The silence that followed the Prince's departure was the calm before a bureaucratic storm.
About ten minutes after Valerian left, a soft chime announced a visitor at the suite door.
Kael moved instantly, his hand dropping to a hidden knife, but I signaled him to stand down.
"Open it," I commanded.
Malakor opened the door.
A courier stood there. He wore the blue-and-gold livery of the Cathedral's Messenger Service.
He looked like a man who carried weightier things than swords—paperwork.
He bowed low.
"A missive for Father Mollian," he announced, presenting a scroll sealed with white wax.
To him, my existence here was a fact as solid as gravity.
I took the scroll. The courier bowed again and vanished down the hall.
I broke the seal.
"What is it, My Lord?" Malakor whispered, wringing his hands. "An arrest warrant? An execution order?"
"Worse," I said, scanning the elegant calligraphy. "It is a Pastoral Summons."
I tossed the scroll onto the table.
"The High Bishop expresses his 'profound relief' at my return from 'classified field work'. He requests a formal debriefing at the Cathedral tomorrow morning."
Malakor blinked. "Field work? But... you haven't been on field work. Your vessel didn't even exist!"
"The Law of Probability," I muttered, rubbing my temples where the headache still lingered.
"It is editing the past, injecting fake information as my vessel's history to patch the missing background. It cannot accept that a nobody suddenly has the power to command Princes. So, it has rewritten history. To the Church, I am now a high-ranking operative who went deep undercover."
I looked at the city through the window.
"We cannot hide, Malakor. Tomorrow, we walk into the lion's den."
" Lion's.. den?" Malakor paled. "But I am a heretic! If I step into the Cathedral..."
"You are not a heretic," I corrected. "You are my Witness. And you will act like one."
I turned away from his panic. There was work to do.
"Kael. Malakor. To the roof."
…
The roof of the Obsidian Spire was a wind-swept plateau of concrete and gargoyles, piercing the smog layer. Here, the air was thin and cold, and the noise of the city was a distant hum.
I stood near the edge, looking down at the sprawl of Zonia.
Kael stood about one meters away—maintaining the new protocol distance perfectly.
Malakor hovered near the stairwell, clutching a notebook and pen, looking ready to vomit from the height.
"Write this down, Priest," I commanded. "If we are to survive the Church, you must understand what you are pretending to worship."
I turned to them.
"You call it 'Magic'. The Church calls it 'Miracles'."
I scoffed.
"It is none of those things. It is Syntax."
I raised a hand, pointing at the sky where the artificial clouds churned.
"The Creator used Language of Creation to build reality. The Universe, in the most fundamental scale, is made of strings of definition. When you speak a Name, you are not casting a spell; you are accessing the Syntax of Reality."
Malakor scribbled furiously. "The Syntax of Reality…"
"Creator Deity has Seventy Names," I lectured. "They are divided into Three Spheres, containing Names 1 to 69, And one Great Name as the 70th."
I held up three fingers.
"The First Sphere is the 'Sphere of Mortals'. It is the only layer your species can access without liquefying your brains. It contains Names 1 through 29."
I lowered a finger.
"This Sphere is divided into three Circles."
"Circle of Geometrics: Names 1 to 9. Lines, Angles, Shapes."
"Circle of Physics: Names 10 to 20. Light, Gravity, Sound."
"Circle of Concepts: Names 21 to 29. Silence, Connection, Memory."
Kael raised a hand. A tentative, student-like gesture.
"Speak," I said.
"Master," Kael asked, his brow furrowed in concentration. "When the Church teaches a Name... they teach an example and incantation. But you... you do not use the words they use. What is the difference?"
"Excellent question," I nodded. "Malakor, record this."
I paced along the edge of the roof.
"There is the Linguistic Form, and there is the Semantic Form."
"The Linguistic Form is the spoken word. 'Linear'. 'Gravitas'. 'Vertex'. It is a password. A placeholder. It hints at the power, but it is not the power itself."
I stopped and looked Kael in the eye.
"The Semantic Form... is the Meaning. It is the image the Creator held in 'His' mind when 'He' spoke the word. It is the pure, unadulterated Concept."
"Visualizing the Semantic Form is what gives a Name its true power. Mortals use the password. I use the Meaning."
Malakor stopped writing. He looked up, his pen hovering over the paper.
"My Lord..." he whispered. "How... how do you know this? The Church has spent a thousand years trying to find the true form of Names. How can you know the Creator's own imagination with such... accuracy?"
I stopped. No entity should have known what The Creator had in mind, so how could I hide the truth from them?
But then, I remembered they are mortals. It was unnecessary.
The wind whipped my coat around me. I turned my head slowly to look at the fat priest.
I let a sliver of my Killing Intent leak out.
Malakor gasped, dropping his pen. He felt the weight of a predator looking at prey.
"Do not pray into the mysteries of a God, Malakor," I hissed. "Do not ask the ocean where the water comes from."
Malakor fell to his knees. "Forgive me! My Lord… Forgive me!"
I relaxed the pressure.
"I know," I said simply, "because I am a Primordial Entity."
I turned back to Kael who seemed to be looking at his father.
"Now. The practical application."
I walked over to Kael. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single, red die—which I had brought from Neon Abyss.
I held it up.
"The First Holy Name of... Creator, Linear."
"The Church teaches you to visualize a spear. Or an arrow. Or a ray of light."
I shook my head.
"Wrong. Those things have width. They have mass and occupy space."
I pressed the die into Kael's hand.
"The True Form of 'Linear' is a one-dimensional line. Infinite length. Zero width. Zero height."
I leaned in close to his ear.
"That is why mortal magic is weak. You cannot comprehend 'Zero'. You pollute the vector with width. You waste energy pushing air out of the way."
"To use the True Form... you must visualize a path that exists only as a direction. No friction. No resistance. Absolute Zero."
Kael stared at the die in his palm. His blue eyes lost focus, turning inward as he tried to visualize the impossible geometry I had described.
"Zero width..." he whispered.
"Apply a vector to the die," I commanded. "Do not throw it. Propel it."
Kael focused and flicked his thumb.
Zip.
The die vanished from his hand.
A split second later, a concrete gargoyle on the edge of tower cracked.
Kael looked at his hand.
"I..." Kael stammered. "I didn't feel the air."
"Because you bypassed it," I said, a rare smile of approval touching my lips.
I looked at Malakor, who was staring at the gargoyle with his mouth open.
"Not Bad, But Weak! School is in session," I announced. "We have twenty-four hours before we meet the Bishop. You will practice until you can thread a needle from across the room."
I pull out a bunch of dice, putting them in Kael's hand and walking back to the stairwell door.
Malakor scrambled up and followed me into the corridor, away from Kael's practice.
"My Lord," he whispered, glancing back at the boy. "One more question... if I may."
"Quickly."
"The Law... the retroactive editing. Are you... commanding it?"
I paused.
"No," I admitted, my voice low.
"I am not commanding it. The Law is a self-correcting mechanism. It sees a hole in the narrative—a priest with the power of a God—and it fills it with the most plausible lie: that I was a secret master all along."
I looked at Malakor seriously.
"But do not mistake its convenience for alliance. The Law is lazy. It uses the path of least resistance. If I push it too far... if I try to claim I was the Emperor... the 'plausible' fix might be to simply erase me from existence."
"We must be careful, Malakor. We ride the tiger; we do not steer it."
I opened the door.
"Now go. Get me wine. The teaching has made me thirsty."