The night held an unnatural quiet—not a stillness, but a hush, as if silence and air had struck a secret bargain to hold their breath.
Ogdi sat at his desk, a pencil poised like a hesitation between his fingers. His gaze drifted across the untouched white pages before him, a vast desert waiting for rain. Above, the overhead light flickered—dimming, then flaring bright—a stutter in reality that he either missed or consciously chose to ignore.
On the wall hung a charcoal sketch of a door. It was heavy, shaded with dark, aggressive strokes. Ogdi couldn't recall creating it, yet the graphite smudges staining his thumb insisted that the hand was his. Unconsciously, he tapped the table—one, two, three—the rhythm echoing an old lullaby his mother had hummed two decades ago, back when she believed he wasn't listening.
Steam curled from his cup, rising in a straight, unnatural column, like smoke from a ritual fire.
"One path, three anchors. Choose without knowing."
The voice was not in the room. It was in the marrow of the moment.
"Which should be the first?"
...
The memory washed over him, hot and bright.
In the sun-drenched chaos of a forgotten street, children—small architects of their own ephemeral worlds—wove through invisible currents. They were lost in a fantastical role-playing game where sticks were swords and shadows were dragons. Their laughter, bright as scattered jewels, punctuated the humid afternoon air.
One voice, slightly older and imbued with a nascent, testing curiosity, cut through the joyous din.
"Hey Ogdi," the boy asked, wiping sweat from his forehead. "If you were offered only one wish, what would you wish for?"
The question hung there, shimmering, a fleeting challenge in the endless afternoon.
Ogdi paused, a flicker of something ancient passing behind his young eyes. He looked down at his hands. "...What would I wish for? Well, just one won't be enough. But if I had to choose... it would be that 6zs#!?&"
He trailed off, the last words dissolving into a jumble of sound and silent yearning. It was a whisper, not from the street, but from the cavernous chambers of a dream echoing forward into the present.
...
Later, in the quiet solitude of his room, Ogdi found himself hunched over a blank page. His pen moved with an autonomy that startled him, scratching against the paper with a desperate urgency. His hand, as if guided by an unseen force, meticulously transcribed:
"The cost must be mine alone."
Ogdi blinked, a slow, disoriented awakening. Had he written that? When? The words seemed to vibrate, foreign yet undeniably penned in his script.
The entity—the one to whom that faint, resonating voice belonged—was there. Not as a shimmering apparition or a divine presence, but as a remnant. It felt like a preserved frequency in the intricate weave of memory, a forgotten chord struck in the symphony of time.
Ogdi exhaled, a breath that seemed to carry the weight of untold ages. An idea, fragile and incomplete yet burning at the edges of his consciousness, began to form.
"If I make the wish," he whispered to the empty room, "it must be bound to me. No one else. Not through accident, not through ripple. Just me. Entirely."
He stared at the notebook. The words shimmered faintly, then faded, retreating into the fabric of the page like water sinking into sand. Only he could see them—for now, at least. And They, watching from the layered echo of time, waited. Not for permission, but for recognition.
"To remember is to be reminded," the voice had once said.
But Ogdi didn't remember them saying it. It was a truth unearthed, not recalled. Closing his eyes, seeking answers in the quiet depths of his own mind, Ogdi dreamt of glass shattering underwater—a soundless collapse, yet its phantom echo resonated inside him long after he woke.
Fragments of the dream clung to the folds of his thoughts. He lit the room softly with a lantern, casting a gentle, hesitant glow, as if afraid to disturb something observing him. Perhaps not observing, but remembering him.
His gaze flicked toward the old piano in the corner, a relic of forgotten melodies. One key, middle C, was depressed, held down by nothing but heavy air. No one else was there.
A short, sharp pain pierced his temple, pulling another memory to the surface: a beach, white sand, a voice without a face saying, "Not every truth needs a name." But that wasn't real. Or wasn't real yet.
That day, Ogdi didn't write. He traced.
He drew symbols from nowhere, born of a primal instinct. Circles crossed by thorns, like ancient shields against unseen threats. Triangles nested inside an eye, gazing inward, outward, into the depths of the soul. A shape that looked like a tether spiraling into itself, binding, connecting, yet unmoored.
On the mirror, faint condensation began to pool, spelling two letters—just two:
O… L
He stared, mesmerized. The "O" he knew—Ogdi. But the "L"? It felt alien, yet it pulled at him, a magnetic north he hadn't yet discovered. A missing half. They faded as fast as they came, like a breath on cold glass.
And from inside his chest, the thought bloomed unbidden, a quiet revelation.
"I wish… I could protect without consequence."
He paused, the words hanging in the air, heavy with unspoken weight. "No distortion. No pain. Just me."
