The figure's grin widened, and the light behind him shifted into patterns that looked almost like diagrams—circles nested within circles, rotating like clockwork inside a human heartbeat.
He felt the shock of symmetry—the sudden knowing that the figure wasn't another being at all, but the pattern itself, wearing form to speak.
"You've read their words," God said, "but do you know why they match?"
The scholar blinked. His mouth was dry.
"Because truth doesn't fracture."
The figure laughed softly.
"Then here's your first lesson: Nothing true breaks.
Truth survives the cut."
The words struck like small, clean detonations in his skull. Each phrase unfolded into hundreds of pages of explanation that evaporated before he could catch them. God stepped forward; the air smelled of ozone and warm metal.
"Second question: Why do you seek comfort in rot?"
The scholar hesitated. "I don't."
"You do. You mistake warmth for wisdom.
Comfort is the root of rot.
Stay still too long, and your edge will dull."
The books behind him began to shiver. Pages flipped on their own, paragraphs crossbreeding, the whole library rearranging its bones. Each text shed its cover and drifted upward, words dissolving into constellations that orbited the brass-eyed apparition.
"You've built an idol from meaning," God said.
"Now cut it down."
He felt heat spread through his hands. The wooden pencil he'd been holding darkened, lengthened, reshaped—blade first, stylus second, until it was both sword and pen, balanced perfectly. Every cell in his body knew what it was before thought arrived.
"Third question: What fills silence?"
He closed his eyes. In the quiet behind the thunder he could hear his own pulse counting prime numbers.
"Fear," he said. "And truth."
"Correct. Silence isn't empty. It's a room full of echoes waiting for you to listen."
Lightning flared between them again. The pulse of information became unbearable. The scholar staggered back into the desk. One book remained unopened, The Art of War. It flipped itself open, revealing a line he'd never noticed before: 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.'
The words peeled off the page, wrapping him like silk ribbons, binding his arms and chest in glowing script.
"You've fought only yourself," God murmured. "The next battles will not be so merciful."
The ribbons burned away. Beneath them, the walls of the apartment began to ripple like water. His heartbeat synced to something larger, the mechanical respiration of the city, the orbit of the moon, the expansion of the universe. Everything was breathing in time.
"Fourth question," God said, voice now everywhere and nowhere.
"What happens when you shrink to fit?"
The scholar could barely think. "You die smaller than you were born."
"Don't shrink to fit. You weren't built for corners."
Each question, each answer, became another cut, and with each cut a piece of the world fell away. The apartment peeled back to reveal the black geometry underneath, the scaffolding of reality. Code made of language. Syntax as physics.
"Fifth question: What happens when belief dulls?"
The scholar looked down at the blade-pen in his hand; its edge was already dimming. "It stops cutting."
"Never bleed for a dull edge. Belief is a tool, not identity. If it won't cut, discard it."
The sword flared again, alive, humming with new sharpness. God nodded.
"Good. You're learning the grammar of survival. There are seven gates between man and his own reflection. You've answered five questions. Two remain before the first gate opens."
The scholar wiped sweat from his brow. His breath came in bright fogs, each exhale a small cloud of golden letters that scattered into the air.
"Sixth question: What is pain for?"
He remembered the hours of stillness, the hunger, the cramped legs in lotus, the dizziness that became prayer.
"To mark the faults," he said. "Pain draws the path."
The apparition inclined its head.
"Final question before the threshold: Why do you trade blows for praise?"
The scholar looked at the flickering candle between them.
"Because I forget who the fight is for."
"And who is it for?"
"Only the edge."
"Then step forward."
The floor cracked open into light. The desk, the books, the candle—all slid into a widening seam that glowed like molten glass. God extended a hand.
"Seven gates. Seven fires. Each will cut you closer to balance. Are you ready?"
The scholar hesitated, then grasped the offered hand. The heat surged through him; words, prayers, equations, every thought he'd ever had compressed into a single, blinding moment of surrender.
And the first gate opened.