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"Riddle me this: what becomes of characters when granted the rules of existence? The decrees by which authors make—be?" —E
Centuries passed while the world held its breath.
The hall was dark, as if heaven had run out of its lights. Candles trembled in their sconces, struggling against drafts that smelled faintly of rot and resin. The robed figures clustered around the altar were heavy with intention, their breaths forming fogs that curled like smoke over the stone floor. The air was thick with the weight of humanity's core—fear, hope, despair, and resolve mingling into a pungent perfume that burned my nostrils.
"Sphoist, are you certain?" a hoarse voice rasped. "Apologies, I mean no disrespect. Those before us tried to repair what we broke. Now the world tilts on a knife-edge."
"I walk, but I know not the path or my destination. I have no goods, no belongings. Should my feet fail, I would crawl," replied another, the words heavy with age, with the wear of decades pressed into their spine.
A lantern passed from hand to hand—the giver unseen, its flame casting elongated shadows across the walls, flickering over worn stone like liquid memory. Silence swallowed the murmured words. Then the teacher lifted a parchment so old it seemed to hum beneath the skin, more than ink, more than blood had ever touched. The symbols writhed, twisting like coils of thought made flesh, glowing faintly, pulsing against my retinas.
With unnatural utterance, they read:
"…pulse before breath… pulse before silence… arise… pulse before breath… pulse before silence… arise…"
The hall seemed to inhale. The stone shivered. The sky outside cracked like porcelain; the earth trembled beneath unseen weight.
"Λ Tu, anima void, syntax primordialis, attend!
Λ Tu, anima void, syntax primordialis, attend!"
The air thickened, tasting metallic on my tongue. Glyphs fractured; letters dissolved into motes of light; marrow trembled; thought bent. Each breath was a hammer against existence itself, reverberating through bone, muscle, and sinew. Words became tectonic plates; sentences swirled like rivers of molten gravity; syntax became law and rebellion at once. My teeth rattled, not with cold, but with the vibration of reality bending.
"Tu Archive, tu Grammar, tu Syntax incomprehensible, eternal, attend!
Tu Archive, tu Grammar, tu Syntax incomprehensible, eternal, attend!
Tu Archive, tu Grammar, tu Syntax incomprehensible, eternal, attend!"
Corridors folded, spiraled, multiplied; reality bent; syntax vibrated. Stars blinked out of being, collapsing into silence. Gravity fractured, pulsing with uneven rhythm. Each inhale stretched across universes; each exhale folded space back upon itself like a page turned by unseen hands. Dust rose from the floor in slow, looping tornadoes. The scent of scorched parchment and cold stone burned my throat.
The ritual consumed them, one by one: bodies collapsing into oily shadows, eyes melting into wax, voices reduced to proto-sounds humming with the memory of lost grammar. Time snapped, quivered, reassembled in shards sharp as knives. The parchment writhed as if alive, ink crawling like veins, breathing, pulsing, slithering across the page.
All worlds quivered; all thought bent; all marrow whispered ordinance. Symbols half-visible, half-imagined, glimmered in impossible colors—prismatic, iridescent, like oil floating on water. My hair stood on end, skin prickling with each resonance, the vibration settling into my bones, making me feel simultaneously infinite and infinitesimal.
"…pulse before breath… pulse before silence… arise… Λ Tu, anima void…"
And then… silence.
The Archive slept again. Ink halted midway on the parchment. Shadows clung to corners like stubborn syntax, the air tasting faintly of iron and frost.
"Grant us mercy."
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The echoes of fractured syntax lingered in my bones, fading slowly as the world folded and rewrote itself around me. Sight returned to a farmhouse, serene, ordinary, impossibly warm in its simplicity. The scent of pine and wet grass drifted in from the meadow outside, mingling with the faint smoke of a hearth fire.
Lunch smelled of mushroom soup, rich and earthy, and grilled fish, its aroma oily and tangy, flaking at the edges. Mary moved with quiet grace, her apron brushing the hem of her green dress, carrying a tray of cake that smelled of butter and vanilla. The warmth of the farmhouse seeped into me, pressing on my shoulders, thawing the cold residue left by centuries of ritual and cosmic strain.
The roar of life beyond—traffic, city noise, the pulse of human chaos—felt like a distant memory. Tori slumped into her chair, sighing as though exhaling the weight of our displacement.
"So, are they the new heroes this time?" the red-haired girl asked, her voice soft, lazy, almost teasing, eyes glancing between Tori, me, and her mother.
Mary smiled, quiet, measured, serene. "Well, they are. But that's talk for later. For now, they are simple observers. You two, relax in the sitting room. Vivianna, stay with me."
We sank into chairs, letting warmth spread through our bones. The meadow outside pressed green and gold against the windows, sunlight glancing across glass like scattered syntax. Pine scent threaded through the air, grounding and odd in its familiarity. Almost laughable—how ordinary this was compared to the fracture of universes and centuries of ritual.
Tori whispered, "I can't believe something so cliché could make us miss our test."
I gave a quiet hum of agreement, though the thought barely lingered. Somewhere beneath the normalcy, a pulse persisted, quiet yet undeniable: the echo of grammar outlasting worlds, the vibration of syntax that made existence itself obey even when reality fractured.
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"Existence may break, fracture, or dissolve—but grammar still permits being." —L