Mercury orbit. Aboard the Scythian, Captain Manuel's ship.
Pietro's cabin lies drowned in twilight.
In the far corner, where a single indicator light pulses faintly, everything feels frozen—
as if time has lost its rhythm and gone still, watching.
Pietro lies on his back.
His body slack.
But his mind...
His mind won't let go.
It whispers.
Pulls at him from within.
Like something vital was left unsaid.
I'm alive, and yet it feels like I've already died.
I'm here... but drowning inside myself.
What do you want from me, memory?
What are you hiding, faith?
Everything sharpens to painful clarity:
the low hum of the reactor,
the subtle vibration of the hull against the rushing plasma,
even the distant rhythm of Captain Manuel's breath.
He feels the ship the way one feels their own heartbeat.
But that's only the prelude.
His consciousness begins to sink.
Losing weight.
Losing shape.
Even losing its boundaries.
Thoughts unravel—like smoke in frostbitten air.
Only silence remains.
And a strange readiness.
Readiness for a meeting.
Readiness for every answer at once.
He opens his eyes.
Or thinks he does.
Before him—
a figure in the dark.
His own face.
But not quite.
Calm.
Lit from within.
As if truth itself had taken on a shape.
"You have questions for me?" the double asks.
The words make no sound.
They arrive inside.
Like thoughts that had always been there—
finally finding a voice.
"I do," Pietro says, gathering the pieces of himself like shattered glass.
Each word is a stroke against viscous waters.
"What commandments does the god Hanaris give?"
The double smiles.
Not above him.
Not down at him.
But with a quiet, fatherly certainty—
as though he knows Pietro is ready.
"The first commandment:
Any believer who dies with Hanaris' name on their lips
enters the Vault of Osari
and shall rise again."
The world flares open.
Light.
Brilliant. Blinding. Alive.
He's no longer alone.
He is inside other bodies.
Seeing through their eyes.
Feeling their pain.
Their fear.
Their last hopes.
I am a woman clinging to her son as the airlock tears them apart.
I am a soldier screaming his lover's name in a storm of plasma.
I am a child choking in an oxygen-starved room—
but still believing in light.
These aren't memories.
They are the people.
Millions.
Billions.
They flood into him—
as if returning home.
Darkness again.
The double stands before him.
"You've just seen them.
They are part of Osari. Preserved.
Waiting to awaken again."
"The second commandment:
Evil is any interaction without consent, without goodwill.
All evil must be punished—
or else you become an accomplice
and multiply it."
"If you stood silent while the weak were beaten,
you struck first.
If you didn't stop the killer,
you held the knife beside him."
The soul of a believer who commits evil
is erased from Osari.
Forever.
He will not rise again.
Pietro presses his lips together.
Doubt grows in his chest.
"And what about non-believers?"
His voice is nearly a whisper.
But the double is already prepared for that.
"Bring them to faith.
That is the path to salvation.
Salvation always begins with choice."
"And if..." Pietro hesitates.
Cold clutches his chest.
"What if I refuse?
What if I say no?
What if I choose doubt?"
The double holds his gaze.
His eyes—like an abyss.
Not terrifying.
Just inevitable.
"You may refuse.
You are free."
Pause.
Then—like a toll of fate:
"But know this—
Your mind will never enter Osari.
You will not rise again.
You will vanish.
Into oblivion."
That final word—
like the stroke of a bell through bone.
Pietro trembles.
The world dissolves.
He sinks.
Eyes fly open.
His cabin.
Still in twilight.
The indicator blinks softly, just as before.
Everything... unchanged.
But inside—nothing is the same.
He takes a breath.
Then another.
As if learning to breathe for the first time.
Something's changed.
He feels it.
Doesn't understand it.
But feels it.
His mind still pulses—
like widening circles across still water.
And with every ripple—
more questions.
Fewer answers.
Will I return to Osari?
Or disappear forever?