The Universe
The Figures
The figures of »The Immortality of Mortality« — and what binds them.
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Menelaus, the Aeonian
A being that cannot die, from time immemorial and for ever. For aeons he carried a light he once fought for, until he forgot what for. His story is that of a warrior who had unlearned how to feel, and who learns again to fall into a morning.
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Lyralei
Healer and keeper of the thresholds, the places where the worlds grow thinner. She sits beside those who come to her, never across from them, and makes even dying into something that happens in twos. What she gives is not a long life, but the capacity to live a single morning fully.
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Jakob Steinberg
Chronicler of these records, and perhaps more than that. Night after night he heard a voice that threw no echo: »You are seeking me.« What he sets down, he does not interpret; he only holds still enough for the truth to pass through.
What Binds Them
All three stand at the same threshold, where the finite and the infinite touch one another, and each meets the same question from a different side. Menelaus lives it: the immortal who learns again what a single morning weighs. Lyralei keeps it, sitting down beside those who cross over. And Jakob sets it down, without interpreting, so that the truth may pass through him. What unites them is not an alliance, but a question: what remains, when you lose what you love and cannot go yourself.