Elsewhere…
Sakolomeh, dressed in a long black coat, advanced slowly through the ruins of an ancient temple.
The place seemed abandoned for centuries.
The cracked columns were covered with moss and dust, and the walls still bore the traces of ancient symbols erased by time.
Each step echoed faintly in the silence of the forgotten sanctuary.
Sakolomeh observed the place carefully, turning his head left and right.
— It looks like no one has come here in an eternity…
He murmured.
Then his gaze suddenly stopped.
On the ground, half-hidden beneath fragments of stone and dust, lay an old yellowed sheet.
The paper was fragile, gnawed by time, as if it had crossed several centuries.
Intrigued, Sakolomeh bent down and picked it up carefully.
He blew lightly on it to remove the dust… then observed the drawing engraved on it.
His gaze fixed.
— What the…
The illustration depicted a strange scene.
Around the center of the page, several primitive human beings were kneeling.
Men and women raised their arms toward the sky in a gesture of veneration.
Some seemed to be praying.
Others stretched out their hands as if imploring something.
Their faces were filled with a mixture of fascination and terror.
But what really drew attention… was what stood above them.
At the center of the image floated a dark and colossal form.
It looked like a black mass, almost alive.
A circular core occupied its center, like some kind of eye or ancient symbol engraved in a shadowy structure.
Around this core spread a multitude of black branches or filaments, resembling roots or cosmic veins.
These filaments extended in all directions, invading the sky of the illustration like a gigantic organic web.
It looked like an inverted tree, but made of shadow.
Or perhaps…
An entity born even before the forms of the world existed.
The filaments seemed to vibrate as if they were alive, plunging toward the men below, while those men raised their hands toward it in an adoration mixed with fear.
Around the scene, the sheet was filled with ancient symbols and unknown glyphs, engraved like prayers or warnings.
Sakolomeh narrowed his eyes.
— What could this possibly be…
He studied the image for a few more seconds.
Then a voice suddenly echoed in his mind.
— It was an Exentity.
Sakolomeh's eyes widened.
— What?
He abruptly lifted his head.
— Are you serious?
He looked at the drawing again.
— But what could something like that have come here to do… to the point of being venerated by the men of that era?
His gaze fixed on the black mass depicted at the center of the drawing.
The dark filaments seemed almost to move before his eyes.
— An Exentity…
He murmured.
— In this world…
A chill ran down his back.
Because only one question now crossed his mind.
If the ancient humans had venerated an Exentity…
Then that meant one thing.
It had truly been there.
Sakolomeh looked once more at the old parchment.
But deep inside, he already knew one thing.
Exentities are not ordinary beings.
They are infinitely ancient forces.
Older than the gods.
Older than myths.
Older even than language itself.
Sakolomeh had already encountered some.
He had even been in the presence of certain ones.
And he knew a truth that very few beings in existence could understand:
Exentities are not really beings.
They are forces of the Metaworld itself.
Laws so deep and so fundamental that ordinary universes can barely withstand them.
They exist before forms, before concepts… before even the idea of existence.
Sakolomeh narrowed his eyes slightly.
An Exentity never appears by chance.
If one of them had manifested here…
Then that meant there had been an inconsistency to correct.
An anomaly in the very fabric of the world.
Meanwhile, deep within his mind, something was activating.
The vestige of Sakolomeh-My0x.
A residual trace of the one he had once been.
Even reduced to a mere vestige, this fragment still possessed an extraordinary capability: absolute knowledge.
For it was, in essence, a direct imprint of Sakolomeh-My0x himself.
No language.
No writing system.
No knowledge.
Nothing could escape it.
In Sakolomeh's mind, the vestige silently analyzed the symbols engraved on the old paper.
The ancient glyphs.
The primitive forms.
The marks left by a vanished people.
Then the voice of the vestige echoed in his mind.
— According to what is written… they say that God came to save them.
Sakolomeh remained motionless.
The vestige continued.
— A threat weighed on their world.
— But God did not take long.
— After neutralizing that threat… he simply left.
A silence passed.
— Without a word.
— Without waiting for thanks.
— Without asking for anything.
Sakolomeh slowly placed a hand on his chin.
He understood perfectly what that meant.
What this people called God…
…was not a god.
It was an Exentity.
Because Exentities are not divinities.
They are laws of the Metaworld.
And a law desires nothing.
It seeks neither worship nor recognition.
It is like gravity.
Gravity does not need to be loved.
