A Door That Breathes
Every realm possesses at least one place that refuses to remain still—an eddy where past and future grind together like millstones. The precipice that scholars call the Margin exists only for those who know how to see it, and L2 had walked that invisible ledge for half his life.
Tonight, following the echo-map only he could read, he left the Abyss's ink-black shoreline and stepped into a corridor of impossible geometries: pillars that bent in half-spirals yet never broke, staircases climbing without treads, windows opening onto star fields that wheeled sideways. A scent of burned copper drifted through the gloom, and the walls themselves pulsed as though they were not built of mortar but of coiled arteries.
At the far end, a tower rose like the fossilized spine of a colossus—grey bricks pocked by meteoric scars, runes worming across them in fractal spirals. No door barred entry; in place of a latch hung a single iron ring that glimmered with interior starlight. L2 touched it, and the iron felt warm—alive—beneath his glove.
When the gate swung inward, it did not creak; it exhaled, as if the tower had been holding its breath since the dawn of ages.
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Ⅱ · Keeper of Forgotten Calculus
Within, torch-sconces cast pale flames that flickered but never consumed their fuel. Shadows traveled the circular walls in slow orbits, scribbling occult formulas across the floor. At the center, on a dais of cracked onyx, sat Nose—named so because he claimed to smell truth the way other men smell rain.
He did not rise. One hand clutched the arm of a throne carved from petrified tree-roots; the other cradled a chipped goblet filled with dark, blood-thick ink. Robes of dusk-coloured cloth pooled around his feet, edges tattered, but the air about him shimmered with power barely leashed.
A stranger might have mistaken him for an invalid. L2 knew better. Nose was the last custodian of Cosmic Remainders, the equations discarded by the gods after they finished writing the laws of creation. And like any true witness, he charged a price for testimony.
> "You seek knowledge not meant for mortal flesh," Nose said, voice hollow as wind in crypt corridors. "And yet you walk unbroken. Impressive."
L2 ignored the compliment. He closed the distance with measured steps, each heel clicking on etched stone, letting his presence announce that he would not be treated as a child. Still, he inclined his head in a gesture that balanced courtesy with challenge.
> "I seek understanding," L2 replied. "Nothing less can save him."
A faint smile cracked Nose's parched lips. "Then you understand what your request implies? Dominion rewrites the ledger of souls. Your brother bears a debt older than stars. You would pay that balance with stolen coin?"
"His life," L2 said, "is worth every theft."
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Ⅲ · Manuscript of Remaking
Nose set the goblet aside. His fingers, thin as raven quills, drew a sigil in the air—zig-zag lines scoring incandescent channels through nothingness. Spitefire, scholars called that technique: the art of writing light so bright it left scars in the dark.
Reality split like parchment. From the tear slithered a coil of black vellum, edges rimmed in rust-red glyphs that flickered between alphabets older than angels. The scroll hovered, smelling of charred marrow and deep-sea pressure.
> "The Manuscript of Remaking," Nose intoned. "Written by those who dared to measure the distance between flesh and infinity—and set about abridging it."
L2's stomach clenched. The scroll's presence hit him like cold air after fever: a promise of relief, but at a cost his body might not survive.
> "What must I steal?" he asked.
Nose's grin widened. "Not steal—harvest. There is elegance, boy, even in abomination."
He rose from the throne; dust cascaded from his sleeves like hourglass sand. With languid grace he unfurled the vellum. Symbols darted across it—spirals, interlocking triangles, living runes that rearranged whenever L2's eyes tried to fix them.
In those shifting diagrams he glimpsed twin silhouettes: one figure radiant as dawn, the other midnight black with a star for a heart. They circled each other, threads tangling between them—threads that represented nerves, veins, maybe even fate-lines.
> "Three forces," Nose said, tapping three nodes that flared on the diagram. "Flesh, Light, Void. Braid them, and your brother's mortal husk will not merely endure Dominion—it will celebrate it."
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Ⅳ · First Axis – The Living Heart of Flesh
Nose's finger touched the leftmost node; crimson light spilled across the vellum, resolving into an image of a beast-browed warrior crowned with antlers.
> "The Beastkin High-Claw. A chieftain who was born with two hearts: one to pump blood, the other to pump power. It beats sixteen times a minute and each pulse carries the raw vitality of a stampeding continent. Secure that heart while it is still living, and you secure an anchor between body and soul."
L2's mind conjured maps: Thornwood Steppe, razor-briar forests, war drums echoing across midnight grass. He pictured the Beastkin chieftain's campfires: circles of bone, banners soaked in prey's blood. Strongholds built on the skeletons of those who tried and failed.
He could already taste the iron tang of risk. It tasted familiar—like his own childhood.
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Ⅴ · Second Axis – The Inviolate Soul of Light
Nose traced the second node; golden radiance washed over the vellum. Glyphs morphed into a cathedral of sky and marble. At its center knelt a girl garbed in linen and starlight, her hair a river of flax; in her upraised palms shimmered a sphere of spotless luminance.
> "A Penitent Saint—unblemished vessel of the celestial order," Nose whispered. "Her soul is self-forging: every prayer quenches it, every sorrow tempers it. To the Holy Factions she is proof that corruption can be cleansed. To you, she is clarity you must graft into chaos."
L2 felt the blood drain from his face. Abducting a Beastkin heart was sacrilege to nature; abducting a saint's soul was war on heaven. He pictured archangel spears raining down like meteor showers. He pictured R2's face if L2 condemned an innocent girl to spiritual vivisection.
His breath hitched. Do I have that cruelty in me?