His breath slowed, his senses sharpening. Around him, objects seemed arranged—too perfectly. The pen aligned with his shadow, a silent declaration. The mug's steam rose in an impossibly straight column. His notebook's page bent just enough to reveal the next untouched sheet, an invitation. None of it added up. Yet, all of it meant something.
A whisper rolled across the room—not sound, but recognition.
"To wish is to anchor. To anchor is to risk. Will you take it alone?"
Ogdi stood, unsure whether the voice was inside him or beside him, a disembodied presence or a thought manifested. Silence stretched. Then something subtle, like a grin behind a veil, a silent acknowledgment of his nascent understanding.
"Not yet."
The scene shifted. Ogdi was no longer in his room.
He wandered through a version of the city that existed only in the twilight of his mind. The fading light painted the familiar streets in shades of ochre and violet. The cityscape felt both intimate and subtly altered, as if an unseen hand had edited its contours.
A flower shop, closed for years in the waking world, was open here, a vibrant burst of color against the encroaching twilight. The vendor, her face a tapestry of lines and shadows, looked at Ogdi and smiled with eyes too old to be hers.
"Your choices echo," she said casually, as if reciting the price of a rose, her voice a soft murmur. "Even the ones you don't make."
He didn't respond, but the sentence hummed behind his ribcage, a persistent vibration. At the subway station, he saw a boy gripping a broken flute. The boy's eyes, wide and expectant, locked onto Ogdi's as if waiting for a melody that would never come.
Finally, Ogdi stepped into the café. It was a place he hadn't entered in years, yet the scent of roasted coffee beans was a familiar, grounding comfort. But the edges of the room were blurry, the patrons merely sketches of people.
The barista, wiping a counter that gleamed with impossible brightness, offered a knowing smile. He slid a cup across the wood.
"The Consequence Blend," the barista said softly.
Ogdi sipped. Memories surged, unbidden, like a tide reclaiming the shore. A friend he left behind to pursue ambition—M. The phantom weight of a missed apology—U. The initials burned in his mind, M… U, a stinging reminder of the friends lost to the drift of time and silence. A crossroads between silence and truth where he chose silence.
But these weren't regrets. They were points in time. Stark reminders, not of what he should have done, but of what he had become.
The voice echoed again, not aloud, but within the architecture of the atmosphere, a resonant query.
"Do you protect for guilt or concern? Do you act to undo or to create?"
He suddenly opened his eyes. He was back at his desk, the "dream" dissipating like mist. Still in a trance, he grabbed the pen. It scratched violently against the page.
"A wish must protect what is precious to me. But it must not become armor for cowardice."
The flame of a nearby candle whispered something in smoke, too faint to read. Then, on the candle's wax base, symbols etched themselves: M… U.
He gasped, a jolt of recognition and sorrow hitting him in the chest. The shadow behind the flame stirred, a subtle shift in the dancing light. Ogdi regained full consciousness to a sound that wasn't sound—a pressure in his chest, like something too old, too vast, was trying to speak through the rhythm of his heartbeat.
No voice. No tangible presence. Just a feeling, profound and undeniable.
"You are ready to speak it," said the voice. Its tone indicated that it already knew the wish, merely awaiting its articulation.
Ogdi watched the candle again. This time, it didn't flicker. It burned straight, unwavering, as if it had heard the decision forming within him.
Then, pen in hand, he began writing. Not the legalese of a contract, but the weight of a decree.
"I wish to permanently gain..."
But he paused, looked up, and for the first time, spoke aloud. His voice was steady, resolute.
"You've been watching. You know me. But I don't know your name."
A whisper in the flame, a soft hiss of recognition. "Knowing too much won't do you any good. But you may call me Azad, for now."
Azad. Freedom.
Ogdi smiled for a second, a ghost of a smile, as if he had heard a name he hadn't heard for a very long time.
"Got it."
He looked down at the paper. He didn't write a contract. He wrote a Law.
The First Wish:
"I claim the Sovereign Word.
I wish for the unrestricted power to shape reality through my will alone, granted now and forever, bound by three absolute truths:
First: The Mirror of Intent. As I conceive the wish in the quiet of my mind, so shall it be birthed into the world—flawless, exact, and stripped of error.
Second: The Severed Cost. Let the ripple die at the shore of my command. No harm, no debt, and no unintended shadow shall fall upon me, upon the innocent, or upon the weave of existence itself. The act is pure; the price is null.
Third: The Iron Seal. This power is mine, and mine alone. It is exempt from the meddling of gods, the decay of time, and the reach of any force—including you."
Ogdi put the pen down. The ink glistened, wet and black, sealing his fate.