The old man took another leisurely sip from his glass while we continued staring at him.
For someone who apparently lived at the center of a settlement hidden inside a dead tree buried beneath the Soul Sea, he looked remarkably unconcerned with life.
Or anything else.
His feet dangled freely over the edge of the cloud while the endless sea of white stretched beneath him. A bottle rested beside him and judging by the amount remaining inside, he had been enjoying his afternoon for quite some time.
"You know," he said while examining the amber liquid inside his glass, "most visitors start asking questions immediately. It is actually quite refreshing that all of you spent several minutes silently judging me first."
"We were judging the temples," Silver corrected.
The old man nodded.
"Of course."
"The worlds too," Ragnar added.
"Reasonable."
"The stairs."
"Fair."
"The whole place."
The old man sighed.
"People are so critical these days."
Aurora folded her arms.
"You’re telling me you intentionally built three identical temples inside each other?"
"I built seven."
Aurora blinked.
"What?"
"I built seven."
The old man looked disappointed.
"You only saw three because I got bored."
Then Ragnar looked toward me.
"I want permission to hit him."
"Patience."
The old man smiled.
"A wise decision. I bruise very easily."
Knight sat down nearby and looked out across the clouds.
"I’ll admit one thing."
The old man brightened.
"Only one?"
"This place is impressive."
The smile widened.
"Finally. Someone with taste."
Knight continued studying the horizon.
"The layered worlds with the spatial compression. The reality folding with the civilization segregation. The recursive pathways."
He paused.
"The architecture is questionable."
The old man looked offended.
"The architecture is art refined over centuries."
"Unnecessary details."
"It was hilarious."
"It was unnecessary."
The old man pointed at him.
"Those are not mutually exclusive."
I was beginning to understand why everyone directed visitors toward the temples. Nobody else probably wanted to deal with this man.
Ragnar eventually sat down across from him.
"Fine."
He pointed toward the endless worlds visible through gaps in the clouds.
"Why?"
The old man blinked.
"Why what?"
"All of it."
Ragnar waved his hand broadly.
"The worlds. The cities. The civilizations. The temples. The fact that nobody talks properly."
The old man nodded thoughtfully.
"That is actually several questions disguised as one question."
"Answer whichever one annoys you least."
The old man considered it. Then took another sip.
"People miss home. When someone dies, everybody assumes they leave behind their possessions. They don’t. The thing people leave behind most often is familiarity. A woman spends eight hundred years living beside a particular river. A farmer spends his entire life beneath a certain sky. A merchant memorizes every street in his city. A child grows up hearing the same temple bells every morning."
The old man looked toward us.
"Then they die."
His shoulders lifted slightly.
"So I rebuilt them."
Aurora frowned.
"All of them?"
"Not all."
He looked offended again.
"I’m only one person."
The old man continued.
"I simply tried recreating the worlds they remembered most."
His hand gestured toward the clouds.
"So if somebody died missing home, they could find a version of it here."
Ragnar looked surprised.
"That’s actually..."
He paused. The old man smiled.
"I know. Unexpectedly wholesome."
"There it is."
The old man pointed at him.
"People keep forgetting I am delightful."
Eventually I decided to ask the question that had been bothering me since we arrived.
"If you’re capable of creating all of this, then why aren’t you outside fighting the Eternals?"
The amusement in the old man’s eyes dimmed slightly. It wasn’t a dramatic change, nor did the smile leave his face entirely, it felt as though I was speaking to someone beneath the endless jokes and philosophical nonsense.
"The Eternals?" he asked.
I nodded.
"The Eternals."
The old man looked down at the glass in his hand and gently swirled the amber liquid around before taking another sip. For several moments he remained silent, seemingly more interested in his drink than in answering the question.
"I did fight them, for quite a while." he eventually said.
"And then?"
The old man smiled faintly.
"A great many things happened."
That answer sounded intentionally vague. Before anyone could continue pressing him for details, he lifted one hand and gestured toward the countless worlds spread beneath the clouds.
"Eventually I realized something important. Whatever contribution I could make swinging a weapon, I could make a much larger one doing this."
Aurora frowned.
"That sounds suspiciously like an excuse."
The old man nodded immediately.
"It absolutely is."
The blunt honesty caught everyone off guard. He didn’t even attempt to defend himself. Instead he leaned back comfortably and stretched his legs over the edge of the cloud.
"I am old," he said with complete sincerity. "Very old. Old enough that I have developed strong opinions regarding comfort. I enjoy good alcohol, comfortable chairs, quiet afternoons and creating strange worlds that confuse visitors."
His smile widened slightly.
"And more importantly, I enjoy surviving."
I nodded.
At least the man was honest about his priorities. The conversation drifted after that, but my attention gradually shifted away from his words and settled upon the old man himself.
Something about him had felt familiar from the moment we arrived.
Not familiar in appearance. I had never seen him before. Not familiar in personality either. If anything, I would have remembered someone this ridiculous.
Yet the feeling persisted.
A subtle sense of recognition lingered somewhere in the back of my mind, growing stronger the longer I stood near him.
Eventually curiosity got the better of me. I allowed my perception to expand slightly. Just enough to examine the soul sitting in front of me more carefully.
Then I froze. The old man noticed immediately.
His eyes shifted toward me.
"Oh?"
There was amusement in his voice again.
"You okay young man?"
I didn’t answer immediately. Instead I continued studying the soul before me. What I was seeing existed far deeper than appearances.
Beneath the surface, hidden within the structure of his soul, was a pattern I recognized all too well. The soul wasn’t whole in the conventional sense. It had been divided long ago, separated into distinct portions and then allowed to grow independently. The process was impossibly complicated and should have been beyond almost anyone alive.
Almost anyone but I knew one person who had done so.
Dante.
Suddenly the familiarity that had been bothering me since our arrival made perfect sense. I looked at the old man for several long seconds before finally shaking my head.
"What a surprise."
The old man’s smile widened.
For the briefest moment the carefree drunk sitting on a cloud disappeared, and something immeasurably older seemed to stare back at me through those amused eyes.
Then the expression vanished.
"Well now," he said while raising his glass slightly. "That is not a reaction I hear very often."