Judd gasped a sudden and huge breath. He sat up, coughing and breathing as if it were the first time, then glanced around. The crimson velvets of the room engulfed him like a tide. It was a dream, he realized. I'm still in the Red Room. A nightmare, just a nightmare. Then, before, I hadn't woken up?

His first lucid thought went to Bahamut. It lay on the altar, where he had left it. Judd heaved a sigh of relief and calmed down. His head still ached. Perhaps, he wondered, the shadow of his Zahir, Bahamut, had caused the nightmares. Perhaps the Veil had breached and he would soon see the Rose. He stopped, aghast to the greatness of his thoughts. I must meditate, he told himself, I must prepare to receive the Vision of the Rose. Today is a great day.

He stood up and approached the window. A full moon shed its light on the mansion courtyard; everything was still, frozen under the silver breath. Suddenly, the bright globe withdrew deeply into the vault of heaven. In an instant the Veil breached and the universe was illuminated by a light that wasn't that of the moon anymore, because the moon didn't exist anymore, perhaps it had never existed, and it simply slipped away like a glove, showing the hand that wore it: the enormous appendage of the God-Abyss. The dreadful sight hit Judd like a slap. He staggered and turned as an enormous sneer filled the sky.

"What's wrong my dearest son? Aren't you happy to see me?"

Judd turned to the altar. The voice came from Bahamut--it spoke! The sky swore loathsome and obscure sounds, but it was Bahamut that translated them, it translated those sounds.

"What did you do to my Work, stop it!" shouted Judd. "Bahamut is my only God! It alone. You are only an absurd hallucination of my mind. I'm still sleeping; you are only a hallucination, only a hallucination!"

"Oh Judd, you are right, the whole world is a hallucination."

No, thought Judd, this can't be the Breach of the Veil. I'm still dreaming! I haven't been able to wake up yet, there isn't any other explanation. I must open my eyes. Yes, I'm still lying on my bed. I must open my eyes! "Judd wake up!" he cried. "Wake up!" I'm still dreaming; I must wake up "Wake up!"

"Screaming is useless", translated Bahamut, as the monster filling the sky swore sounds of another world. "No one can hear you. No one! You are all dead. The whole humankind has drowned in the timeless ocean of my sleep. You are all dead and dream you are alive. But not you, my dear son, you are aware of the Dream, because you created Bahamut, which dreaming about me has called me forth."

"No, you don't exist!"

"You are the favorite and the sacrifice Judd, rejoice!" snarled the sky.

I can't be immolated on the altar, thought Judd with horror. I'm a devout servant. I am destined to rise to impossible heights standing by My God! "If I can't kill you," he shouted, "then you won't be able to either!" He burst open the large window and, without hesitation, hurled himself out. His body fell through the air and crashed into the greenhouse. How come the greenhouse was there, he wondered; he had built it much farther away. The windowpanes smashed under the tremendous impact and the roof caved in, making the whole building vibrate. Again, Judd thought. It's happening again--like in the dream. His body lay disjointed on the ground, his limbs broken and contorted in strange angles. A pool of black blood lazily soaked through the roses. Then something slimy bent under his skin. A powerful contraction raised his chest; his heart started to beat again and breath returned to his lips. Like a man who escaped drowning, Judd drew in a sudden and huge breath. He sat up, coughing and breathing as if it were the first time, then glanced around and suddenly started screaming in pain--his limbs were creaking and screeching, recomposing the fractures. I'm still alive, he thought, breaking into hysterical laugh. "What did you do to me? What?" he shouted at the heaven's parasite. "Into what have you turned me? I should be dead." He lowered his eyes and looked at the black blood oozing from hundreds of gashes--the wounds were healing, and the fractures too, they were knitting together. "All this dark blood," he moaned, "this filthy fluid. There must be a way... There must be a way to free myself from this unnatural life!"

A bellow of loathsome and bloodcurdling sounds answered to him. Then, from his room, through Bahamut, God's words reached him: "Awakening doesn't exist, death doesn't exist. "Do you remember, 'A dream, dreaming, dreamt a dream dreaming it.'"

