one side."

  Poppandacorn clung tighter to Americ-Ana's leg, as if that conversation carried too much weight for a small body. He whispered, trying to make it fit inside his heart.

  "Mommy... so the king is... waiting for the pendulum to come back."

  Americ-Ana did not answer. She only looked at the luminous lattice one more time, and felt a strange shiver, because she realized that Law was not only about Solomon.

  It was about everything.

  And, in that worksite of demons and stone, the universe really did seem to swing.

  The worksite kept pulsing, but Americ-Ana noticed the change before she understood it. It was not in the general noise, which stayed constant, it was in a detail, a strange pause between sounds, as if someone had stepped out of rhythm.

  Solomon felt it too.

  He stopped speaking in the middle of his own thought, his gaze hardening, his head turning slightly, like someone who recognizes danger not by the noise, but by the intention behind the noise.

  "Did you hear that?" Americ-Ana asked, and her voice came out low, tense.

  Solomon narrowed his eyes, listening past the hammer blows, past the wings, past the dragging stone.

  "I did," he said, and his tone was dry. "It is not from the worksite."

  Poppandacorn drew in against Americ-Ana's arms as if the word "did" were a threat. The GummyAir hovered closer, vibrating in a low, protective hum, as if trying to take up space between them and the world.

  Then it came again. A sound that did not belong to construction. A sound of arrival. Of someone stepping with decision, someone who did not need to ask for passage.

  Solomon let out a breath with a calm that seemed rehearsed by hell.

  "It seems we have company," he said. And the way he said "company" made Americ-Ana feel ice inside. "And look at that... the first unexpected visit."

  Americ-Ana blinked, confused, trying to make it fit.

  "The first?" she repeated.

  Solomon inclined his face, and the ethereal light of the lattice on his ankle pulsed at a slow interval, as if it too were listening.

  "The grim man," he said, almost without emotion. "Birthmark on the left side of his face. He came to discuss Adoniram's Gift."

  Americ-Ana and Poppandacorn looked at each other at the same instant, as if the sentence had been a physical trigger.

  "Patron Uvo," the two of them said, almost together.

  Poppandacorn trembled and clutched her clothes tightly.

  "Mommy... it is the bad man," he whispered, his voice small and terrified. "The man who kicked Poppa in the butt. Poppa is scared."

  Americ-Ana felt her heart speed up, and for one second the post trauma tried to come back, that delay between noticing and reacting. Only this time she reacted. Fast. Because fear, in that world, was the kind of thing that killed you if you let it turn you into a statue.

  "Poppa, stay with me," she said, firm, and adjusted his little body higher against her chest. "Focus. Look at me. We are going to hide."

  She looked around like someone searching for a fissure in fate itself, and the Bronze Sea was right there nearby, enormous, unfinished, a colossus of metal without water, an open mouth waiting to be filled.

  Americ-Ana pointed with her chin, quick.

  "There. In the Bronze Sea," she whispered. "We are getting in there."

  The GummyAir floated into position, obedient, ready to be ground and escape at the same time.

  Solomon did not argue. He only made a short gesture with his hand, as if accepting the plan with the urgency of someone who knew the price of being visible.

  "Hurry," he murmured.

  Americ-Ana climbed onto the GummyAir in a single motion, holding Poppandacorn tight, and the living board glided low, close to the ground, avoiding drawing attention. The luminous lattice around Solomon's ankles stretched out, branching, and Americ-Ana felt one second of irrational panic that it might pull too much light up toward them, but the confusion of the worksite itself seemed to swallow the glow.

  They reached the Bronze Sea.

  Up close, it was even more absurd. A giant of metal, thick rimmed, dark inside, without water, smelling of new bronze and unfinished construction. The base, with the twelve oxen, still looked like something half mythological, half industrial, and the emptiness inside it looked like a hiding place made by a builder who understood panic.

  Americ-Ana did not think twice.

  She leaned down and whispered to the GummyAir, as if speaking to an intelligent animal.

  "Lower."

  The GummyAir answered with an almost mute "Fly" and lowered with her, allowing Americ-Ana to slip inside the Bronze Sea. She landed in a crouch, feeling the cold metal under her hands, pulled Poppandacorn close against her chest, and signaled for him to stay quiet.

  Poppandacorn opened his mouth to say something, but Americ-Ana covered it.

  "Shh," she did, like a soft blade. "Shh."

  His LED eyes lit with fear. He nodded, obedient, trembling.

  The GummyAir tucked itself in there with them, hovering low, almost pressed to the metal, vibrating so softly it seemed to be holding its own breath. Americ-Ana stayed motionless, feeling her heart beat too loudly for a hiding place so silent.

  Outside, footsteps.

  Getting closer.

  A presence entering the perimeter without being announced, as if the place already belonged to him.

