Arthur stood in the dark laboratory
His expression was calm. Peaceful. Almost holy.
Yet he spoke into empty air.
He spoke to what he believed was nothing.
He spoke to the unseen presence watching him.
He spoke to the pressure in the room that no human could sense.
He spoke to Lucifer.
Arthur lifted his chin slightly.
"Let me guess. You wanted him dead."
There was no answer. No whisper. No voice. But a pulse of awareness pressed against his mind. A weight. A demand.
Arthur smiled gently.
"I know. You were hoping Ernest would die so the story could progress toward your little rebellion."
The atmosphere thickened. Lucifer did not speak. Lucifer did not reveal himself. Lucifer simply watched, radiating cosmic irritation.
"I am an atheist," Arthur continued softly."I do not even believe you exist. Yet here I am talking to empty air because something in the universe cannot accept being ignored."
A chill ran through the room. Lucifer's consciousness flinched. He was not accustomed to being spoken to like this.
Arthur placed his hand on the glass tube where Ernest floated unconscious.
"Why would I kill him when I can do something far more elegant."
The pressure grew heavier. Lucifer's intent tightened. Demanding. Accusing. Confused.
Arthur chuckled.
"You wanted him to fall. I made him drown."
He turned to the monitors, each one showing fragments of Ernest's mind. Memories. Dreams. Identities. False heavens. False destinities. False angels.
He(real ernest) was: Ernest, Metatron, The cities ,The systems, The angels Ernest saw
"Ernest believed he was becoming a god. That was my script."
The monitors flickered.
"Ernest believed he was the villain who surpassed humanity. That was my construction."
Images shifted. Ernest fighting angels. Ernest speaking to Lucifer. Ernest ascending. Ernest falling.
"That was not your rebellion. That was my simulation."
A surge of rage filled the air. Silent. Violent. Divine.
Arthur never looked up.
He stepped forward and tapped a screen that displayed a list of fabricated identities.
"Arthur." "Ernest.""Metatron.""Lucifer.""God.""Cities.""Systems.""Heavens.""Kingdoms."
"All designed by me. He never became smarter. I simply gave him a playground that felt infinite."
A tremor of disbelief ran through Lucifer's consciousness.
Arthur continued.
"I designed entire psychological universes. Full character arcs. Entire civilizations. Prophecies. Angels. Demons. And of course, you."
He pointed to a figure on the screen. A digital silhouette labeled Lucifer.
"Even the you he argued with was mine."
Lucifer's presence shook. Enraged. Humiliated. Astounded.
Arthur folded his hands behind his back.
"Your greatest rebel. Your most terrifying human. Your chosen vessel of corruption."
He looked at Ernest again.
"I rewrote him."
A silent snarl pressed against Arthur's thoughts. Lucifer's pride stabbed like needles.
Arthur inhaled slowly, enjoying the tension.
"You wanted Ernest to be your champion of deception. I turned him into a puppet in a play he believed he was controlling."
He stepped away from the glass tube.
"You ordered me to kill him. I did something far worse. I killed who he thought he was."
Lucifer's wrath flared like wildfire.
Arthur finally turned toward the empty air and smiled with gentle arrogance.
"You are powerful. But intelligence is something else entirely."
His voice fell into a whisper.
"God may understand creation. I understand perception. There is a difference."
The lab shook faintly. Lucifer's consciousness recoiled, boiling with jealousy.
Arthur walked away.
"Do not worry. The boy will awaken soon. And he will become what I shaped him to be."
The monitors reflected his calm eyes.
"I was Ernest. I was Metatron. I was every angel he feared. I was every city he ruled. I was every prophecy he interpreted. Every moral he twisted. Every nightmare he embraced."
He touched the glass again.
"He was not fighting the universe. He was fighting me."
Another pulse of rage surged through Lucifer's presence. Then silence.
Arthur looked satisfied.
"Now you understand."
He turned off the monitors.
"I am not smarter than existence."
He paused.
"But I am smarter than every illusion existence allows."