It does not need to be respected.
It simply acts… because that is what it must do.
Exentities function in exactly the same way.
They appear.
They correct what must be corrected.
Then they disappear.
The rest has absolutely no importance to them.
Sakolomeh looked again at the illustration.
The dark mass with cosmic roots.
The circular center surrounded by filaments.
He murmured softly:
— The ancients believed they saw a god…
He paused.
— But what they truly saw… was a law.
Exentities exist before forms.
Before concepts.
Before language.
Therefore… they have no true appearance.
Their nature is too foreign to reality.
In a way, it was similar to the Anarchetypes.
But Exentities had one particularity.
When they act in a universe…
They can adopt a temporary form.
An imperfect form.
A mere approximation.
Sakolomeh looked at the image.
— A bit like water…
He took the parchment between his fingers.
— Water can take the shape of a vase…
— But water… is not the vase.
The form that humans had drawn here…
was probably only an imperfect shadow of what had truly manifested.
And if this Exentity had appeared here…
Then that meant that long ago…
Something serious enough had threatened this world…
…to the point of requiring the intervention of a law of the Metaworld.
Sakolomeh slowly raised his eyes toward the temple ruins.
One question still remained suspended.
What was that threat?
And above all…
was it truly gone?
Sakolomeh had to understand this quickly.
A heavy intuition weighed in his mind: the disappearance of the ancient peoples of this temple could very well be linked to this event.
He slowly closed his eyes.
Around him, time bent like a surface disturbed by a stone thrown into water. Centuries silently receded.
When he opened his eyes again, the world had changed.
The temple was no longer in ruins. The walls were intact, covered with symbols and frescoes still fresh. Before him stretched a crowd of men and women dressed in ancient garments.
They raised their arms toward the sky.
They prayed.
They venerated.
At the center of the sacred square, an immense fresco represented what they called their god — the same strange figure engraved on the sheet he had found.
However, something was wrong.
Sakolomeh slowly swept the horizon with his gaze.
The world seemed peaceful.
The sky was clear.
The earth intact.
There was no trace of the catastrophe spoken of by the fresco.
No ruins.
No war.
No abomination.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Sakolomeh took a few steps among the inhabitants of the temple. The men continued their rituals: some danced in a circle, others recited ancient prayers, while several placed offerings at the foot of the altar.
For them, this moment was sacred.
For him, it was an enigma.
He slightly tilted his head.
Of course, no one could see him.
He was only a spectator in this past, a presence detached from chronology. Unless he decided to manifest himself, he would remain invisible to their eyes — and that was not necessary.
Sakolomeh observed this strange scene for a few more moments.
These men venerated a god that was not one.
And they celebrated the destruction of a threat that no one could describe.
But it was not their fault.
It was logical.
Exentities did not function like gods or myths.
They intervened only when an inconsistency appeared in the order of the Metaworld. Their role was simple: to correct the system.
And to correct an inconsistency… they removed the responsible Harvest.
When that happened, the event disappeared completely.
Even the gods lost all memory of what had taken place.
In the structure of the world, that event had never existed.
That is why a memory of a removed Harvest was, in theory, impossible.
Sakolomeh contemplated again the men gathered before the altar.
The fact that they still remembered the Exentity was almost tragic.
They seemed trapped in a strange collective psychosis.
They knew that a danger had existed… but none of them could say which one.
They knew that a god had saved them… but no one could explain what it was.
All that remained was a void surrounded by beliefs.
A memory without an origin.
And it would remain that way forever.
Sakolomeh then raised his eyes to the sky.
It was strangely empty.
No star shone.
He already knew that it would be impossible for him to go back far enough to observe the Exentity itself.
These entities existed before time.
The past, the present, and the future could not contain them.
Even fragmented, they left no trace in the temporal flow.
It was a phenomenon similar to that of the great mythical beings.
For chronology, these entities were not really events.
They appeared in no archive of time.
With certain gods, it was sometimes possible to force an ancient memory — a kind of echo left in reality — in order to glimpse a presence that was not supposed to appear in the past.
But that was not true time manipulation.
It was simply the extraction of a memory trace, as if one were making an ancient buried memory rise from the fabric of the world.
An archive.
A fragment of recorded reality.
However, even this method quickly reached its limits.
It already did not work with extremely elevated entities, such as primordial gods.
So with an Exentity…
Sakolomeh let out a slight breath.
It was even more impossible than ever.