Bivisu remained silent for a few moments, watching the still surface of the lake. The wind itself seemed to have stopped blowing, as if the entire forest were holding its breath at what he was about to reveal.
When he spoke again, his voice was calm, but carried an unusual gravity.
— Before all this... there was me.
Hinata slightly raised her head.
— I was Bivisu, the unique avatar of the Original Gods.
His gaze drifted for a moment into the depths of the night sky.
— At that time, the Original Gods were even more incomprehensible than they are today. They were absolute, indifferent, impossible to distinguish from one another. Where they remained upstream of everything, I acted downstream as their sole extension.
He paused.
— Then I was sealed.
Silence fell again.
— And when they lost their only intermediary with the Dream, they had to manifest themselves.
Bivisu turned his eyes toward Hinata.
— The entities you call today the Original Gods are the result of this adaptation.
The young girl listened without interrupting.
— Some adopted relatively understandable forms. Others retained traces of their primitive state.
His gaze deepened.
— Shad Ruhvaël. Kami-no-Koe. Lucifer.
He slowly shook his head.
— Shad Ruhvaël is probably the one who has changed the least. Her current manifestations still greatly resemble what the Original Gods once were.
Hinata felt a shiver run down her spine.
Bivisu continued:
— You must understand that this transition was not simple.
He raised a hand toward the sky.
— To become compatible with the Dream, the Original Gods had to molt countless times.
— They went from states you would call non-dual to apparent dualities.
— They abandoned primitive forms to adopt those they possess today.
— They tried again and again to approach the structure of the Dream.
His gaze darkened.
— And despite that, some never fully succeeded.
He was clearly thinking of Shad Ruhvaël.
Then of something even older.
— The Father God himself does not completely succeed.
Bivisu's voice softly echoed across the lake waters.
— That is why he continuously fragments.
— Not because he desires it.
— But because his existence still exceeds what the Dream can truly contain.
Hinata remained silent.
The more Bivisu spoke, the more she felt as though she were hearing the history of beings so ancient they preceded any notion of history.
— However...
His gaze hardened.
— All the molts abandoned during this evolution did not simply dissipate.
The wind began to blow again.
Faintly.
— These old shells still exist.
— The old skins.
— The old costumes.
— The old failures of fragmentation.
The young girl felt her heart slow.
She already understood where he was going.
— The Outergods...
Bivisu slowly nodded.
— Yes.
— The Outergods.
His voice seemed to resonate in several directions at once.
— They are the remnants of the Original Gods.
— Abandoned molts.
— Prior states.
— Forms older than most realities themselves.
His gaze shifted toward the horizon.
— Although they are infinitely inferior to the Original Gods from which they originate, they remain terrifying to everything that exists in the Dream.
— They live in the depths of the Primordial Void.
— At the boundary of what can still be called existence.
Bivisu closed his eyes for a moment.
— Some call them Outergods.
— Others call them the Gods of the Outer Worlds.
— Others still think they have always existed before all creation.
A faint smile appeared on his face.
— In a way, they are not entirely wrong.
Silence fell again.
— As you saw in your dreams, their forms are unstable.
— Some change depending on the observer.
— Some seem impossible to measure.
— Others defy geometry, causality, or even the notion of direction.
The memories of the titanic creatures Hinata had glimpsed immediately returned.
She felt her hands tremble.
— Yet...
Bivisu resumed:
— Contrary to what many believe, they desire almost nothing.
— They are naturally indifferent.
— They observe.
— They exist.
— And most of the time, that is enough for them.
Then his voice grew deeper.
— Except in one specific case.
The atmosphere immediately changed.
— When a certain Original God gives them an order.
Hinata felt her breath catch.
Bivisu continued:
— Among the Original Gods, there exists a being whose existence almost no creature of the Dream knows.
— Even his name is concealed.
— Those who know it refuse to pronounce it.
Bivisu's gaze drifted into the void.
— He is older in his memories than Lucifer himself.
— More silent than Shad Ruhvaël.
— More distant than all the others.
