For a moment...
SEENEE saw nothing.
Then—
something opened its eyes.
SEENEE looked through them.
And for the briefest moment...
he saw what they saw.
Nothing.
Not darkness.
Not space.
Not an empty universe.
Nothing.
There were no stars.
No worlds.
No distance.
No direction.
No beginning.
No end.
And somewhere within that impossible absence...
stood Nafsan.
Outside Sirna.
Outside the multiverse SEENEE had just described.
SEENEE saw only a glimpse.
A fraction of a moment.
Then it disappeared.
He said nothing.
For once, there was no joke.
No explanation.
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No clever comment for the audience.
Only silence.
Because SEENEE had questions.
And these questions were different.
They were personal.
If Sirna contained the stories he knew...
what had he just seen?
If there were worlds without end...
what did it mean to stand outside them?
And if Nafsan had been there...
what exactly was Nafsan?
SEENEE did not answer.
Perhaps because he couldn't.
Then Nafsan moved.
He entered.
And the moment he did...
something happened.
Just as SEENEE had said.
A story formed.
SEENEE felt it immediately.
Information that had not existed within his knowledge began to exist.
A beginning.
A history.
A world.
A name.
SEENEE looked at it.
NAFSAN STORY.
He became quiet again.
Then the story opened.
Nafsan stood in a world filled with monsters.
Not mindless creatures.
Not simply beasts.
Things of different shapes.
Different sizes.
Different instincts.
Some crawled.
Some walked.
Some were so enormous that smaller creatures lived beneath their shadows.
Others looked almost human until they moved.
And above them...
stood Nafsan.
Their King.
But Nafsan was not a king because he wore a crown.
He did not need one.
The monsters knew who stood above them.
They feared him.
They followed him.
And Nafsan...
thought.
That was what separated him from the creatures surrounding him.
He watched.
Calculated.
Questioned.
Learned.
A thinking King among monsters.
SEENEE began learning the story.
Its beginning.
Its rules.
Its history.
Then, naturally...
he looked toward its future.
Images passed before him.
Nafsan fighting.
Nafsan killing.
Nafsan traveling.
Worlds changing around him.
Then—
Safsan.
SEENEE stopped.
He looked again.
Nafsan would eventually enter...
SAFSAN STORY.
Not as a passing stranger.
Not as an ally.
Not as someone Safsan would simply defeat and forget.
Nafsan would become Safsan's greatest archenemy.
Someone whose existence would change Safsan forever.
SEENEE tried to look further.
Nothing.
He frowned.
He tried again.
Safsan.
Nafsan.
Then...
a gap.
There were things between them that SEENEE could not see.
Moments without answers.
Events without information.
Consequences without visible causes.
SEENEE's expression slowly changed.
“That doesn't make sense.”
He knew Nafsan's story now.
He could see its beginning.
He could see parts of its future.
He knew Nafsan would eventually reach Safsan.
Yet the most important parts between them...
were missing.
SEENEE remembered what he had seen through Nafsan's eyes.
That impossible place.
Outside Sirna.
His questions returned.
But this time...
one question stood above the others.
If Nafsan had been outside Sirna before his story appeared...
then where had Nafsan's story existed before he entered?
SEENEE remained silent.
He looked toward the audience.
For a second, it seemed like he was about to say something.
He didn't.
Instead...
the story returned to Odania.
To the capital.
To the battlefield.
THUMP.
Everyone felt it.
THUMP.
Safuu turned toward the sound.
The Knight of the Spear felt it through his armor.
The Guardian of the Roots felt it beneath the earth.
NAREZEN stood completely still.
Civilians across the capital stopped.
Soldiers stopped.
The wounded opened their eyes.
People who had no idea who Safsan was...
felt something coming from him.
THUMP.
The strange energy was growing.
Safsan's unconscious body remained among the ruins.
But something was happening inside him.
Something NAREZEN had never experienced in its previous life.
Something the Reality Book had not predicted.
Something even SEENEE could not explain.
And now...
after seeing what existed beyond Sirna through Nafsan's eyes...
SEENEE looked toward Safsan differently.
Two mysteries.
One had come from outside everything he knew.
The other...
had been inside his story all along.
THUMP.
SEENEE stared at Safsan.
And for the first time...
he wondered if those two mysteries would one day meet.