  Americ-Ana held Poppandacorn tighter, her eyes fixed on the rim of the Bronze Sea, not allowing herself to lift her head. She only listened. And then the voice came, clear, familiar, crossing the worksite as if the demons were only scenery.

  "King Solomon."

  The voice cut across the worksite with a coldness that did not need to shout to command. Americ-Ana felt her whole body go rigid inside the Bronze Sea, as if the name itself had been a direct order to her blood.

  Poppandacorn trembled. His little paw gripped the fabric of her jacket, searching for ground where there was none.

  "Mommy..." he tried to whisper.

  Americ-Ana did not let him. She pressed two fingers to his little mouth and repeated, almost soundless, more breath than word.

  "Shh."

  The GummyAir lowered a little more, vibrating in a mode so quiet it seemed almost to apologize for existing.

  Outside, the voices began.

  At first, it was only a tone, an argument that seemed too distant to become words. Americ-Ana could make out intention, not content.

  The work went on in the distance. Demons hammering, wings beating, stone being dragged. But the conversation between the two of them, even muffled, had a different weight, as if the air grew denser around it.

  Americ-Ana pressed her ear to the inner wall of the Bronze Sea, trying to catch any word that might give shape to the danger. Nothing came clearly. Only loose fragments. A "no" here. A "you" there. The tension rising like a rope pulled tight.

  Then, the first blow.

  It was not the sound of a tool. It was a human sound. Dry. Raw.

  Americ-Ana went cold.

  The second blow came right after, heavier, followed by a strange noise, like metal scraping, or something being torn from its place by force. Americ-Ana's breathing locked. Poppandacorn bit his own little paw so he would not scream, the LEDs trembling as if they were sobs.

  Another impact.

  Then another blow.

  And then a sound that turned Americ-Ana's stomach, a deep thud, like a body meeting hard ground, the kind of fall that is not a slip.

  Silence.

  For one second, the worksite seemed to go on working as if nothing had happened, which made everything even more horrible. Hammers, chains, wings. And inside the Bronze Sea, Americ-Ana's world stood still, suspended, waiting for the next word.

  Footsteps.

  Only one pair.

  Walking slowly.

  Then, moving away.

  Americ-Ana stayed motionless, counting the beats of her own heart as if they were seconds. Poppandacorn was trembling so much that she had to hold his little body firmly against her chest so he would not hit the metal and give the two of them away. The GummyAir vibrated with an almost animal fear, as if it understood that the entire place was a trap.

  More silence.

  Until, with absurd care, Americ-Ana raised her head just a little, enough to peek over the rim.

  The worksite was there, enormous, mad, functioning. Demons flying with buckets, carrying stones, measuring, pulling ropes. The temple rising.

  And, on the ground, near the base of the Bronze Sea, a body.

  Americ-Ana felt the air vanish from her lungs.

  Solomon was down.

  His posture was not the posture of someone who had sat down. It was the posture of someone who had been struck down. And even from a distance, the worksite light caught a dark sheen on the floor, a stain that did not match dust, or cement, or shadow. A pool of blood.

  Americ-Ana dropped her head back down too fast, as if looking were dangerous, as if her eyes could trigger something.

  Poppandacorn, curious and terrified at the same time, lifted up too, just a little, and saw.

  His LED eyes would have flashed on alert if he had the courage. But what came out was a trembling voice, panic breaking loose in pieces.

  "Mommy..." he whispered, and it felt like the whole metal body of the Bronze Sea heard it. "The king is dead..."

  Americ-Ana felt a shock inside, a desperate urge to run to him, to do something, to deny that silence.

  Poppandacorn began to sob without sound, his little body shaking.

  "Poppa, don't cry," Americ-Ana pleaded, pressing him against her chest. "Please. Stay calm."

  She looked again, over the rim, this time with more precision, searching for any sign of movement, any smallest indication that said "it is not over."

  The body did not move.

  And farther off, one demon stopped carrying stones, turning its face toward the Bronze Sea as if it had scented a strange presence.

  Americ-Ana felt her blood turn to ice.

  The demon opened its mouth, and the cry came like an alarm there was no ignoring.

  "INTRUDERS!"

  The shout ripped through the worksite like a siren. Americ-Ana felt her whole body react before thought, a dry, immediate shock, as if fear had pressed an emergency button inside her.

  Another demon repeated it, closer now, the voice thick, full of echo.

  "INTRUDERS!"

  And another, like a chorus.

  "INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS!"

  Poppandacorn's LED eyes went wide, and panic tried to climb his throat in the shape of a cry, but Americ-Ana already had her hand over his mouth again, firm, almost desperate.

  "Shh," she whispered, pressed close to his ear. "Shh. Stay still."

  The GummyAir vibrated lower, as if trying to disappear.

  Outside, wings beat in a rush. Multiple footsteps. The sound of stone being dropped onto the ground, the sound of something heavy being abandoned so that hands could be left free to hunt.