— And his primitive form is so terrifying that even some Original Gods avoid speaking of it.
The lake seemed to grow darker.
— It is he who commands the molts.
— It is he who maintains their cohesion.
— It is he who gathers them when he wishes.
Bivisu's voice became almost a whisper.
— For them, he is their father.
— Their ancestor.
— Their master.
— The one they have served since times even the Gods struggle to measure.
Hinata felt an icy cold run down her back.
— And despite his own sealing...
Bivisu's red gaze rested on her.
— His influence remains.
— If the Outergods were destroyed, he could trigger a new war through other molts.
The silence became crushing.
Then Bivisu finally concluded:
— Those who dare speak of him rarely use his true title.
— They simply refer to him as...
His eyes met Hinata's.
— The Father of the Outergods.
The revelation struck Hinata with a violence she would never have thought possible. Since the beginning of this conversation, every answer from Bivisu seemed to raise more questions than explanations.
She finally broke the silence.
— Why were you sealed? And if the Original Gods are supposed to be more fundamental than their own Molts... why don't they simply destroy them instead of remaining so indifferent?
Bivisu observed her for a few moments before answering.
— The Original Gods can neutralize any Outergod individually. Some of them could even erase several without particular difficulty. But when they are gathered... the story becomes different.
His gaze lifted toward the silent sky above the lake.
— Some Molts still retain what I call the primitive instance of the Original Gods. They are the closest remnants of what they were before their countless transformations. And that is precisely what makes them dangerous.
He paused.
— It is not because they can defeat the current Original Gods. They cannot. But they know. They remember things forgotten for eternities. They know weaknesses that the Original Gods themselves abandoned or lost through their metamorphoses.
Hinata slowly lowered her eyes.
— And with the Father of the Outergods behind them... that knowledge becomes a formidable weapon.
Silence fell again.
Then Hinata resumed:
— And your sealing? Why did you accept such a thing?
A slight smile appeared on Bivisu's face.
— Because I had lost my reason for being.
The young girl immediately raised her head.
— What do you mean?
— I was corrupted by my own function.
His eyes drifted into the reflections of the lake.
— In the past, I was very different. I was the unique avatar of the Original Gods. Their will passed through my existence. Their resonance spoke through me like a multitude of inner voices.
He looked at his own hand.
— Over time, I began to believe that my order had to be everyone's order. I wanted to impose an absolute structure on beings who were not meant to live according to my rules.
His smile became more bitter.
— I saw all transcendence as an anomaly. All freedom as an error. My role was to prevent creatures from reaching certain forms of total transcendence of the Dream... to prevent them from approaching the Fog.
The wind rippled the water's surface.
— But I eventually went too far. Even ordinary transcendent beings seemed to me to be faults that needed correction.
Hinata listened without saying a word.
— That was when the Resonance of Son of God intervened.
— Son of God...?
— Yes. One of the Original Gods.
Bivisu gently nodded.
— He did not destroy me. He did not defeat me. He simply forced me to confront myself.
His eyes closed for a moment.
— In the end, I was the one who chose to seal myself. Or rather... I was forced to understand that I had to do it.
Hinata remained silent.
For the first time, she sensed in Bivisu's voice something that resembled regret.
— Even if I was the avatar of the Original Gods, their resonances continued to live within me like several distinct personalities. They spoke to each other. They contradicted each other. Each tried to influence my decisions.
He then turned his gaze toward Hinata.
— And among all those voices... there was one that weighed more than the others.
Hinata's heart tightened.
— The Father of the Outergods?
— Yes.
The lake suddenly seemed even more silent.
— He was the one who froze the primitive state the most. The one who most deeply refused the changes that occurred after the loss of my unity.
Bivisu sighed.
— Lucifer was nostalgic as well. But compared to the Father of the Outergods...
He slowly shook his head.
— It was not the same.
Then he looked Hinata straight in the eyes.
For the first time since the beginning of their meeting, his gaze seemed strangely grave.
— Do you want to know his name?
The young girl's eyes widened.
— His... name?