The Monitor hovered silently, guiding Kael through an endless corridor where the walls seemed made of stars. With every step he took, Kael felt the environment change: it wasn't just a physical place, it was like walking into a memory.
Finally, they reached an immense chamber, where thousands of luminous spheres floated in the air, each projecting fleeting images: vanished civilizations, impossible architectures, maps of galaxies Kael had never seen.
The Monitor stopped in the center of the room.
"Welcome to the Chamber of Memory. Here lies the echo of the Forerunners."
His voice was different, more solemn, as if even an AI could feel respect for what he was about to reveal.
Kael crossed his arms, studying the projections intently.
"So this is the great civilization everyone was afraid to mention?" His tone was neutral, but his eyes reflected a mixture of fascination and analysis.
One of the spheres descended, projecting the image of tall, elegant beings surrounded by colossal structures. The Forerunners were not gods, but they had behaved as such.
"The Forerunners mastered the balance between power and knowledge. They created rings, artificial worlds, and networks that connected entire galaxies. But in their rise, they made the oldest mistake: they believed their supremacy was eternal."
The images changed. Now they showed war. Destruction. An enemy without a defined form: the Flood. The arrogance of the Forerunners faced with a threat they could not control.
Kael watched silently, without interrupting.
"When they realized they could not win... they created this." The Monitor spun on its axis. "The Rings. Not as weapons of power, but as a last resort. A calculated suicide to stop the inevitable."
The images showed the rings activating. Silence. Extinction.
Kael took a deep breath.
—And all that knowledge stayed... here? Waiting for someone to inherit it.
—It wasn't out of hope. It was protocol. Knowledge must persist, even if it suffers the punishment of oblivion.
The room darkened slightly. The Monitor floated toward Kael, its central eye glowing brightly.
"Now you understand why I brought you here. This legacy is not a prize. It is a burden no human could bear in their current form."
The Monitor's tone hardened. "Your biology is… insufficient."
Kael showed no surprise. From the moment he grasped the magnitude of what surrounded him, he knew there would be a price.
"What do you propose?" he asked coldly.
"Reconstruction. It is not a simple upgrade. We must reconfigure your body and mind so that they are capable of sustaining the knowledge of the Ancients without collapsing."
Kael walked slowly around the room, observing the spheres that continued to project snippets of history, of mistakes and greatness.
"Will I still be me?" he asked, without looking at the Monitor.
The silence stretched longer than expected.
"You will be… more." But every transformation demands leaving something behind. Your current physiology is a limit. Your human mind, though advanced, cannot process the entire legacy without fragmenting.
Kael turned, facing the Monitor.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you will die ignorant, and this Ring will remain silent until another candidate arrives—if it ever arrives."
Kael smiled slightly.
"I was never one for second chances."
The Monitor projected a beam of light that revealed a platform in the center of the chamber, surrounded by columns that pulsed with energy.
"The process is irreversible. Your body will be dismantled and restructured at the molecular level. Your brain will be connected to the Eternal Network, where you will experience the equivalent of billions of years in controlled simulation. When you awaken... you will be able to understand what you can only observe now."
Kael stepped toward the platform without hesitation.
"How long will it be out here?"
"Five standard years."
Kael let out a low laugh.
"For me, it'll be an eternity."
The Monitor hovered nearby.
"This is how true heirs are forged. The previous Didact failed because he believed strength was enough. You... are different."
Kael stood on the platform, watching as the columns began to emit beams of light that scanned his body.
"I will not repeat the mistakes of ghosts."
The energy enveloped him, and he felt his body begin to dissolve into particles of light. There was no pain, but a feeling of detachment, as if every cell that defined him was being negotiated with eternity.
His vision blurred, and before he lost physical consciousness, he heard the Monitor's voice for the last time:
"We will see you in five years, Kael Atreides. Or... when you have ceased to be just that name."
Then, darkness claimed him.
The Artificial Eternity
Kael opened his eyes in a place he could not describe. It was not a physical space, nor a simple dream. He was on the Eternal Web, a world constructed by the minds of the Forerunners, where time had no meaning and every thought could become reality.
Before him, endless libraries of knowledge unfolded. Languages that wrote themselves, equations containing the laws of entire universes. Technologies that defied comprehension.
But it wasn't a passive process. Each fragment of knowledge was accompanied by mental tests, simulations of impossible decisions, ethical dilemmas, scenarios of war, creation, and destruction.
Kael spent centuries learning to build worlds. Millennia designing civilizations. Eons facing conceptual threats that would have destroyed any human mind.
And with each cycle, his consciousness expanded. He no longer thought like a man. He thought like an entity that understood the flow of time, matter, and mind on an almost divine level.
He felt his former self, the Kael who had been exiled, blurring. But instead of being lost, he was redefined.
He didn't forget.
He integrated.
When finally, after what felt like billions of subjective years, the Eternal Web revealed the final door, Kael stepped through without fear. He knew that, on the other side, he would awaken in a new body, in a universe that would no longer be a mystery to him.
And with that knowledge, he didn't plan to simply rule.
He planned to rewrite the rules of existence itself.