  Americ-Ana heard the first impact on the rim of the Bronze Sea, as if someone had leaned against it to check. The metal answered with a deep sound, a muffled "dong" that nearly stopped her heart.

  Poppandacorn trembled all over, and Americ-Ana felt his little body vibrating against her chest like a machine shorting out, but she could not hold him too tightly, because any sound in there was a sentence.

  She breathed through her nose, short, controlling even the air.

  "Gummy," she murmured, not daring to call louder. "Stay... low."

  The GummyAir answered with an obedient tremor, almost a swallowed "Fly."

  Outside, demonic voices were drawing closer, and there were many of them. The sound of the worksite began to change, because the flow of labor was turning into the flow of a hunt. Hammers slowing. Ropes no longer being pulled. For one second, the temple itself seemed to hold its own movement.

  Americ-Ana felt time narrowing.

  She raised her head a little, just enough to see over the rim, and what she saw was a crowd of demons.

  Demons coming in masses, climbing structures, gliding low, landing in dry leaps, faces warped by predatory attention. Some had skin dark as coal, others skin pale as old wax, some with twisted horns, others with torn wings, others with eyes that looked like hot glass. All converging.

  And, in the middle of that chaos, one of them pointed straight at the Bronze Sea, as if he were certain.

  Americ-Ana did not wait for confirmation.

  She pulled Poppandacorn up onto her shoulders in a rush of silence, fitting him there as always, and whispered, firm, cutting through panic with command.

  "Hold on tight."

  Poppandacorn grabbed her head as if it were the last solid thing in the universe.

  Americ-Ana planted her foot on the GummyAir in a single motion, already angling her body in the opposite direction, and the living board answered like a restrained arrow.

  "Gummy! Gummy! Gummy!" Americ-Ana said.

  "Fly! Fly! Fly!" GummyAir replied.

  The GummyAir shot out of the Bronze Sea in a leap of air, and the wind of the movement made the rim of the great basin vibrate. Americ-Ana felt the exposure like a slap, one instant in which the whole world could see "there."

  And it did.

  The demons screamed in unison, a sound of rage and hunger.

  Americ-Ana leaned her body farther, and the GummyAir gained speed, skimming close to the ground at first, then rising, cutting between scaffolds, swerving past buckets, passing under a beam, escaping by inches from a huge hand that tried to seize the air.

  Behind them, wings beating. Roars. The cry of "INTRUDERS" turning into pursuit.

  Poppandacorn, on her shoulders, turned his face back and saw the swarm of demons growing.

  "Mommy!" he whimpered, and his voice almost broke, but he held himself together. "Run, run, run!"

  Americ-Ana did not answer. She only searched with her eyes.

  And then she saw it.

  The fissure.

  The fissure in the air, that impossible crack that looked like a flaw in reality, glimmering faintly like shattered glass in the dark. The exact point through which they had entered that place.

  Americ-Ana aimed her whole body at it as if she were an arrow.

  The GummyAir understood before the word.

  "Fly," it vibrated, and accelerated.

  A demon passed overhead, trying to intercept, and Americ-Ana dropped her body at exactly the right moment, feeling the wind scrape the leather of her jacket. Another came from the side, and she swerved in a sharp cut, the GummyAir obedient, almost too intelligent to be only a "skate."

  The fissure widened ahead, the crack growing larger with every meter, as if the universe were opening an exit out of mercy or irony.

  Americ-Ana pressed Poppandacorn's little paws firmly against her own head and whispered like an order.

  "Do not let go!"

  They hit the fissure.

  The impact was not physical, it was ontological. Like striking a wall that is not a wall, and still feeling it.

  The sound died.

  The wind died.

  The demons' scream died in the middle.

  Reality made a dull crack.

  And the universe blinked.

  The impact made no sound, it had continuity.

  Americ-Ana went through the fissure like a stubborn bullet, and the momentum did not ask permission to slow down. The GummyAir came with her, tearing through reality as if it were still a road, and for one second Americ-Ana had the feeling that the universe had forgotten to put ground in the world.

  Everything was dark.

  Not "low light." Not "shadow." It was weighted blackness, a darkness that seemed to touch the skin, like wet cloth. Americ-Ana felt her stomach drop before she understood, because she knew that texture.

  "No... no, no, no..."

  She instinctively squeezed Poppandacorn's little legs, searching for any proof that she still had a body, still had control, still had one living thing there with her.

  Only the proof came wrong.

  Poppandacorn's little finger was not glowing.

  The absence of the purple opened a hole in Americ-Ana's chest, because now there was no arrow, no cursed lantern, no anything. Only the dark, and the feeling that something far too large could be inches from her face without her knowing.

  Americ-Ana pulled her body back in a survival reflex.

