London, 1859
The book landed on the desk of the same industrialist Enki had met in Manchester. On the Origin of Species. The man's name was Alistair Finch, and his factories were monuments to the new god of Output.
Enki, attending a salon in the man's opulent home, watched Finch's eyes gleam as he read the passages on "natural selection" and "the survival of the fittest."
"By God, it's brilliant!" Finch exclaimed, slapping the leather-bound cover. "It's not just for finches! It's the law of life! My factories, my success—it's not exploitation, it's nature! The strong should thrive. The weak…"
He shrugged, a gesture of cosmic indifference. It was Kur's philosophy, given a scientific sheen. Sebastian's beautiful, neutral observation of the natural world was being twisted into a moral justification for a man-made hell. A description was becoming a prescription for cruelty.
Enki left the salon, the taste of the man's logic like ash in his mouth. He walked the foggy streets, his mind a ledger of horrors. He saw the same pattern everywhere. A tool of description—be it science, or scripture—being hammered into a weapon of control.
His journey took him to the East End, to a different kind of gathering. A small, smoke-filled room where Jewish intellectuals, fired by the new nationalist fervor sweeping Europe, debated the future of their people. They spoke of a homeland, a safe haven from the very pogroms Enki had witnessed. The longing was human. Understandable. A wounded, bleeding thing.
But then one of them, a man with the intense eyes of a prophet but the tongue of a politician, stood up. He held a volume of the Talmud, not as a source of spiritual wisdom, but as a deed.
"The sages are clear!" the man declared, his voice sharp. "In Sanhedrin 59a, it is said a Gentile who studies Torah is deserving of death! Why? Because it is ours! Our inheritance! Our land is ours alone, by divine decree. The goyim" — he spat the word, stripping it of its neutral meaning of "nation" and forging it into a slur — "are like beasts of the field. Useful perhaps, but without souls like ours. They are there to serve the Children of Light."
A murmur went through the room. Some nodded, their fear and trauma finding a violent, theological outlet. Others looked down, uncomfortable but silent.
Enki felt a chill that had nothing to do with the London damp. This was not the Judaism of the father waiting by the window. This was not the faith that had produced the gentle, unwritten churches of the first century or the profound, soulful debates of the Kabbalists.
This was something new, and yet terrifyingly old.
It was the King's argument, reborn. It was Julian's love for exclusive law, weaponized. It was Isabelle's desire to purify and preserve, turned genocidal.
They were taking the Talmud—a vast, complex, and often self-contradictory ocean of law, story, and debate, meant to guide a people in holiness—and they were cherry-picking the darkest, most divisive passages. They were ignoring the countless teachings on compassion for the stranger, on the dignity of all life created in God's image, on the responsibility to be a "light unto the nations."
They were not building a faith. They were forging a national identity based on a divine right to supremacy. They were creating a new Cage, and calling it a sanctuary.
The man continued, his voice rising to a fever pitch. "We have been sheep among wolves for too long! But no more! We will become the wolves! We will take what is ours, and we will build a state with walls of steel and a law of iron! It is our survival! It is our destiny!"
Scrapbook Entry: "The same salons now twist Darwin into a whip and will one day twist the Talmud into a sword. Both are lies. The jungle has no Torah, and the Torah has no jungle. One merely describes the world that is; the other still calls, quietly, for the world that ought to be. But when you use the 'ought to be' to justify the 'is' of your own hatred, you have not built a kingdom of God. You have summoned a demon, and painted a Star of David on its brow."
He walked out into the night, the two visions of supremacy—the industrial and the ideological—echoing in his mind. They were converging, different streams feeding the same dark river. The Cage-Makers were no longer just in churches and palaces. They were in synagogues and salons, reading from sacred texts and scientific journals, and finding in both a license for their own monstrous will to power.