“Your Existence . Your true value.”

The paper shimmered. The grid beneath him shuddered.

He wrote: Potential = the first time I explained a derivative to my little sister and her eyes lit up.

The basement was gone. They stood in a vast, white plane ruled with faint blue lines, like an infinite worksheet. A single desk materialized in front of Elias. On it was a sharpened No. 2 pencil and a blank sheet of paper.

The instructor reappeared, solid now, his chalk-dust face cracking. “The book lied to you,” he admitted. “The answer isn’t a number. The limit doesn’t exist. You can never fully eliminate fear. And potential is infinite. So E—your existence—is not a fixed value. It’s the process of the limit.”