  The GummyAir understood the gesture as a command and reacted. Its vibration changed, from burst to brake. A low "Fly," almost swallowed, and the speed began to die in layers, as if the cloud were braking in the air with the caution of something that was afraid too.

  Americ-Ana took a deep breath, trying to organize her heart in her throat.

  "Poppa..." she whispered, and her voice came out small. "I can't see anything."

  Poppandacorn was clinging to her shoulders, squeezing like an anchor. His LED eyes blinked, trying to read the dark, trying to find a pattern in absence. His technology seemed offended by its inability to dominate that place.

  "Mommy..." his voice came very close to her ear, low and careful, like an emotional protocol. "Poppa's sensors are detecting... the same vibrational patterns."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard.

  "Then we're back."

  "Yes, Mommy," Poppandacorn confirmed. "We're back where Lacrimosa was."

  The name was not just a name. It was a warning. It was an abyss-mouth with teeth.

  Americ-Ana kept her body rigid on the GummyAir, holding Poppandacorn's little legs tight as if touch were the only fixed point in the universe. The GummyAir hovered, vibrating softly beneath her feet, a living wad of gum trying to be comfort in a place that accepted no comfort at all.

  Americ-Ana forced another inhale, long, controlled.

  And Poppandacorn noticed.

  His LED eyes dimmed, as if conserving energy for what mattered, and his voice turned gentler, almost sung, close to her ear.

  "That's it, Mommy... that's it." He squeezed her shoulders a little with his little paws. "Inhale. Exhale. Poppa is here. Everything will be okay."

  Americ-Ana did not answer at once. She stayed listening to her own breath, her own blood, and a silence that was not silence, but waiting.

  She spoke at last, with the kind of calm born when despair tries to become method.

  "Poppa... we cannot stay still. We need to find the fissure we came through. If we keep going straight..."

  Poppandacorn went still for one second, as if his whole body were an antenna.

  "If we keep going straight..." he said, and the sentence came out like organized fear. "Poppa detects a round object... with orbits around it... colossal... farther ahead."

  Americ-Ana closed her eyes for half a second. The darkness did not change, but inside, she saw it.

  "It is the Ophanim."

  Poppandacorn swallowed hard.

  "It is the Ophanim, Mommy."

  Americ-Ana opened her eyes again, even knowing it made no difference. She pulled her body closer to Poppandacorn, as if it were possible to hide inside her own embrace.

  "Then that's it." She spoke in a thread of voice. "We're past it. We fell at a point beyond the Ophanim. And that's good and bad at the same time."

  Poppandacorn seemed to brighten for an instant, an almost childlike energy wanting to turn into applause.

  "Mommy... you are amazing..."

  Americ-Ana gave his little body a light jolt with her shoulder, a quick warning.

  "Poppa. Keep your voice down."

  He froze at once.

  "Sorry, Mommy."

  And at the exact moment she finished saying that, Americ-Ana felt it.

  A current of air.

  It was not ordinary wind. It was the displacement of a presence. The kind of movement that does not apologize to matter.

  It passed far too close to her face, as if something enormous had cut through the space just to test the distance.

  Americ-Ana froze.

  Poppandacorn went rigid on her shoulders, and his LED eyes flashed on alert.

  "Mommy..." he started, but the sentence did not finish.

  The shape came back.

  And struck dead on.

  The shape hit Americ-Ana again, and this time it was not just a "brush." It was a real, brutal impact, as if an invisible mass had decided to shove her body off its own axis.

  The GummyAir faltered.

  Its soft vibration turned into a jolt, a stumble in the air, and Americ-Ana felt the world spin without warning. She lost her position, her legs slipped, her body pitched to the side, and the darkness, which already seemed to have hands, seemed to pull.

  "Poppa!" she screamed, more from instinct than from voice, because the sound tore out of her throat with the shock.

  Poppandacorn clamped down hard on her shoulders, trying to hold on, trying to become a seat belt with a body made of robotic plush. His LED eyes erupted in alerts, but the information was useless without light. It was like reading a report over an abyss.

  The shape swept past again, so close that Americ-Ana felt the air turn cold across her face, as if something had sliced through the space right in front of her, and her body answered with pure panic.

  "Poppa, fire a flare!" Americ-Ana shouted, her voice breaking. "Light something up, now!"

  Poppandacorn did not argue.

  His little unicorn horn opened with a dry, mechanical snap, and the shot came in the same instant.

  "FWOOSH!"

  A signal flare shot upward, tearing through the dark, becoming an artificial star that threw unstable flashes over everything around them. Shadows leaped. Distances appeared and vanished. The nothingness gained contour for half a second.

  And in that half second, disaster almost happened.

  The shape struck Americ-Ana from the side with greater force, like a calculated shove, and she flipped upside down, the world inverted in a snap. Her chest locked, the air fled, and she felt her fingers lose the soft footing of the GummyAir.

