Kayden took no more than a few minutes flying at low speed to reach the central part of the arena. It was a peculiar place: a vast garden rose before him, covered with white and black petals in every direction. There was no center, nor any visible god, and he could not sense any presence—at least at first. As soon as he stepped inside...The petals began to slowly spin in the air, revealing tiny inscriptions carved on their surfaces, ancient symbols that pulsed as if breathing. With each faint vibration, a silent whisper echoed in his mind, carrying fragments of the immutable laws of that space—laws that shaped the ground, the air, and even the flow of time, ensuring that no force beyond what was allowed could manifest there.The elder lay in a hammock alone. No god surrounded him, nor was there a single living soul nearby. He merely swayed gently while continuously and tirelessly adjusting small portions of his garden. Thousands of changes had already been made in the mere seconds it had taken Kayden to reach him.The being before him, resting in a hammock, seemed entirely unconcerned with the events outside, and this was truly the truth: this elder had witnessed billions of events like these and countless different geniuses. In the end, they were all swept away by the rivers of time."I don’t even know the names of the gods representing the council at this moment," the god replied, anticipating Kayden’s thoughts. The two spent several days without speaking before the god uttered this phrase."It’s not really important compared to this project of laws." The truth was that Kayden too had completely lost himself in this garden. Every petal represented a fundamental law, perfectly integrated into the grand scheme of things."Indeed." The elder said nothing further, and Kayden asked nothing. A small game began between them. Kayden was trying, in some minimal way, to understand something about this garden through countless attempts.However, the more he observed, the more he realized that the petals did not follow a fixed pattern: sometimes they disappeared like dust at the touch of a breeze, other times they multiplied silently, altering the rules before he could comprehend them.
Time began to pass without Kayden noticing. In the blink of an eye, the elder ended one event and began the next, then ended it again and started another. Kayden had completely lost himself in the threads of time. Nothing here mattered to him anymore beyond the garden, this entanglement of laws, this end without beginning and this beginning without end—something he had never seen in his life.Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, years into decades, decades in the blink of an eye into millennia, millennia into millions of years, then billions. It did not take long for them to become trillions.Unaware, Kayden spent an insane portion of his life merely analyzing random laws without truly understanding any of them. He was perceiving something from absolute zero. This was, in reality, much more than a simple law.This garden was the legacy and inheritance of the Ody family. It was something this elder had spent 99% of his entire life building. He had renounced any social interaction solely for this purpose. Leaving this place occurred only in extremely rare cases, such as the day Kayden first interacted with Jarvis.
Kayden had spent the entire time conversing with Jarvis. The god already knew what was present here, but Kayden asked him not to reveal it; otherwise, a significant portion of his learning could be lost spontaneously.The garden seemed to expand with every step Kayden took, the petals spinning in ever-changing patterns. The air carried a faint vibration, as if small notes of something ancient resonated silently. Beams of light passed through the space irregularly, illuminating symbols that appeared and disappeared without warning. Each moment brought a sense of immensity, as if time itself were folded upon itself. The elder remained motionless, observing every detail without the slightest hurry, adjusting minutiae that Kayden could barely perceive.
There was no logic to any of the laws, nor to their configurations. No plausible explanation existed for their selection or how they interacted with one another. No visible organization could be discerned among them. Kayden could not even determine where the garden began or ended.To leave this place, Kayden had to shut down any sense or perception on his part—from physical to spatial or metaphysical. He had to walk without any definite purpose to exit. Should he attempt to understand or think, he would be trapped in this environment forever. He could have destroyed it, but that would have been blasphemy before something so meticulously constructed."Chaos," Kayden murmured, then looked at the elder. "You are mimicking the laws of chaos." Tens of trillions of years had passed before he reached this conclusion, and..."Incredible," the elder’s eyes blazed like fire as they gazed upon Kayden. "This is the work of my life. I have been here since the first beings ascended to celestial status, and even so, I am incapable of putting this into operation. This is an imitation of the law of chaos, the most complete and incomplete law that exists, the law that governs beginning and end, destiny and time."
The part about "since the first ascended to celestials" surprised Kayden and made him somewhat uneasy. He was facing a titan—a true titan—someone who had literally been present at the dawn of everything. This was not an ordinary god. This being was colossal, one of the true monsters of existence."You were unable to understand it, weren’t you?" Kayden hit the mark and saw the god’s eyes darken. He had seen those eyes in himself many times—the eyes of someone who..."I failed. My existence was perfect, but my creation was not," the god sighed. "I continue trying, but I know my goal is unattainable. I have been informed of this by superior beings. I am doomed to pursue the impossible until the end of time."