The transition was instantaneous and seamless. One moment, Ren was on a crowded, sun-drenched street, the next, he was in a place of profound, unending silence.
He stood on a floor of polished, featureless darkness that reflected a sky of endless, twilight purple. The air was perfectly still, without a hint of a breeze, and held a strange, sterile purity. Before him, floating in the center of this infinite space, was a woman in a meditative, cross-legged position. Her eyes were closed, her expression one of perfect, untroubled serenity. This was not the cold, unfeeling puppet from the outside; this was the true, living god, Raiden Ei.
Behind her, a massive, deep crimson torii gate, a symbol of the sacred, stood silent and imposing. The entire space, the Plane of Euthymia, was the physical manifestation of her own mind, a world of perfect, unchanging stillness.
Ren stood before the meditating god, a small, solitary figure in a vast, silent cosmos, and he waited.
Slowly, her eyes opened. They were the same luminous amethyst as the puppet's, but these held a depth of thought, of ancient memory, and a profound, unshakable loneliness.
"You are the anomaly," she said, her voice a soft, melodic whisper that echoed in the infinite space. She did not sound angry or threatening, but deeply, philosophically, curious. "The source of the man-made ambition. The architect of the false Visions."
Ren simply nodded. "My name is Ren."
Ei's gaze was analytical, dissecting him not with malice, but with a scientist's need to understand a variable that had just been introduced into her perfect, eternal equation. "Your existence is a threat to the Eternity I have built for my people. Your technology allows for a will, an ambition, to be realized without the divine trial of a Vision. It is an uncontrolled variable. It creates change. It erodes the unchanging stillness that is the only true shield against the erosion of time and the pain of loss."
She looked at him, her expression not of a tyrant, but of a weary, burdened protector. "By all the principles of my Eternity, I should eliminate you. Erase the variable. Restore the equation to its stable, predictable state." She paused, a flicker of something—doubt? hesitation?—in her ancient, lonely eyes. "And yet… I hesitate. I find myself… unwilling to do so."
Ren met her gaze, his own glowing azure eyes full of a quiet, profound understanding. "That's because you're a good person," he said, his voice simple, direct, and utterly sincere. "You're a good god. Not a tyrant."
The simple, unadorned statement seemed to strike the goddess with a surprising force. It was not a plea for his life, nor a challenge to her authority. It was a simple, factual observation of her character.
"You're doing all of this," Ren continued, his voice gentle, "the Vision Hunt Decree, the Sakoku Decree… you believe you are shielding your people from the pain of loss, from the dangers that come with great ambition. You are trying to protect them, in the only way you know how."
He took a small step forward, not in aggression, but in a gesture of shared understanding. "I understand that," he said. "When I created my devices, the first thing I thought about was how some people would use them to do bad things. I was afraid of the consequences. But then I thought of all the good things, all the happiness and comfort they could bring."
Ren knew that he was in the best possible position and thus decides to tackle the core of her philosophy, the foundation of her entire decree. "Let's talk about the Vision Hunt Decree," he said softly. "You believe that by taking people's Visions, you are taking away their great ambitions, and therefore, shielding them from the great dangers and losses that come with pursuing those ambitions."
Ei simply listened, her expression unchanging, but her attention absolute.
"But you're wrong," Ren stated, his voice still gentle, but firm with an undeniable truth. "I've seen them. The people outside, in your Inazuma, the ones whose Visions have been taken. You haven't taken away their ambition. You haven't taken away their hopes and their dreams. They still want to be the greatest swordsman, they still want to protect their family, they still want to see the world. Those dreams are still there, burning inside them."
He was of course referring to his memories of Inazuma Archon quest, since technically he had just now entered Inazuma, but there was no need to elaborate to Ei to prove his point.
He looked at the goddess, his eyes full of a deep, profound empathy. "The only thing you have done is take away their best tool for achieving those dreams. You've removed the path that was blessed by a Vision. You think you've made them safer, but you've actually put them in more danger."
He explained, his logic clear and irrefutable. "A swordsman who dreams of being the best, but who no longer has the enhanced reflexes of his Electro Vision, will now have to train twice as hard, take twice as many risks, to achieve his goal. A woman who wants to protect her village, but no longer has her Pyro Vision, will now have to face down a monster with nothing but a simple, metal spear. You haven't erased their ambition; you've just made their journey a thousand times more perilous."
He finished, his voice a soft, powerful whisper in the heart of her perfect, silent world. "You haven't shielded them from danger. You've just taken away their shields."
The words, a truth so simple and so devastatingly logical, echoed in the infinite, silent space of the Plane of Euthymia. Raiden Ei, the god of Eternity, the architect of a perfect, unchanging nation, was silent. For the first time in five hundred years, someone had not just challenged her philosophy; they had shown her the fundamental, compassionate, and catastrophic flaw that lay at its very heart.