  Americ-Ana managed to grab on.

  One hand only, dug into the edge of the GummyAir, holding as if she were holding reality itself. Her body hung over the void, her jacket pulling downward, blood roaring in her ears.

  In the other hand, she held Poppandacorn.

  Only Poppandacorn slipped.

  His little legs came loose from her shoulders, and he was left hanging, swinging over the abyss like something far too precious to be dangling there. His LED eyes flickered, and for the first time Americ-Ana felt panic turn into something physical, a blade inside her stomach.

  "No... no, no, no..." she whispered, without enough voice left to scream again.

  The flare's glow kept flashing above them, irregular, revealing pieces of the environment like bursts from a cruel camera. The blackness around them did not retreat, it only allowed glimpses.

  And then, in the largest of the flashes, the flarelight showed what was coming.

  A colossal mass was rushing straight toward them, far too fast for something that size, its mouth open like a death portal, bones forming overlapping jaws, a void inside the void.

  Americ-Ana understood before her brain finished the sentence.

  It was Lacrimosa.

  And it was coming head on, as if the whole darkness had decided to swallow them both at once.

  Poppandacorn saw it.

  Not "saw" with the eyes of an ultra advanced toy. He saw it with calculation, with terror, with brutality. Lacrimosa was coming straight at them, its mouth open like a decision, and Americ-Ana was hanging over the void with only one hand.

  His little body did not hesitate.

  "Poppa protects Mommy!" he shouted, and his voice came out thin, but absolute, like a vow that accepts no argument.

  He let go of his fear and climbed.

  He climbed up Americ-Ana's forearm as if she were an emergency wall, little paws gripping fabric, seam, skin, anything that offered friction. The flare flashed above, and the light made everything intermittent, as if the universe were taking pictures of the end of the world.

  Americ-Ana felt the jolt of Poppandacorn climbing over her, felt his weight pulling upward, and for one second she thought the two of them would fall together.

  "Poppa, no..." she tried to say, but the sentence did not get to exist.

  Poppandacorn reached the top of the GummyAir.

  And then he did the impossible with a plush body.

  He planted himself on top of the living board as if he were pilot and anchor at once, grabbed Americ-Ana's hand with both little paws, and pulled with everything he had.

  "Mommy, hold on tight!" he shouted, breathing as if he were breathing for her. "We are going to spin!"

  Americ-Ana barely had time to understand the word "spin" before the GummyAir reacted.

  The GummyAir vibrated like an obedient animal, offended by the idea of losing its rider. It tilted itself in an aggressive angle, and the air around them seemed to crack.

  "Fly!" it answered, not as a sound, but as a promise.

  Then the rotation came.

  The world spun with controlled violence, a fast circular movement, smooth and brutal at once, as if the GummyAir had decided to turn panic into maneuver. Americ-Ana was thrown upward by the force of the motion itself, her body rising, her stomach left behind, and for one second she saw Lacrimosa in the flarelight, far too huge, far too close, the mouth widening.

  Then she fell.

  She fell back exactly onto the GummyAir, off balance at first, knee striking the soft surface, hand searching for support, her body trying to find "up" and "down" again in a place where nothing could be trusted.

  Poppandacorn was already ready for that.

  He pulled Americ-Ana by the wrist and shoved with his plush shoulder, as if saying "get up now" with his whole body.

  "Mommy!" he shouted, urgent. "Focus!"

  Americ-Ana swallowed the panic, locked her feet onto the GummyAir, and rose again, trembling, but alive.

  The flare was still burning above them, the light pulsing in waves, and Lacrimosa kept coming, as if the maneuver had been only an irritating delay.

  And the darkness around them seemed to smile, because now it was certain they were there.

  The spin saved their lives, but collected its price in the very next second.

  Americ-Ana could still feel her body shaking, her knee hurting, her heart trying to reorganize itself in her chest as if it were a loose thing. The flarelight swallowed and returned the world in flashes, and each flash was a different photograph of the same nightmare.

  Lacrimosa was coming.

  It did not need sound to threaten. Its presence itself was already a wrong wind, a pressure that pushed against the skin from the inside. Americ-Ana felt the air pull lightly, as if the space around them were being inhaled with calm.

  "Poppa, back to my shoulders, now!" Americ-Ana shouted.

  Poppandacorn did not argue. He jumped off the top of the GummyAir in a quick, theatrical motion, but without any comedy in it this time, and Americ-Ana lifted her arms on reflex. He landed with his little legs spread over her shoulders, fitting into place as always, and she grabbed his little feet hard, like someone holding the last solid thing in the universe.

  "Okay... okay..." Americ-Ana whispered, more to herself than to them. "Poppa, maximum mode. Full sweep. Find the fissure we came through. Now. Go, go, go!"