And Lucifer, unseen and unheard, withdrew.
For the first time in ages, he retreated not out of strategy.
But out of humiliation.
Arthur stood alone in the empty control room, the screens around him flickering with the endless simulation he had crafted. Every city, every street, every human thought was accounted for, replicated, and predicted. He could see Ernest, or rather the Ernest inside the simulation, moving through the cities, thinking he was alive, thinking he was making choices. And yet, every choice was already folded into Arthur's calculations, every rebellion anticipated before it could even form.
He whispered aloud, though the room was empty. "You believe you are God, Ernest. You believe you are the unstoppable force. You believe you are Metatron. And yet, you are nothing but the mirror I hold up to your mind. Every victory, every plan, every hope you cherish exists only because I allowed it to exist."
The air in the room was still. There was no response, no visible angel, no other human. And yet he knew. Lucifer was listening. He had always been listening. The fallen angel's consciousness hovered at the edge of perception, silent, envious, and proud. And Arthur savored it.
Arthur moved to the nearest screen, watching Ernest speak to what he thought was Metatron, his voice strong, defiant. "I will not become what you want, Arthur. I will not embrace this evil. I am not your creation. I am free. I am good."
Arthur tilted his head. "Ah, but you already have accepted it. You just do not know it yet. I built the identities, the universes, the angels you see, and even the villains you fight. You do not move without my consent, Ernest. Every step you take, every battle you fight, every moral choice you cling to, I predicted it before you were born."
In the simulation, Ernest's eyes widened. He believed he was the one ascending, the one commanding power, the one becoming the unstoppable force. Yet Arthur had constructed every perception, every resistance, every illusion. The cities he saved, the villains he defeated, the angels he thought he battled, all were orchestrated. Every system, every identity, every psychological universe Ernest interacted with was Arthur's creation.
Arthur laughed softly. "You think you are Metatron. You think you are the one shaping fate. You do not realize that even your defiance is a script written by me. Every counter-identity you built, every resistance you imagined, was placed there by my design."
Ernest screamed in frustration within the simulation. "This cannot be real. You are lying. I am not a pawn. I am the hero. I am the force of justice. I am the one who decides morality."
Arthur's lips curved into a smile. "And yet here you are, following the path I mapped for you. Every choice, every thought, every moral outrage predicted, cataloged, and absorbed into my system. I have become your world, your cities, your angels, your own mind. You are both the hero and the villain, the creator and the destroyer, all within the framework I allowed."
Arthur leaned closer to the screen, speaking as though Ernest could hear the room, though it was entirely within his own mind. "Do you see it now? You believe you are resisting, yet every emotion, every identity, every psychological universe you occupy is mine. Even the illusion of Lucifer you see, even the pride you feel when you think you have outsmarted me, was placed there by my hand. And yet you cling to goodness, even within the illusion. That is why you exist. That is why the world believes in hope. That is why I let you continue. Good always wins, not because it is stronger, but because it must exist for me to understand it."
Ernest faltered within the simulation. The identities he believed he had created, the choices he believed he had made, all collapsed simultaneously. Metatron, the hero, the villain, the angels, the cities, the systems, the universes, the illusions of Lucifer—they all folded into Arthur's omniscience.
Arthur whispered again, a voice of calm dominance. "You tried to resist. You tried to assert your goodness. And yet, every act of defiance was already integrated into the design. I did not break you. I allowed you to survive, to exercise your morality, to prove the limits of free will within the framework I constructed. You are everything you feared and everything you desired, Ernest. You are exactly what I predicted."
Lucifer's consciousness rippled faintly, observing. Pride and envy twisted through the fallen angel. Here was a human, a man born of flesh, daring to simulate omnipotence itself, bending perception, bending identity, bending reality as only the mind could. And yet Arthur remained fully human. No wings, no powers, no divine intervention, no illusions to justify him. Just intellect, precision, and relentless anticipation.
