[Midir Faust]
I knelt before a man whose presence rivaled legend, his gaze fixed on me like a verdict.
The chamber was spare: a polished bronze floor, four golden pillars anchoring the corners, and stone statues that held the ceiling in silent witness.
Everything returned a hard, dour reflection, our two figures, the braziers, the carved reliefs, nothing more.
He stared briefly at the pillar on the far right, then back at me with a grief that softened his voice.
"Midir, it is a great tragedy. I lament that you will die."
I let the words fall away. "Very well. My king, what would you have me do?"
He reached out, deliberate. "Fetch Naeve. Slaughter him and bring me his head."
Naeve, the Silent Moon, was a name people whispered with respect and with a little fear.
Once a foremost scholar of water and gravity, he had mapped how gravity could bend logic itself; his work made impossibilities useful.
Then obsession set in. He chased Great Old Ones and thin places until the map swallowed the man. Madness hollowed him.
I inclined my head. "By 'bring his head,' do you mean literal or ceremonial?"
He considered, then let out a soft, mirthless laugh. "Both. Hang him before the throne."
He meant show, and warning, and retribution all at once.
I bowed deeper, my forehead pressing against the bronze floor. "I will return as soon as possible."
As I rose, he flicked his fingers, and in that instant, the world folded.
I was hurled through the currents of reality, crashing into the farlands of our kingdom.
The barren wastes shuddered beneath my arrival, the air trembling as frost spread outward in thin veins.
Blood trickled from my forehead as I forced my mind back into focus.
He could have sent me gently, but that was not his way.
A tyrant through and through, though I suppose efficiency was its own virtue.
Before me stood Naeve.
Even from a distance, his presence rippled like a disturbance in still water, immense, immeasurable.
The air itself bowed around him, gravity bending to his will.
I couldn't sense his essence at all; it was as if existence refused to acknowledge him.
His hair flowed dark blue, reflecting faint strands of light that weren't there.
His skin was pale, like moonlight stretched thin over porcelain, and his eyes carried the calm despair of an endless night.
The sword he held shimmered faintly blue, not from its metal but from his mana's touch, refined by centuries of mastery.
His scholar's attire, once similar to mine, was now ink-black, his cloak torn open like a wound.
He looked at me with sorrow and confusion, and then, almost mercifully, it began to rain.
For the first time in over ten millennia, this borderland of dust and silence felt the touch of water.
Each droplet struck the ground like a hymn for the dead.
I drew my ceremonial katana and leveled it at him. "Naeve, lay down your blade and bend your knees."
He twisted his sword once, and space folded. Before I could blink, his blade pierced my chest.
"There is something, Midir," he said, voice trembling with madness and revelation. "Something beyond this meaningless world!"
The wound sealed instantly as my body rewound its own timeline. I exhaled. "Then you may die while groveling at salvation."
His sword came down like a guillotine. I deflected it, kicked him back, then blinked behind him.
My blade moved faster than light could carry thought, three hundred strikes punctured his back before he was launched skyward.
Gravity convulsed around him, and meteors screamed down from the heavens.
I raised my hand, releasing a dragon woven from layered time.
It roared, devouring the meteors whole, erasing their momentum from the past and future alike.
Yet even through my control, I could feel the weight of them.
His gravity magic had deepened, it was no longer bound to mass, but to truth itself.
"Glory, Naeve," I said, my voice echoing across shattered space. "May you relish the endless knowledge of death!"
I leapt upward and brought my sword down.
A wave of pure mana cleaved through time and space, unraveling reality itself.
He countered with a flick of his wrist, gravity twisted, stitched the tear shut, and hurled my own attack back at me.
When it struck, I felt my power waver. I ducked, barely avoiding his blade, then dropped low as another swing came down.
He caught my movement, slashing deep into my shoulder.
I pressed my palm to his chest and spun, infinitely, endlessly, an eternal rotation that launched him away, tearing the ground beneath us.
Extending my sword, I traced an arc that tore through the horizon, sealing him in a temporal bind. For a heartbeat, he was still.