  Poppandacorn stretched his little body, rigid. The LEDs in his eyes changed at once. The brightness dimmed, as if he were saving everything he could to become pure brain.

  In his eyes, for an instant, cold, clinical text appeared, and Americ-Ana caught only fragments in the flarelight.

  "OPERATING ABOVE LIMIT."

  "OVERLOAD RISK."

  Poppandacorn began to tremble, not from fear, but from strain. His voice came out thinner, tighter, as if passing through an emergency filter.

  "Mommy... Poppa is... scanning..."

  The flare above hissed and spat light in pulses. With every pulse, Americ-Ana saw the colossal curve of Lacrimosa drawing closer, the mouth open like a hole in the very concept of mercy.

  "Faster, Poppa!" Americ-Ana said, and the words came out with anger and panic mixed together.

  Poppandacorn swung his head from side to side like a desperate satellite. He pointed once, hesitated, pointed again, correcting the angle in the air as if he were aiming through mathematics.

  Lacrimosa passed close enough for Americ-Ana to feel a blast of wind across her face, as if something gigantic had beaten wings where no wings existed.

  Americ-Ana ducked on instinct, pressed low against the GummyAir, and snarled at her own body not to freeze.

  "Gummy, hold on. Just a little longer."

  "Fly," the GummyAir replied, vibrating, offended, ready.

  Poppandacorn let out a short sound, as if he had fit a puzzle together at the last second.

  "There, Mommy!" he shouted, and his little arm pointed with precision. "In that direction. There is a fissure."

  Americ-Ana forced her eyes into the middle of nothing, into the darkness cut by the flare, and then she saw it.

  An irregular line, almost invisible, like cracked glass in the air.

  The way out.

  And, together with hope, came the warning that turned her blood to ice.

  Poppandacorn tightened his little paws on her head, urgent, and spoke close to her ear, like a survival secret.

  "Mommy... aim right at the center. If we overshoot the point... we'll fall into the Ophanim sector."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard, bent one knee a little over the GummyAir to steady her body, and leaned her weight forward as if she were a trigger.

  "Then we don't overshoot the point," she whispered.

  The GummyAir answered with a living tremor.

  And shot toward the fissure, while Lacrimosa swelled behind them in the flarelight, hungry, punctual, inevitable.

  Americ-Ana saw the fissure grow far too fast, as if distance itself were being devoured in reverse, and her instinct tried to make her body lock up.

  It did not lock.

  She dropped fully to her knees now, both knees sinking into the GummyAir's soft surface as if it were living foam, and pulled Poppandacorn by his little arms against her chest.

  "Poppa... hold me."

  "Yes, Mommy."

  Poppandacorn clung to her hard, squeezing as if he could become an anchor. Americ-Ana curved her body over him, forming a shell, an oval protection, an improvised capsule against the world. The flare still spat light above, and with each pulse she saw Lacrimosa, and wanted never to see anything again.

  The air around them began to pull.

  Lacrimosa opened its mouth even wider, and that mouth was not a mouth, it was a destiny. Americ-Ana felt her hair rise, felt her clothes vibrate, felt her own fear being sucked away as if it were matter.

  Poppandacorn screamed, his voice bursting inside the embrace.

  "Gummy! Gummy! Gummy!"

  "Fly! Fly! Fly!" the GummyAir answered, and the surge was so brutal that Americ-Ana felt her stomach slam against her spine.

  The fissure was right there, a thin crack in the air, and Americ-Ana squeezed her eyes shut, as if closing her vision would help her body obey. She took one breath, only one, short and sharp, and spoke inside the embrace, like promise and command:

  "Center. Center. Center."

  The GummyAir aligned.

  The whole world seemed to vibrate with the approach. The fissure had almost no glow, but it had presence, like a cut in the fabric of reality. Americ-Ana felt the air turn strange, as if cold from the inside, as if she were about to pass through a mirror.

  Behind them, Lacrimosa came.

  A tail of bones cut through the space in a strike that felt inevitable, and the flarelight revealed for an instant the giant shadow passing far too close.

  Americ-Ana clutched Poppandacorn with all her strength.

  "Don't look," she whispered, though she no longer knew who she was speaking to.

  Poppandacorn did not answer. He only clung to her and trembled.

  The impact came without sound.

  It was like striking a wall that did not exist. A dull crack ran through her body. The air died. Sound died. The flare's light seemed to remain outside, as if it had been forbidden to enter.

  And then reality gave way.

  The universe blinked again.

  Americ-Ana did not fall because the world showed mercy.

  She did not fall because the GummyAir was there, steady, vibrating low, as if saying with its own body, "I hold."

  She was still on her knees, curved over Poppandacorn, holding him tight, as if the embrace were the only thing that had crossed intact with them. Her chest rose and fell in small blows of air, and for one instant she did not open her eyes. She only stayed there, feeling.

