Elios' voice was cold. Wrong. Nothing like the man she remembered.
As if he were someone else entirely.
She heard a click.
It was the sound of a thumb sliding against a pinky an old habit, something she used to do as a child. Even now, under stress, her body remembered it. But this time, the sound felt wrong. Twisted. As if the motion itself carried intent.
The door handle melted beneath her fingers.
Metal sagged, softened, and ran like wax, dripping onto the floor in dull, glowing strands. Heatless. Silent.
The room filled with white mist.
Not steam. Not smoke. Something heavier. It swallowed sound first, then depth. The walls groaned and shifted, their smooth surfaces cracking and bulging until they resembled raw stone. The floor followed, splitting into uneven rock. The house was gone.
She stood inside a cave. A closed experimental space, nudged from the room's existing structure, walls reshaped by probabilistic shifts in micro-forces, all within his focused proximity.
But not a natural one.
Her heart hammered violently, every beat threatening to tear free of her chest. The ceiling glimmered faintly, embedded with veins of pale lightstone that pulsed softly, just enough for her to see.
Elios.
His face was empty. Not calm vacant. Her friends' bodies lay scattered nearby, twisted and bleeding. Mike's eyes were still open, glassy and white, his expression frozen in a mute question.
Dead.
Shout. Run. Do something.
Sara had never been a fighter. She was raised in comfort, in a world where fear was mostly imagined, where danger lived on screens and headlines. The modern world had softened her. Now, stripped of illusion, she had no words.
But she spoke anyway.
"Elios… Elios… Elios what the fuck is wrong with you?" she screamed, her voice breaking. "What the fuck are you? Where's Elios? Where's my husband?"
She sobbed openly, desperation clawing through every syllable.
"Welcome to my terrarium," Elios said mildly.
His voice echoed unnaturally, as though the cave itself listened.
"Funny enough, I'm not really a killer, my dear Sara. I'm just curious." His eyes drifted to her. "Why do you glow? Is that your soul?"
He tilted his head.
"And if that is your soul… then let me have it. Let me refine it. Make it grander. Fuel my innovation." A pause. "But then again what could be greater than my own reality?"
He gestured vaguely to the bodies.
"All the data I've gathered over the past few days led me here. You're my friends. And what's better than friends helping each other?"
As he spoke, his thoughts unfolded with cold clarity.
Through observation, he had discovered something new something absent from memory. With his altered field of cognition, he saw thin layers of white mist clinging to every human body. Unlike the mist bound to the Disc, this one carried will faint, fragile, personal.
When he approached, his own mist reacted.
They neutralized each other.
"What is this?" he murmured. "Life essence?"
The gap in his memory yawned open again. He ruler and destroyer of countless realities could not explain such a primitive concept. And yet, curiosity stirred.
He was bored.
Now he had something to learn.
To push back against direct authorship. To operate beneath the notice of higher-order resistance. After all, he thought, my blankness exists for a reason. To bypass the cosmos itself.
So he would grow stronger. Regain control over his fragment. And build the reality he intended.
Sara stood frozen.
Shock hollowed her out. Despair crept in quietly. She understood, finally she would die here, by the man she loved. There was nothing she could say.
So she smiled.
Her legs gave out. She collapsed, blood loss finally winning. Sepsis had already begun its silent march. Death was no longer far.
Behind her, the bodies began to change.
Decomposition accelerated grotesquely. Flesh collapsed inward, forming crusted blood blisters that swelled and burst. From them emerged life.
Nine black sparrows clawed their way free. Not conjured from void, but accelerated from the decay's latent biology bacteria and cells iterated into form, probability modified at the cellular scale until wings unfurled.
In seconds, they grew from embryonic shapes into full adults. Their first breath echoed through the cave like a crack of thunder. The sound shook Sara where she lay, her eyes squeezed shut, her body trembling as she pressed herself against the stone wall.
Then she heard wings.
She opened her eyes just in time to see a blood-red crow hurtling toward her.
She tried to move tried to roll away but dizziness overtook her. Her body refused to respond. Too much blood had already been lost.
The birds, extensions of the terrarium's nudged ecosystem, moved on instinct he subtly probabilized no direct command over sentience, just paths altered in their simple minds.
Jet-black claws snapped shut around her mouth.
Others seized her limbs, pinning her down with terrifying precision. She struggled weakly, but the grip was unbreakable.
Elios watched.
Former love. Former friends. Former humanity.
A single tear slipped free.
Elios died in that moment.
Enoch took his place.
As Sara weakened, the white mist around her body thinned until it vanished entirely.
Without hesitation, Enoch gave the order.
Razor-sharp beaks descended, pecking again and again at her neck. Flesh tore. Blood sprayed. Death came swiftly.
White mist erupted from her corpse vast, uncontrolled.
In seconds, Enoch absorbed enough to unlock deeper access to the Disc.
The Disc served two purposes.
First: a localized reality-interface, allowing Enoch to operate within a universe without triggering higher-order resistance.
Second: a constraint device.
It did not grant power.
It unlocked processes Enoch already understood though his full awareness remained blocked by restrictions he himself had imposed. Unless he wished to face the full resistance of higher-order rules, this limitation was necessary.
As the mist flowed into him, traces from the crows followed confirming his hypothesis. Creations within his terrarium were extensions of his will.
Yet something else was mixed within the mist.
Fragments.
Voices.
"Why did I have to die? What did I do?"
"I still want to live… Elios, I loved you. Where's my baby?"
"Maybe this is a dream… it's so cold… but so happy. Our baby is grown now, Elios. In this life and the next it's always you."
Her memories.
Pathetic. Beautiful. Human.
The final ember of her will dissolved into a dreamscape perhaps what this world called heaven carrying anger, fear, longing, love, hatred, and an aching attachment to life itself.
Enoch processed it all.
"My perception field and interference force have increased significantly," he noted calmly. "I can now utilize the Four Chapters of Enoch to a higher degree."
The First Chapter of Enoch: Accelerate or decelerate biological processes. The Second Chapter of Enoch: Modify probability at micro-scales. The Third Chapter of Enoch: Stabilize or destabilize materials. The Fourth Chapter of Enoch: Create closed experimental environments.
"It appears memory acquisition only occurs when the recipient's death is linked to my will," he concluded. "The explosion was caused by destabilized matter."
A pause.
"This… is the correct path to growth."