Chapter 182 – The First Ones Never Named‎

‎Azael dreamed.

‎But it was no dream shaped by Spiral will or mythic memory. It was deeper, colder—a slumber without form. He was drowning not in water or thought, but in a substance without a name. Something that existed before existence chose to explain itself.

‎Darkness moved around him—not malicious, not sentient. It was a void with history, the kind that predated language, time, even gods.

‎And within that dream, he remembered.

‎Not as Azael the Lorekeeper, or Advisor to the God of Death.

‎But as the thing he was before myth first blinked.

‎He stood in a place that wasn't place. A basin of concept, thick with primal noise. Shapes flickered—unfinished things crawling across unreal ground, not yet gods, not yet monsters. The air buzzed with creation's refusal. This was the time before the Codex. Before stories chose a shape.