There was no floor.
No sky.
No boundary.
Just motion without movement.
Aarav stood—or floated—or simply was—in the space beyond form.
Not dream. Not death.
Something older:
Source-memory.
In this place, thought was not abstract.
It was substance.
Every idea he'd ever touched drifted around him like particles.
His childhood home—shimmering as light.
Old fears—folded into flickering echoes.
The first breath he ever took after reincarnation—still pulsing like a heartbeat.
And deeper still…
Memories not his own.
Yogis from a time before time.
Architects who whispered code through mudras.
Flames that had once walked in human skin.
He reached out.
And they did not speak.
They became matter.
His hand touched an idea:
"Discipline that requires no audience."
It became a thread of silver across his palm.
Another:
"Stillness that unmakes hierarchy."
It etched itself into his breath.
He was no longer absorbing knowledge.
He was shaping his own myth.
In the mortal world, statues cracked again.
Not from rebellion.
From irrelevance.
People no longer waited to be taught.
They began to remember forward.
Aarav opened his eyes.
Still in the memory-field.
And whispered:
"Let's build what never needed gods."