"Bask in the lies of tomorrow: Historic Ring."
A clear wing of light unfurled from my body, circling us both. Time layered upon time, folding and looping in infinite recursion.
For those beyond space and chronology, it should have been meaningless.
But my time magic was not an element; it was an extension of my being. I owned the concepts of age and progression.
Even the transcendent must obey me.
He trembled, eyes widening. "I can see the antlers of chaos!"
The words froze me. Before I could react, his hand struck across my face.
Gravity surged, my body slammed into the ground.
His sword plunged through my heart, driving me deep into the earth.
I coughed, blood splattering across his face as he screamed, "I am nothing, and yet I still bask in its glory!"
Pain surged, and through it, I heard the impossible.
"Obtuse King of Domination: Naivety!"
His Regalia, its very invocation distorted reality.
His authority laid absolute dominance upon any mind lesser than his own. The air trembled under its decree.
Impossible. I was the smartest. I could calculate a universe from the fractal geometry of a single branch.
There was no world where he was my superior, and yet I felt my reason constrict, my body refusing to act.
Then his eyes dimmed. The brilliance faded, and he fell beside me, utterly spent. The oppressive weight vanished.
I gasped, springing backward, driving pillars of mana into the ground to bind his limbs. Runes flared, sealing his body to the soil.
Too much. This was too much. Killing him outright was impossible.
I'd only used one Orderless Action this year. To use another would be costly, but letting him escape would be worse.
I snapped my fingers. In an instant, Naeve hung from the prison's walls, chained in my private chamber.
The runes stripped him bare of essence, leaving only thought and memory.
The room was vast, carved from dark stone and filled with relics and abstract models, concepts turned physical, theories turned art.
A black light filtered through a crystalline lens, washing everything in spectral shadow.
And as I looked upon him, this hollow remnant of brilliance and madness, I understood one thing clearly.
He was the most valuable specimen in existence.
I reached out and traced my finger along his face, feeling the cold stillness of flesh without life.
A faint sigh escaped me. "Ruari… why must you forsake this person?"
I activated my Regalia, allowing my mind to pierce into the remnants of his.
Such an act was forbidden for most, but for me, it was simple.
His consciousness unfolded like a dying flame trying to resist the wind, and as I reached deeper, something resisted, a strange, unseen force.
It wasn't simply protection. It was warning me. Urging me to turn back.
Of course, I ignored it. Knowledge that warns you to flee is the only knowledge worth pursuing.
So I broke through, tearing down that frail veil of resistance. What followed was revelation.
My mind filled with impossible information, visions too vast to comprehend.
I saw how mana, infons, and spiritrons intertwined to give life to all things.
I saw the hidden architecture of the Central World and the forgotten worlds it mirrored.
I saw the birth of existence itself, the threads of reality woven across infinite planes, singing in divine synchrony.
And still, it was not enough.
I understood everything that could be known in this realm, yet I craved the impossible, the knowledge that would allow me to transcend death itself.
To exist eternally without surrendering to oblivion.
But such truth could not be found here. This world, no matter how grand, was still bound by limitation.
So I delved deeper into Naeve's final memories, his forbidden discoveries, and there, at the edge of comprehension, I saw it.
A place beyond all form and reason. A realm not above reality, but outside it entirely.
The Narrative.
Just thinking of it was pain. Its presence was pure meaning, absolute authorship, a truth that devoured all others.
And there, I understood what Naeve had found.
He had discovered the Book of Me.
Not a mere artifact, but the story of a being, the written account of every breath, thought, and act that defined one's existence.
It was the totality of self, recorded across the boundless page of the cosmos.
Every world, every version, every choice written as narrative truth.
To read the Book of Me was to know one's absolute essence, the pattern of fate, the reason for existence, and the chains that bound it.
But the Book of Me's no longer existed where it should.
For us, for those of the Central World, our Book of Me's had been exiled to the Haze, a realm beyond knowledge and name.
A place where stories vanish, where even truth cannot be acknowledged.