The celebration lasted long into the night. The villagers danced around the filled irrigation pond, their shadows long in the firelight, their voices raised in songs of praise to the river, the earth, and to Enki. They brought him offerings of the first-fruits, their gratitude a physical, overwhelming force.
Enki accepted it with a quiet nod, but his mind was elsewhere. It was screaming, yet also filled with a profound, quiet wonder.
He slipped away from the firelight, climbing a small rise that looked east over the sleeping land. The world was bathed in the cool, clear light of a single, brilliant moon. Just one. The sight of it, serene and solitary, struck him with the force of a physical blow.
It's gone, he thought, the knowledge settling deep in his soul. Its twin, the destroyer, is just… memory now. A ghost moon.
His mind, the mind of Kaelen, effortlessly called up the data. Lunar orbital patterns. Tidal models from a world with two satellites. The precise astronomical coordinates of the cataclysm. It was all there, a perfect, terrible record. But overlaying that cold data was the visceral memory of Ninella's hand in his, the final, desperate pressure of her fingers before the white nothingness.
The Ikannuna, the Kaelen-voice whispered, the name now a key turning in a lock. They were not destroying us. They were… curating. Pruning a tree that had grown too tall, too brittle, and bore no fruit. They saw our end not as a murder, but as a necessity.
The vision in the white space returned with perfect clarity. The seven points of light. The seven crowns.
THE WITNESS. That was his. His burden.
THE KING.
THE MOTHER.
THE QUEEN.
THE LAWGIVER.
THE BUILDER.
THE WATCHER.
The other six. They were out there. Right now. Were they also looking at this same, single moon? Were they, too, haunted by the ghosts of a world they lost?
A wild, desperate hope flared in his chest, so bright it was painful. I can find them. If we are together, we can change it. We can guide this new humanity onto a different path. The plan formed with the swift, sure logic of a 30th-century mind.
But beneath the grand, cosmic purpose, a smaller, more fragile hope took root, one that had nothing to do with duty and everything to do with the memory of a woman's laugh.
Ninella.
The Ikannuna had preserved him. They had preserved the others. Was it possible… could a soul be so unique, so vibrant, that it too was deemed worthy of preservation? Was it madness to hope that the same cosmic law that saved him might have saved her? That somewhere in this vast, new, ancient world, she was being born, or was already living, under this same, single moon?
He looked at the happy, dancing villagers, their joy simple and immediate. They were his responsibility, the first garden he had been tasked to tend. But they were one garden in a vast, wild world. To truly fulfill his purpose, he had to find the other gardeners.
And perhaps, just perhaps, in searching for the future of humanity, he might find a piece of his own past.
The next morning, as the village slept off its celebration, Enki stood before his mother. He had a traveling pack—a waterskin, a blanket, a knife, and a pouch of dried fish. His expression was no longer that of a quiet boy or a local miracle-worker. It was the resolute look of a soldier who has just received his orders, and the wistful gaze of a man chasing a ghost.
Ninsun took one look at him and her heart shattered. She saw the ancient knowledge in his eyes, the purpose that had settled there. The boy was gone.
"You are leaving," she said. It was not a question.
"The water will last through the season," Enki said, his voice gentle but firm. "The channel will need maintenance before the next drought. I have shown Anu how."
"Why?" she whispered, though she already knew the answer.
He reached out and took her hands, the healer's hands that had saved a village and raised a king. "The world is much bigger than this village, Mama. And I have… kin… to find. There are other names that were called. I must learn why." He paused, and his gaze grew distant, looking through her to a memory only he could see. "And I have… a memory to search for."
He did not say goodbye. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers, just as his father had done a lifetime ago. A gesture of profound connection, and of parting.
Then, he turned and walked away from the village, his back straight, his gaze fixed on the eastern horizon where the sun was rising. He did not look back.
He was Enki of Sumeria, the bringer of water.
And he was Kaelen, the Witness from the End of Time, a man chasing both a future and a ghost.
His journey had begun.