Dust danced beneath the beams of light that invaded the crevices of the wooden house on the outskirts of Suryashan. The refuge of golden logs remained intact, exactly as Tribal and Alaya had left it. The porch still received the same wind. The walls still held the silence of so many decades. There was in that simplicity a kind of permanence that contrasted with the grandeur of the empire that had grown around it.
Bhāskara surveyed the environment with eyes gleaming. For a man who calculated the stars by scribbling in the sand, to be before the possibility of knowing the records, the methods, and the knowledge accumulated by that empire was almost unbearable.
He touched one of the parchments resting on a small shelf.
— All this... — he murmured. — All this knowledge gathered in a single place...
Tribal smiled. He wiped the rustic table with a gentle gesture and pushed aside some objects, offering the space to the astronomer.
— Then perhaps it's best to begin.
Bhāskara did not even answer. He was already imagining equations scattered across the floor, maps on the table, and astronomical observations occupying every corner of that house. Their cycle there was complete. That house, simple on the outside and almost infinite in possibilities within, would now serve as shelter for Bhāskara's feverish mind.
Before departing, Tribal remained motionless for a few seconds. He expanded his perception. He sought the presence he had known for ages. Akasha. Or, as he had come to be called by those who lived under his dominion: Arkhamesh, the Lord of the Sun. Nothing.
His brother's presence remained distant, withdrawn behind the deep layers of the empire. Tribal tried to reach him again with his perception, but found no response. He did not insist.
Perhaps Akasha knew they had arrived. Perhaps not. Perhaps he simply did not wish to receive them. Tribal looked at Alaya. She was already ready. Without grand farewells, the two left the golden city. Bhāskara remained. The great march was over. But the astronomer's work was only beginning.
Far away from there, time ran in another direction. The story unfolding in that instant belonged to a still-distant past. Long before Bhāskara entered that house in Suryashan, before that city became a center of knowledge, Avaranael and Saryah still wandered the world accompanied by their human followers.
The long journey of exile had not yet ended. It was during that walk that they arrived at a lush valley. There they found a settlement different from all the places they had known. There were no great towers yet. There were no walls. There were no forges or machines trying to dominate the landscape. There was only a community. And within it lived exclusively spiritualists.
Avaranael felt the change even before crossing the settlement's boundaries. The energy of that place was familiar. Not only because those beings carried the same sensitivity that he and Saryah possessed, but because there was something in the way they perceived the world that reminded him of Elshua himself. Avaranael finally understood something he had long tried to formulate.
The spiritualists were not a race deliberately created by anyone. Their sensitivity came from another origin. Fragments of Elshua's essence had dissolved into creation, crossing matter and finding new forms of existence. That was why those beings seemed to be born already close to the deep laws of the universe. They needed no schools. They needed no masters. They learned by osmosis. They observed. They felt. They absorbed. But the reception was not warm.
The inhabitants of the settlement observed the humans accompanying Avaranael and Saryah with evident discomfort. For them, those creatures carried something strange. Desire. Fear. Ambition. Anger. Passion. All that the spiritualists had learned to keep at a distance.
The leader of the community made a quick decision. The beings of flesh could remain. But outside. They would camp beyond the settlement's boundaries until their presence could be understood.
Avaranael did not protest. Saryah did not either. There was a misunderstanding there that would not be resolved by force. However, there was something the leader could not comprehend.
Avaranael and Saryah were spiritualists. Authentic ones. But they lived together. Not merely as companions of the journey. They were a couple. They loved each other. They had united spirit and matter. And that, for those people, was almost inconceivable.
The leader observed the two for some time. There was something in Saryah's presence that disturbed him. It was not only her energy. It was the way that energy transformed when she was near Avaranael. The two seemed to produce a third frequency. Something the leader had never felt.
So he made a decision. He asked that Saryah be taken to the nucleus of the settlement. He said he needed to understand that energy and that she could help conduct the spiritual balance of the place.
Avaranael understood the request. He did not like it. But he did not fight. He separated physically from his companion without turning the situation into conflict. He knew that blindness. He had lived something similar in other forms. From the perspective of the absolute, perhaps there was no malice in that decision. There was only ignorance. And ignorance, Avaranael thought, was also part of the path.