Yet R2 lay miles away, lungs rattling like coins in an empty cup. Cruelty or not, cost was non-negotiable.
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Ⅵ · Third Axis – The Catalyst of Unbeing
The final node flared violet, then deepened to a black that ate the torchlight around them. L2 smelled salt and heard, faintly, the groan of tectonic plates sliding beneath abyssal trenches.
> "The Sea People," said Nose, "descend from creatures who once danced on the ocean floor where sunlight dies; the Void touched their blood, and they did not perish—they adapted. In their capital of kelp-glass, the Matriarch keeps a shard of living Nothingness: a gem that is simultaneously matter and vacuum. Their priests use it to cut time away from wounds."
He leaned closer. "You, however, will seize it to graft the void to your brother's marrow—so his blood can sing with the abyss without dissolving."
Cold crept up L2's spine. He imagined pearl-skinned sentinels parting columns of black water, wary eyes luminous like bioluminescent orbs. How to steal from guardians who breathe crushing pressure the way hill folk breathe wind?
Solve one impossibility at a time, Loggnos, he told himself.
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Ⅶ · Bargain With a Witness
The vellum snapped shut. Nose pinched the scroll between forefinger and thumb; power crackled like sun-struck ice.
> "Three relics, each ringed by armies and creed," he said. "Slip once, and all the heavens will write your name in salt."
"Not my name," L2 answered. "My sins are my own—but they will pronounce R2's freedom."
Nose studied him, unreadable. Then the ancient finally offered the scroll. L2 accepted; its weight sank into his bones like a judge's gavel.
> "Payment," Nose murmured, clenching his empty hand.
L2 tensed. "What coin?"
"Memory." The witness's eyes flared black-blue. "One perfect memory you cherish beyond reason. I will keep it—so you cannot retreat into it when the cost grows unbearable."
The demand sliced deeper than a blade. Memories were anchors; in them L2 stored the human he had not yet strangled with necessity. But he could see no escape route in Nose's void-lit gaze.
He closed his eyes and surrendered the last sound of his mother's laughter—a single note of pure, summer-warm joy he'd carried since childhood. It flew from him like pollen on wind.
He staggered. The chamber tilted. Nose inhaled as if sampling wine, and for an instant his gaunt cheeks flushed with borrowed life.
> "Debt acknowledged." His voice trembled with satisfaction. "Now go, thief of impossibilities."
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Ⅷ · Departure Through Shifting Stair
L2 bowed—formal, yet laced with fury that he lacked any other coin. He tucked the Manuscript beneath his cloak and turned toward the archway. Torches winked out behind him, leaving only the ember glow of traveling sigils beneath his feet.
As he crossed the threshold, Nose called after him:
> "Remember: the Void never gives without claiming tithe. When you take its shard, it may swallow a portion of what you hold dearest. Choose what that portion will be before the shard chooses for you."
L2 did not answer. A silent vow crowded his throat: I already chose. Everything is offered; nothing withheld.
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Ⅸ · The Human Cost
The stairwell beyond Nose's chamber spiraled downward into gloom. Mid-descent, L2 paused, pressing a palm to the Manuscript under his cloak. Through the parchment he could feel veins of ink pulsing like trapped serpents; each pulse synchronized with R2's faltering heartbeat miles away.
In that moment of hush he let the staggering scope of his mission settle:
Beastkin heart: wrested from a warrior who could crush stone in his fist.
Saint's soul: abducted from sanctified walls defended by hymnal artillery.
Void shard: lifted from a kingdom that drowned trespassers in living oblivion.
He would have to lie, to kill, to do things no prophecy of light would ever sanctify. And each crime would blacken him a shade darker than the last. Would R2 still recognize the brother who returned?
The memory he had sacrificed—his mother's laughter—echoed faintly, then muted forever. An ache spider-webbed across his chest.
This is the first toll, he realized. Others will follow.
He inhaled, exhaled, and forced worry into a sheathed blade. Hesitation was luxury. Downward he strode until the stair spat him out on a barren hillside under an indigo sky fretted with cold stars.
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Ⅹ · Threads of Fate, Pulled Tight
Far, far to the south, R2 tossed in a fever-dream, unaware that a piece of his brother's childhood had been bartered away. In that same instant, three distant oracles pricked their fingers on omen-blades:
1. A Beastkin augur woke at his fire, whimpering of a white-eyed thief who would break tribal law with a single filament.
2. A cathedral candle-reader gasped as her flame spiraled violet, foretelling the abduction of heaven's purest song.
3. A Sea-People tide-seer felt the tide flow backward for one heartbeat, whispering of a surface-dweller who would pluck darkness from the goddess's crown.
Thus, alarms began to rise, each faction blind to the others yet united by dread of an unseen predator.
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Ⅺ · Endnote: The Quiet Between Pulses
L2 sighted the distant lights of Red Nest fortress—R2's refuge—flickering like embers on the horizon. He touched two fingers to the Reaper-Silk anchors embedded in his wrist; they pulsed back, confirming his brother yet lived.
Above, the moon slid from behind tattered clouds, throwing a silver road across the grasslands. In its sheen, L2 murmured:
> "One heart, one soul, one shard. Hold on, brother. Let them call me monster; I will give you stars."
The wind carried his vow over fields where beast blood still soaked the earth, across sleeping villages unaware of how close the world had come to annihilation, and up, up into the night where even the constellations seemed to hesitate—wondering which thread of fate this mortal had just severed, and what new pattern might grow from the ragged ends.
The search had begun.
And somewhere in the dark, the Manuscript of Remaking thrummed like a second spine beneath L2's cloak, aching to be opened again—and fed.
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End