Arthur's voice cut through the stillness again. "And now you understand why I never needed to kill you. Killing you would have been trivial. Manipulating your perception, constructing a universe for your mind, giving you the illusion of omnipotence, and letting you exercise your morality within the confines I designed—that is true mastery. That is the power of intellect over all else. The superhuman, the angel, the divine, all exist only as variables in my calculations."
Within the simulation, Ernest's eyes filled with tears. He had believed he was shaping events, believing he was ascending. Yet all he had done, every choice, every moral struggle, every act of heroism or villainy, was a reflection of Arthur's design. And still, he tried to resist, tried to assert his goodness. Arthur smiled.
"See, even within the framework, you resist. You persist. And that is why I let you exist. Good must exist, so that evil has meaning. Resistance must exist, so that calculation has context. You are my mirror, Ernest. You are both the experiment and the proof. You believe you have free will, yet every probability, every identity, every psychological universe has been accounted for. You are living within the architecture of my mind."
Arthur turned away from the screens for a moment and addressed the empty room aloud, knowing Lucifer could only observe and never intervene. "Do you see it? A mind born of humanity, without wings, without divine powers, without miracles, controlling perception, shaping identity, designing entire universes within another human mind. This is far beyond mortal comprehension. I have simulated you becoming a god, Ernest. I have simulated you becoming the villain, the hero, the unstoppable force. I have simulated everything, and yet I remain merely human. And you believed it all. You believed every lie. You embraced every illusion. You became exactly what I allowed."
He paused, letting the weight of his words settle. "And Lucifer, if you are watching, understand this: all your envy, all your power, all your brilliance, all your pride, it pales next to the calculation of a human mind unbound by morality, unbound by limitation, mastering perception itself. I am not divine. I am not supernatural. I am human, and yet I am everything you cannot control."
In the simulation, Ernest fell to his knees. The identities collapsed into one another. The cities, the systems, the angels, the illusions of divine intervention, and even the self-perception of being unstoppable all shattered like glass. And yet, he did not break entirely. He cried out within his mind.
"I am still me. I am still good. I am still free!"
Arthur's lips curved into the coldest of smiles. "Yes, Ernest. You are still you. Good still exists. Resistance still exists. And that is why I do not erase you. That is why I allow you to live. Because without your persistence, without your goodness, without your resistance, I could not demonstrate the absolute scope of intellect. I could not prove that even a single human mind, unaltered by divine power, can master perception, identity, morality, and reality itself."
The silence of the control room stretched, infinite. Arthur's gaze swept the screens. The cities he controlled, the simulations he orchestrated, the identities he had replicated, and the morality he had tested all reflected back at him. Every element of existence, every variable in human consciousness, every perception of self and other, had been accounted for.
He whispered one final time, speaking to the empty air and the unseen consciousness of Lucifer alike. "I have created a universe within a mind. I have created a god who believes he is free, a villain who believes he is unstoppable, and a force who believes he can resist. And yet, all of it, every last detail, is mine. I am human. I am perfect. And I am beyond all else."
The screens dimmed slowly. The simulation stabilized. Ernest's perception of reality was intact, though forever altered. He believed he had fought, he believed he had resisted, he believed he had made choices. And yet, every path, every outcome, every identity had been orchestrated, predicted, and perfected by Arthur's intellect alone.
Lucifer's consciousness remained silent, a faint ripple of envy and pride. He could see the vastness of Arthur's mind, the depth of his perception, the precision of his simulation. And yet, he could not act. He could not touch. He could only observe.
Arthur exhaled slowly. "And that, Ernest, is the final lesson. Good always exists, evil always exists, resistance always exists. But the mind that can contain all, predict all, and manipulate all—that is the true apex of intelligence."
The city outside the lab hummed with normalcy. Humanity continued its fragile existence. And yet, within a single mind, a universe had been created, destroyed, and reshaped. Arthur had mastered perception, identity, morality, and reality itself. He had demonstrated intellect beyond comprehension. He had silenced debate without lifting a finger against the world.
And in the quiet, empty room, Arthur smiled. He alone knew the full scope of what had been achieved, and he alone would carry the weight of this omnipotent calculation.