"Shut up. You won't desecrate my Work, the very image of my God, with your filthy voice!"

Judd's body contracted with unprecedented violence. His muscles stretched like steel cables, and a ferocious vitality invaded him. This time I won't run away, he roared inside himself. Like a panther, he leaped onto the greenhouse framework and jumped three meters high through the air, then, with an impossible agility, he put a foot on a projecting cornice and hurled himself at the tower.

He burst into his room like a beast and pounced upon Bahamut. "Nobody will have what I have created," he bellowed, seizing the aquarium and flinging it against the wall. The bell-glass shattered into pieces. Bahamut fell to the ground, its body covered with bleeding gashes. Through a swollen eye, it looked at Judd as he slumped to the floor too.

"How come my dear, you assail your own creature?" fleered God. "Don't you remember what makes up Bahamut?"

Judd managed to raise his head. Bleeding gashes covered his face; a dark fluid oozed from his swollen eye. He stared at his creature and whispered through blood: "It's made of the cerebral matter of the sacrificed ones."

"Are you sure?"

A strange shiver ran through Judd; a sense of unreality, like pins and needles in a limb, enveloped him. Something around him had changed, but he could not define what. The place looked different, yet it was somewhat familiar. He realized he was looking downward: his hands were honing the internal blade of the Sacrificial Tiara. He faintly felt his own body moving and found himself in front of the dressing table. He looked at his own reflection without understanding, then a wave of horror revealed what his conscience had pitifully concealed: a corpse worm rested on his thorax, its tentacles sunk into his chest and head. The filthy creature was throbbing slowly, pumping fluids. From its frontlet, an appendage protruded and pierced directly into the scar of the Initiation Ordeal. Judd felt his hands placing the Sacrificial Tiara on his head, even though he had not ordered it. He felt the blade on his forehead. His voice, crazed, shook the silence, "He who saw the Zahir would soon see the Rose, because the Zahir is the shadow of the Rose and the breach of the Veil. Thus you wrote my prophet, you who saw the Zahir through eyes without eyelids, Oh great Rhbeen-Al-Tariq! I've seen, my prophet, and in me has grown the Larva of the Worm that feeds on the Rose. My body now is only a fruit too ripe. The time has come to part my divine body from the matter that creates dreams. The time has come to mold the gray matter of dreams into God's shape, so that the Veil will breach and dreams will see reality." It isn't happening now, thought Judd, the room looks different. It looks like... like the past. Suddenly his body bent violently, smashing his head against the marble of the dressing table. Judd saw blood splashing onto his feet. The Tiara rolled across the floor together with the upper part of his skullcap. He felt his body straighten up and approach the altar, where the aquarium rested. His hands raised and touched his head. That yielding surface he felt under his fingers... it was... his brain. He was sliding his fingers around his cerebral matter and... he was drawing it out--he was drawing out his own brain! A disorienting flash of light made him stagger.

Then Judd saw his own hands laying him gently into the aquarium. Through which eyes was he watching? It was as if... as if he was two. He could see his own brain inside the aquarium... and... yes, he could also see through the glass of the aquarium. Now he was back again inside the aquarium and was looking out. Someone, outside--him... HIMSELF--was immersing the electrostatic scalpel; the liquid started immediately to hiss as sparks along the blade lit up the oxygen in the fluid, releasing a wake of luteous bubbles. Like the inquisitor's incandescent sword, the electroscalpel drew inexorably nearer, and brought a frenzy of distorted blinding visions.

When Judd recovered, he saw a shape floating inside the aquarium: it was Bahamut, Bahamut was floating inside the aquarium. Then it happened again--he was looking out from the aquarium. His face, outside, came into light. He was putting the torn out piece of his skullcap back in its place. The fracture on his skull recomposed quickly, disappearing. So the strange sensation in my head, Judd thought, it meant... The scar has disappeared. _My grandfather cheated me! We haven't used the cerebral matter of the sacrificed ones! The filthy bastard has managed to make me immolate myself! My brain... my brain is Bahamut! I am Bahamut! But how can I be someone else, if I am Bahamut? So what am I? His eyes...The eyes outside the water... are... its eyes, my eyes... are those of the corpse worm. I am the WORM! Judd screamed, drawing back from the mirror.