During the night, the spiritualist leader entered deep meditation. Saryah remained close. Silent. She did not try to convince him. She explained nothing. She merely existed. And it was precisely that which disarmed him.
The more the leader plunged into his own consciousness, the more he perceived something disturbing. The energy he felt in Saryah did not diminish when she was far from Avaranael. On the contrary. It seemed incomplete. As if a part of it remained outside the settlement.
The leader deepened his meditation. Then he saw. Not an image. An understanding. He saw Avaranael and Saryah walking for years. He saw the exile. The cities. The teachings. The loss. The reunion. The long transformation that had brought them to that moment.
He also saw what none of the spiritualists of that settlement had understood: Saryah's energy was not something that could be separated from her experience. She was not pure because she was isolated. She was pure because she had learned to exist amid imperfection.
The leader opened his eyes. For the first time, he felt shame for his own certainty. He had tried to protect purity. And, in doing so, he had confused purity with isolation. By separating Saryah from Avaranael, he had separated precisely that which made her energy so extraordinary. By rejecting the other beings, he had rejected a part of creation itself.
At dawn, the mist still embraced the valley when the spiritualist leader walked to the settlement's boundaries. Saryah came at his side. On the other side, Avaranael waited. The leader approached and, before everyone, returned Saryah to her companion. He bowed. Not before an authority. Before an understanding.
The settlement's residents watched in silence. The humans, camped on the periphery, as well. The leader then raised his face.
— Throughout our entire existence, we believed we had understood harmony — he said.
His voice was low, but everyone listened.
— We are born with the capacity to feel what others must learn over a lifetime. We absorb knowledge without masters. We know silence. We know energy. We know peace. He paused.
— And we believed that made us complete.
No one answered.
— We were wrong.
Some spiritualists exchanged glances.
— The purity we protected for ages became a prison. We rejected dust because it is imperfect. We rejected desire because it can wound. We rejected passion because it can consume. His eyes swept over the humans.
— But it is also those things that make a being change.
He turned to Avaranael and Saryah.
— You carry something we forgot.
Avaranael remained silent.
— Your union is not an anomaly.
The leader breathed deeply.
— It is a possibility.
He looked at the settlement's inhabitants.
— Spirit needs matter to experience the weight of existence. And matter needs spirit so as not to lose itself within its own desire. The words remained suspended in the air.
— We are only one note in the song of creation — he continued. — By rejecting the dust, the hunger, and the imperfection of those born of chance and desire, we reject portions of the Whole itself.
A wind crossed the valley.
— True elevation is not in fleeing chaos to keep one's aura clean. It is in crossing it without losing what we are.
Saryah closed her eyes. Avaranael held her hand. The leader observed the gesture and finally understood. Energy did not exist to remain separate. It existed to transform.
— Perhaps — he said — Elshua did not leave fragments of his essence in creation for us to hide them from one another.
Silence.
— Perhaps he did it so that we might learn to recognize one another.
On that day, spiritualists and humans sat together for the first time. There was no ceremony. There was no speech. Only proximity.
Some still distrusted. Others watched in silence. But no one was sent away. Avaranael and Saryah remained at the leader's side. Before them, the valley stretched as far as the eye could reach. It was then that they perceived something none of them had thought of before.
That world needed a name. Not the name of a ruler. Not the name of a race. Not the name of a city. A name that could belong to everyone. A name for the very land that sustained every creature.
The leader looked at the ground. At the dust. At the roots. At the bodies. At the rivers. At the spiritualists. At all beings. And he understood that all of it had one thing in common. The earth supported everyone. Without choosing. Without separating. Without demanding purity.
— Bhumi — he said.
Avaranael repeated:
— Bhumi.
Saryah smiled. The leader closed his eyes. The word seemed ancient. As if it were merely being remembered, and not created. Bhumi. The Foundation. The Vast. She who supports and nourishes all essences. The ground upon which spirit learns. The matter in which desire is born. The dust that receives the body. The energy that crosses everything.
In that instant, no one realized they had not merely given a name to the planet. They had given a name to what they were finally beginning to understand: creation had never been made to remain separate.