  The silence.

  It was not the silence of the vault beneath the altar. There were no bones creaking. No wrong wind. No pressure of a presence hunting. It was a wide silence, too clean, as if the "nothing" had been built with intention.

  "Gummy..." she whispered, without lifting her face. Her voice came out hoarse, as if it had passed through glass. "Please... don't let me fall."

  The GummyAir vibrated softly beneath her knees.

  "Fly," it answered, simple, like a promise.

  Poppandacorn was still pressed tight against her chest. Americ-Ana felt his little body trembling, a small tremor, but real, and then his voice came close, inside the embrace, with that exaggerated care he used whenever he realized she was hanging by a thread.

  "Mommy..." he said, quietly, almost sung. "We made it."

  Americ-Ana opened her eyes slowly.

  And it took her a second to understand what she was seeing, because that was not a "place." That was the absence of edges. There was no wall. There was no ceiling. There was no floor. It was an immense void, a space too large to fit inside the mind, and even so, there they were, floating like a stubborn comma in the middle of an infinite sentence.

  She swallowed hard.

  "I... can't feel the ground," she said, and the sentence came out like a confession.

  "You are not on the ground, Mommy," Poppandacorn replied, as if reading a report, but with fear inside it. "The GummyAir is supporting us."

  Americ-Ana squeezed his little paws a little tighter.

  "Then don't move too much," she said, more to herself than to him. "Slow. Very slowly."

  Poppandacorn let out a short little breath, as if recalibrating his courage, and then said, with sudden excitement:

  "Mommy. Look, Mommy."

  Americ-Ana lifted her torso carefully, still kneeling, still holding him, and forced her eyes into the void.

  Far away, very far away, there was something that did not belong in the nothingness.

  Colors.

  Not one color. Many. A concentration of tones shining as if someone had spilled stained glass into the dark. It was small on the horizon, but even small, it called to them. It was like a lighthouse made of forbidden beauty.

  Americ-Ana's heart jumped.

  "I've seen that before..." she whispered, and the memory came like a knife and hope at the same time. "It is... it is the stained glass tree."

  Poppandacorn went quiet for a second, as if searching for the right word.

  "Yes, Mommy." He spoke, and this time his voice was not protocol, it was relief. "The geometric patterns... are equivalent. Only..."

  "Only it is smaller," Americ-Ana finished, staring, unblinking.

  The tree looked like an absurd replica. As if something colossal had been reduced until it could fit within a meter of height and still remain sacred, still remain dangerous.

  Americ-Ana loosened the embrace for one second, just enough to look at Poppandacorn's face.

  "Poppa. Are you okay?"

  Poppandacorn blinked his LEDs quickly.

  "I am okay, Mommy." He made a tiny pause, and the next word came carefully. "But I am... trembling."

  Americ-Ana nodded slowly.

  "Me too."

  She took a deep breath, and this time the breath was not desperation. It was decision.

  She leaned forward.

  The GummyAir understood. It moved ahead gently, cutting through the void as if it were ordinary air, and Americ-Ana felt her stomach make that strange turn you get when you ride on something alive.

  The tree grew in her field of vision.

  And the more it grew, the more surreal it became, because it was too beautiful to be there. Stained glass in many colors forming branches, and the branches floated, and the light seemed to come from inside the glass itself, as if each color were a memory lit from within.

  Americ-Ana came close enough to realize that the "trunk" was not a trunk. It was a stained glass spine, holding up the impossible.

  She held her breath.

  "We made it," she said, and the sentence came loaded, heavy with a thousand things. "We made it, Poppa. We made it, GummyAir."

  Poppandacorn made a sound that was almost a cry and almost a laugh at the same time, and then he clung to her again, with the force of someone who needed to feel something solid.

  "Mommy..." he said, quietly. "Poppa is proud."

  Americ-Ana laughed without meaning to, a short, nervous laugh that turned into relief for one second.

  "Me too," she whispered. "Me too."

  The GummyAir was vibrating happily, a soft tremor, as if it were making little jumps inside itself.

  Americ-Ana looked ahead.

  And saw it.

  A line in the void. A thin cut, almost invisible, like cracked glass in the air. It was not large, it was not beautiful, but it was clear enough to be hope.

  The way out.

  She swallowed hard and felt like crying again, but held it back.

  "Poppa." She pointed with her chin, without letting her feet leave that feeling of control. "Look. The way out is right there."

  Poppandacorn turned his face, followed the direction, and his eyes blinked in confirmation.

  "I see it, Mommy."

  Americ-Ana took a deep breath again, now with her soul trying to reorganize itself inside her body.

  "Then let's go," she said.

  She carefully straightened on the GummyAir, her legs trembling a little, and settled Poppandacorn onto her shoulders, as always, like a survival ritual. She held his little feet tight, feeling the familiar texture, the right weight, the living anchor.