God's voice echoed across the room, "Bahamut was a thinking key, the key and the lock at the same time. You created it with your cerebral matter, so that it could dream about me and set me free. Once you..."

"You lie! I would be dead now if I had done it, I would be dead!"

"But you are dead."

"You lie! I see you and I hate you, thus I am. I exist, I feel it."

The bones of Judd's head broke suddenly; the upper part of his skullcap flew away. It's happening again, he thought, I can't resist. I'm doing it again, I'm sliding my fingers inside my skull. Nothing. It can't be true; there isn't anything inside my head..Horror paralyzed Judd, his legs failed and he crashed into the dressing table. He raised his eyes and saw the reflection in the mirror: his exposed skull, empty, without him and in his place the organs of the worm coiled up in the shape of a rose, an obscene flesh rose. Was it that the Rose then, the supreme vision, wondered Judd. "I'm not here, I can't be here!" he cried, "My brain isn't here, so I must be somewhere else... Yet, I'm here, so how come I'm here? What are you doing to me!?"

An uproar of lurid and wicked sounds derided him from the sky, "You have nourished an eternal larva inside you, an alter ego, another yourself, my servant. That is why you are not here, yet you exist. You are that larva and you are somewhere else."

"No, you lie... it can't be true, it's impossible! Shut up, shut up! You are only an illusion..."

"No, YOU are an illusion. Answer, what is REAL? Is this real?"

Judd perceived he was not in the room anymore. Darkness surrounded him on all sides. He floated--he was underwater--inside a fluid abyss.

"Tell me," whispered God liquidly, "when did you start to dream? Could you tell me? What reality is the one where you started to dream? Maybe it's this one, isn't it?"

What kind of place was that, wondered Judd. All had changed again; he had never seen that place before, yet it looked like... like his sculptor's studio, but it was so different, the equipment looked so strange. The furniture was not his anymore; it was so linear, there was so much steel, and glass. Many of the pieces seemed made of--what was the name of that substance?--celluloid... It was so strange. But there was something even worse: on the floor there was a body--it was him, himself--shaken by convulsions. On both sides two men kept hold of him, while a third person, a woman, cried in shock.

All changed again. I'm back, thought Judd, I'm back again in the Red Room; who's that over there? Oh my God it's myself in the room!

"It's you," sneered God, "not me, YOU are only a mad illusion, my contemptible, pathetic son, and all of humankind's dreams your dream. You are the creator among the creatures, the god men have been searching in the sky, who instead walks among them. All the lives of men have been yours and your life has been theirs, always. You are the one who, walking through the void, molds the image of this universe, you are the only one who can be aware of the dream, because you're the dreamer, and through the veils of the dream, you can see me, your creator."

The whole universe unfolded before Judd's eyes: he was God. That was the Breach of the Veil; that was the Vision of the Rose!

"I am God" he uttered in awe.

"You are the god of men and I am your God. You are the dream that dreams about itself, you are your destiny and belong to me. You'll keep dreaming for me eternally, my dear, and your terror will resonate in timeless dreams, distilling pleasure into the depth of my bowels."

That's all wrong, shouted Judd's mind. If he was God, he could not be a victim. He must be the executioner. He must climb the heights and bestow life and death on men. He could not be a sacrificial lamb on the altar he had made with his own hands. He felt he was fainting. Well, he thought, at least I won't have to bear that horror any longer. He felt his knees giving way, then saw himself falling, then the other himself in front of him ran and caught him. Embraced by his own arms, he turned and stared at himself. It couldn't be true--he was looking at himself through his own eyes, which saw his eyes, which stared at him... An impossible vertigo enveloped Judd, unfolding an abyss of madness.