Chapter 4: Your Choice

The engraving still felt warm when Aris read it.

Not a symbol. Not a formula.

Just a short sentence, written in a language he didn't understand:

"Sein Und Zeit"

As Aris read the writing, his head felt tight, like something was pressing in from the inside and not giving him time to breathe. Amidst the pain he felt, a faint silhouette of an eye he had seen appeared.

Aris closed the pocket watch slowly, as if afraid that the sentence would make him unconscious.

Aris slowly stepped out of the Daconia square. He realized the difference, there was no sound, no vibration as if time had stopped around him. Only silence.

The sky of Daconia was bluish-red in color. The sun was invisible, but its shadow was there. The direction of the light was felt, though the source was invisible.

He walked past the wooden houses that had seemed alive earlier. Now the windows were closed. There was no smoke from the chimneys. There was no sound of steps.

At the end of the main road, he found something he hadn't seen before. The building was unlike any other house. The walls were composed of shiny black stone, but they did not reflect shadows. It was cylindrical in shape, like a tower without a top, and the door was open as if waiting for someone to come. Above the door, a word was engraved in a language that was not entirely unfamiliar, but could not be read immediately either:

"Dasein"

The pocket watch in Aris's hand felt warm.

He entered. Inside, there were many archives. Circular shelves filled the space, towering upwards, storing thousands to millions of objects. Not just books. There were clock fragments, maps that changed shape when viewed, glass bottles filled with frozen light, bones with mathematical engravings, even pieces of miniature cities that kept collapsing and rebuilding themselves.

And everything was labeled.

Aris approached one of the shelves. He picked up a book with a brown cover. As he opened the book and read it:

"Those who fail will remember, those who forget will be reminded by time."

Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps. The sound came from behind. Aris turned around quickly. An old woman stood between the shelves. She had long, silvery-white hair, flowing neatly. Her skin was dark, her eyes sharp, full of age lines that came not only from time, but from long observation. She wore a simple robe with symbols on the chest vertically like a spear, a circle on the outside and inside, on the circle there were symmetrical curves and hooks like horns and crescents similar to Aris' pocket watch.

"Who are you?" asked Aris.

The woman smiled slightly. "In my homeworld, I'm called Namtira. Now... I'm just the guardian of this place."

"You're... human?"

"That was then," she replied honestly. "Like most of the people here."

Aris felt a chill creep up.

"You're trying to make your way home," he said.

Namtira nodded. "I failed."

"And you became... this world?"

"Not all who fail become foundations," Namtira said. "Some of us quit right before it dissolves completely. And just a reminder."

She walked down the shelf, her finger touching one object. A compass whose needle turned in on itself.

"Do you know what the most common mistake of time travelers is?

time travelers?" she asked.

Aris shook his head.

"They think time is a line," she said. "Or a circle. Or the branching roots of a tree"

She turned her head, looking directly at Aris. "But time is a covenant."

"A covenant with whom?"

"With...SEIN," Namtira replied. "In the universe, THEY have many names."

"Then you know about the First World?"

Namtira stopped walking.

Her expression changed, not fearful, but wary.

"Not many know about it," she said quietly. "Only a few people dare to look for it."

Namtira looked at Aris for a long time, as if weighing whether it was a sentence worth telling.

"The First World," she repeated softly. "We didn't call it a world at first. It was too... simple."

She walked towards the center of the tower. The black stone floor there was uneven; carved circles and lines cut through each other like a diagram drawn by someone who did not believe in human geometry. Aris's pocket watch vibrated subtly, synchronizing with Namtira's steps.

"Sit down," the old woman said.

As soon as Aris stepped into the circle, the space around them changed. The shelves disappeared, replaced by a dark expanse studded with points of light, not stars. Rather, it was like a small hole in the cosmos.

"This is the Archives of the Way," said Namtira. "Each dot is a world that a cosmic man has touched."

"Cosmic man?" Aris repeated.

"Humans who first realized that existence is not really existence, but a temporary position." Namtira stared at one of the softly pulsing dots. "They are not born like us. They just happened." The light from the dot expanded, engulfing them both.

The first world they traveled to had no sky. Above were only layers of transparent reality, like cracked glass arranged in layers. Each layer reflected a different possibility: a ruined city, a crystal forest, a waterless ocean.

Here, time moves like mist, sometimes flowing, sometimes stopping between two breaths.

"Welcome to Lust Kharon," Namtira said. "The world of crossroads. All first-world seekers pass through it, whether they realize it or not."