  She leaned forward.

  The GummyAir began to move toward the fissure, and the void around them remained void, indifferent, as if it did not care.

  A few meters from the exit, at the exact moment Americ-Ana began to believe reality would let them go, a voice cut through the silence.

  It was not a demon's scream.

  It was not Lacrimosa's roar.

  It was far too human to belong in that nothingness.

  "Hey... you. I'm here... I'm here. I'm trapped on Step Thirteen."

  Americ-Ana stopped short.

  The GummyAir froze in the air, hovering.

  And her heart, which had just returned to its place, sank again like a stone.

  Americ-Ana stood motionless for a second, as if the voice had tied her body in the air.

  The sentence still echoed inside her skull, far too human, far too desperate, far too intimate to exist in that void.

  "Hey... you. I'm here... I'm here. I'm trapped on Step Thirteen."

  The GummyAir hovered, obedient, but tense, vibrating at the barest rhythm, like an animal scenting danger without being able to see it.

  Poppandacorn tightened his little paws on her head, instinctively, as if trying to become a helmet.

  "What is it, Mommy?" he asked, low, careful.

  Americ-Ana took one short breath.

  "Did you hear that, Poppa?"

  Poppandacorn went still for half a second, his LEDs blinking fast, as if he were running ten analyses at once in a body far too small.

  "Poppa heard it, Mommy." His voice came out serious. "The origin of the sound seems to come... from there."

  He stretched out his little arm and pointed.

  Not toward the fissure.

  Toward the small stained glass tree.

  Americ-Ana felt a coldness pass through her chest, because the tree was the only beautiful thing there, and things too beautiful in that kind of place were never "just beautiful."

  The voice came again, clearer, closer, as if it knew it had been heard.

  "Help! Help me! I'm on Step Thirteen. I'm trapped!"

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard. Her eyes moved from the fissure, the clean way out, to the tree, the problem shining.

  "Poppa..." she whispered, and the word came out like both a plea and a rebuke to her own instinct. "We were leaving."

  Poppandacorn squeezed tighter.

  "I know, Mommy."

  Americ-Ana kept looking at the fissure for one second longer than she needed to, as if staring at her last chance to be sensible. Her breathing made the smallest sound, and the void gave back nothing.

  She closed her eyes for an instant, opened them again, and decided with that irritating courage she only had when she had already gone too far.

  "Poppa... let's go see what it is."

  Poppandacorn froze.

  "Careful, Mommy." He said it, and the sentence was not cute, it was warning.

  Americ-Ana leaned her body toward the tree.

  The GummyAir obeyed, moving slowly, cutting through the void as if that nothingness were a vast room. The fissure stayed behind, still visible, still calling like an open door, and that made Americ-Ana more nervous than it would have if it had vanished.

  The voice kept coming, intermittent, like someone knocking on the wall of the world from the inside.

  "Please... I'm trapped..."

  Americ-Ana lifted her chin a little, trying to look brave to herself.

  "Fac Foedus!" she called, firm enough not to sound like crying. "Is anyone there?"

  Nothing answered with words.

  Only the glass answered with color.

  They came close enough for the stained glass to begin reflecting. Not reflecting like a perfect mirror, but in broken reflections, in tones, in fragments, in little colored pieces.

  Americ-Ana let her eyes travel across the branches, slowly, searching for a shape, a shadow, a body.

  And then she saw it.

  Among the shards of color, a reflection that was not hers.

  Blond hair. Not ordinary blond. A platinum blond, almost white, long, falling like clear water.

  Americ-Ana narrowed her eyes, her heart racing as if it recognized before her mind did.

  "No..." she whispered.

  Poppandacorn tilted his head, confused.

  "Mommy, who are you calling?"

  Americ-Ana did not answer.

  She guided the GummyAir one step closer, slowly, as if entering a room that was sacred and trapped at the same time. The stained glass enlarged the reflection. The face did not become fully clear, but the impression was too strong to be coincidence.

  Americ-Ana felt her mouth go dry.

  "Helena?" she said, low, incredulous, and then the sentence came out whole, as if it were impossible to hold it back. "Helena Blavatsky? Is that you?"

  Poppandacorn tightened his grip on her shoulders.

  "Mommy..."

  Americ-Ana ignored him.

  She stretched out her hand, slowly, like someone approaching a skittish animal. The tip of her finger trembled, not from cold, but from fear of confirming.

  The stained glass branch reflecting the blond girl seemed to draw her hand in, like a magnet of history.

  Americ-Ana touched the tip of the branch.

  Nothing happened.

  "Nothing..." Americ-Ana said, more to herself. Deep down, a small disappointment, because she had hoped something would happen.

  "Mommy... let Poppa try," Poppandacorn asked, stretching out his little arm.

  His little paw touched the branch.

  And the Universe blinked again.