Perched on the roof of the slow-moving Train to Elsewhere, Bob gazes into the vast night, his mind still tangled in the cryptic riddles of a golden fish. As the stars shimmer into constellations above him, the Great Bear takes shape: stitched by unseen golden threads across the heavens. A quiet nostalgia softens Bob’s ever-cynical heart as he thinks of Bearton and the old forests that once whispered stories to roots.

In the quiet hum of the Train to Elsewhere, Bearton shares the tale of Duir - the ancient oak said to be a doorway between worlds. Beneath its branches, he once dreamed “the dream where time forgets you.” From his coat, he reveals an old acorn - the key to that cosmic door. Bob calls it a snack, the train chuckles softly, and somewhere, the forest seems to find it all amusing.

Bob the Black Cat tells Bearton the story of Phaëthon, the boy who tried to drive the sun and fell to earth, his sisters’ tears hardening into amber - grief made golden. Centuries later, a poet’s touch awakened the amber into a torch, carrying the quiet glow of memory and love.

The Train to Elsewhere descends into the lush, misted valley of the Nile, where crocodiles glide through green water and time drifts sideways. Amid the hiss of steam, a new passenger boards - Nafretiri, also called Crocodama, the Venture Capitalist of the Underworld. Polished, dangerous, and smiling with ancient grace, she offers Bob and Bearton passage to the Hall of Amenti, for a price. As the river hums with memory, her final words echo like a curse: “One of you will not leave this train.”

As the rain whispered against the Train to Elsewhere, Bob drifted into a dream - both luminous and unsettling. He found himself underwater in a sea of dark blue light - a living mind where stars slept and thoughts swam. There he met the Golden Fish, radiant and still, who revealed that magic is not in appearances but in the golden thread connecting all things - sky and sea, waking and dream. When Bob awoke, the rain still ticked on the roof, his spoon trembled softly, and the world shimmered with quiet knowing. Magic, he realized, is what you recognize before you understand.

As the Train to Elsewhere falls silent, Bob the Black Cat tells Bearton of what came before gods - the spiral law of Anankē, Necessity. From Chaos came Chronos and Anankē, twin coils that crushed the Cosmic Egg until light and shadow were born. Even gods, Bob says, move within her curve, for Necessity does not choose or warn, she simply is.

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As the Train to Elsewhere glides through folded skies, Bob the Black Cat recounts the Titanomachy - a war born from a father’s fear. With dry humor, he tells how Kronos devoured his children, how Rhea tricked him, and how Zeus rose to reclaim the world. In the flicker of train lights, myth turns to mirror as Bob concludes: we’re all still running from the gods we’ve swallowed or the ones we’ve become.