Creatures flashed in the distance. Their forms were unstable: half human, half concept. Some were faceless, others had holes in their bodies and from those holes flowed shadows of the future and the past.

"Are they... alive?" asked Aris.

"They were once alive. But now they're just waiting."

Suddenly, the ground shook. From behind the layers of reality, a large figure appeared like a solidified shadow. Their body was covered in symbols that moved on their own, spinning and shifting and shifting.

"The contract guardian, The Kalvaror" Namtira muttered. "It senses your pocket watch."

The creature roared. not a sound, but more like a memory of fear. The symbols on its body radiated, compressing the space around them. Aris felt his head tighten again.

"Don't fight with power," Namtira said quickly. "A creature of time cannot be beaten. It can only be promised."

She raised her hand, revealing the symbol on her chest. Aris's pocket watch opened on its own. The hands spun backwards, then stopped.

Aris suddenly remembered something he had never experienced: a promise, made before he was born.

The creature stopped. Its symbols faded. It retreated, then dissolved back into the layers of reality.

Namtira staggered. Aris supported her.

"Every promise given to The Kalvaror takes a piece of me," she said softly. "That is the price to pay for being a reminder."

The journey continues. World after world.

They passed through Vakara, a world whose entire population was an echo of the voices of the dead, stuck repeating their last sentence. There, Aris was almost dragged away by something that sounded like his mother.

They crossed the Covenant of Stillness, a city built on a giant sleeping creature. Every building was a nail holding its body together. When the creature moved, the entire city would go to war with gravity changing direction. There was a fight, the citizens of the city fought with the The Tailors of Destiny, Texentium. The humans who cut off the possibilities to keep this world "stable".

Aris saw it from a distance. One of the Texentium members died not from wounds, Aris chose not to save him. "Don't stay here too long," Namtira said afterward. "Getting used to this world will quickly consume anyone."

Then they left and arrived at the world with the dark hole, Abyss Gate. They almost failed miserably. The world was a bottomless pit, where time fell and unraveled. There, Aris saw another version of himself that was older, colder and staring back from the darkness.

"I had once gotten that far," that version said. "Then I chose to stop."

"Stop?" asked Aris.

"Stop being Dasein."

Namtira pulled Aris away before she could answer further.

Finally, after traveling for what seemed like only a few seconds, they arrived at a place that was not recorded in the Road Archives.

There was no name. No coordinates.

Just a white plain with no texture, and in the center of it was a human sitting cross-legged.

He looked ordinary. Too ordinary. Simple black clothes, an unmarked face, brownish hair. But his shadow did not follow his body. His shadow pointed in all directions at once.

"There he is," Namtira whispered. "The first cosmic man, The Purusha. Who realized he existed before there was time to realize anything."

The human opened his eyes.

"It's been a long time," he said. His voice sounded familiar to Aris, like a mother tongue he'd forgotten he had. "Someone finally brought the clock back."

"Is this clock...yours?" asked Aris.

"No," he replied with a smile. "It was a deal."

Namtira knelt down. "We failed," she said. "We tried to go back, reshape, and repair..."

"I know," The Purusha replied gently. "Failure is how you survive. The First World cannot be entered by those who wish to improve it."

"Then can I go there?" asked Aris.

The cosmic human stood up. As he took a step, the white plain rippled like water.

"Because you are one of the chosen ones," he told Aris. "The ones chosen by SEIN."

Aris fell silent.

"The First World," The Purusha continued, "is not the origin of the universe. It is the result of existence first realizing itself, it leaves a mark. And that mark is the First World."

"And SEIN?" asked Aris.

"Another name for the creature," she replied. "There are many things you don't deserve to know it right now, but to get to the First World you have to become Dasein."

The Purusha looked up at Namtira. "You may rest."

Namtira's body trembled. The symbol on her chest cracked, then collapsed into ethereal light.

"What happened to her?" Aris panicked.

"She did not vanish," the human said. "He returned to Daconia."

Namtira smiled one last time before dissolving into the white plain.

The cosmic human looked back at Aris.

"Now it's your choice," he said. "Return, become a human on your home world. Or step into the role of Dasein."

The pocket watch in Aris's hand stopped ticking.

For the first time since he read it, the sentence felt clear, complete, and heavy:

"Sein und Zeit"

Being and Time.

And Aris finally understood...time does not move forward. Instead, it forms a knot of circles that crisscross each other without end.