Atlas did not enter Heaven.
He was swallowed by it.
The transition was violent in a way that made no sound. One moment there was the familiar pressure of shadow—Veil's domain folding, bending, protecting—and the next, the world inverted into a vast, bleached expanse that rejected him down to the marrow.
White sand stretched in every direction, endless and sterile, glittering faintly as if each grain had once been a star ground into dust. Above, the sky was not blue but a smooth, pearl-bright dome without sun or cloud, luminous and false.
The sand burned cold beneath Atlas's boots.
Not heat. Not frost. Judgment.
He felt it immediately—the way LAW tightened around his bones, not resisting him outright but measuring him, as if Heaven itself were running calculations. It did not ask who he was. It asked whether he should be allowed to continue existing.
