Azik had a profoundly long dream.
It began in an icy, unending darkness... an environment devoid of warmth, where only the chill of death and boundless silence existed.
In the dream, Azik was not the gentle history professor of later centuries, but an ignorant hatchling... too young even to understand fire or the sun... who in one moment felt a thought arise: "It's so cold."
After an unknown duration in that spectral darkness, one day it abruptly ended. The young feathered serpent opened its eyes for the first time in the waking world... not to welcoming parents, but to a man's cold, critical gaze.
Instincts tied to blood alerted Azik that the man was his father... a being he should be close to. Yet life's instinct told him to shrivel in fear: death might come at any moment. This man might kill me.
Why?
The young serpent wondered, but did not dare to ask.
Then, after a silence filled with suffocating dread, the man withdrew his gaze and uttered:
"Not bad."
It wasn't praise for his child... it sounded like approval of a functional implement.
That lone sentence spared the young serpent's life. His many siblings... once born... did not survive. They perished before even knowing the world.
Yet… was living under such conditions truly fortunate?
Azik did not know. The dream shifted: afterward, the young serpent was trained... taught things, driven into competition with his surviving siblings.
Salinger knew no familial sentiment. All offspring of Death had to compete ruthlessly: the strong nurtured further, the weak vanished without trace.
The young Azik, the one deemed "not bad" by Death, became the standout... undoubtedly the final victor ammong the siblings.
So Death crowned him. There Azik was the Death Consul.
"Azik, you truly are my finest offspring."
On that day in the dream, Death's rare smile of satisfaction fell upon his child. Azik knelt on one knee... humble and expressionless... eyes downcast and devoid of emotion.
As the dreamer, Azik could not say what that Death Consul felt in that moment. He suspected it wasn't joy.
Still, the dream continued. The Death Consul ruled the Balam Empire... though Azik felt it more apt to call him an administrative tool of Death.
All his power came from Death. The Death Consul could only act within Death's bounds... like a puppet with no freedom or identity.
The term god‑incarnation puppet flitted through Azik's mind... he had heard it used to describe him. But was that accurate?
Azik thought not. Though he carried out repetitive bureaucracy, he also read stories... fables, folktales, even rumors circulating from other kingdoms.
As the Death Consul, he had no obligation to read such stories, yet he became obsessed. He read again and again, then quietly reflected: What are affection, friendship, love?
He had never experienced those emotions in reality... even with myriad siblings, or the many nobles wanting to become empress beside him.
So Azik wondered: Are those sentiments real? Do they exist only in fiction... or in our world as well?
He believed in the latter. The works from the Tudor Empire, believed to originate from Mr. Door, felt truthfully vivid. In those tales, high‑Sequence individuals also experienced love, kinship, even marriage.
So why, if he was also high Sequence, couldn't he? Because he wasn't strong enough?
No one answered.
Until one afternoon... an otherwise routine quiet moment... the Death Consul blinked. A young man appeared in front of him. Another version of himself sat across... calm, composed.
Effortlessly, he deduced the truth: he had reached the future... thousands of years ahead.
In that future, he had finally escaped Death's confinement. He wasn't fully free, but over many cycles, he discovered self, and the emotions he had only read about.
This is wonderful.
He thought silently. For the first time, the puppet felt genuine satisfaction on that seemingly ordinary afternoon.
Though his stay in the future was brief, upon returning to his era he was elated... for the self he finally possessed, and for the gift from the future.
That gift gave him more selfhood and suppressed Death's influence over him.
From that moment on, hope and light filled the remaining days. He occasionally visited the future again... but most of the time, he remained in the cold palace, attending bureaucratic duties. Yet he wasn't discontent. That small slice of beauty was enough to sustain him through endless years.
The Death Consul had considered rebellion... but the gap between Sequence 2 and Sequence 0 was insurmountable. Blood ties to Death offered no leverage. So he remained silent... guarding the sliver of humanity he had, maintaining a cold facade, continuing as Death's most favored offspring.
Even though he knew: Death had molded him into the perfect revival vessel.
***
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