"Four hundred years ago, the Last Great Alchemist discovered the Twenty-Ninth Name of the Creator Deity."
Malakor's voice was hushed, reverent.
"That discovery... transformed our civilization. But after that... silence."
He waved his hands in desperation.
"We hit a hard ceiling, My Lord. The Empire's scientists, the Tower of Ivory mages, even the Dark Seer monks... everyone tried for four centuries. But the Thirtieth Name... the true form of the Thirtieth Name... It is as if it does not exist."
"Or at least," he whispered, "we cannot understand it."
I fixed my gaze on the apprentice.
The young boy dared to take a step forward. His voice did not tremble with fear like Malakor's; it trembled with excitement.
"The Order of the Severed Tongue has been working on this plan for eighty years, Your Holiness," the boy said. "My grandfather struck the pickaxe for this basement. My father built the lead walls so the magical echo would not leak out. And we... we drew these lines."
He pointed to the chalk circle in the basement, now marred by my footprints.
"The goal was not to summon a monster to fight. We wanted a 'Duke of Heat' to... make a deal."
I smirked.
"A deal? You wanted to haggle with a mid-tier demon for the Thirtieth Name?"
I leaned forward, voice dripping with amusement.
"It is like asking a mole to describe the sun."
Malakor spoke hurriedly, defensive. "We were desperate. The Empire and all the cults against it are stuck in an erosive cold war. We thought... we thought a being from the other side might have a key."
I leaned back.
So that was the case.
The stagnation of humanity. They were stuck on the twenty-ninth step. They had reached the glass ceiling of their perception and were now struggling like flies banging against a windowpane.
They had summoned a creature to cheat.
"The Thirtieth Name..." I said quietly, tasting the words.
"What you have burned generations and lifetimes for is merely trivial knowledge to me. Children's alphabet."
Malakor's eyes shone.
Greed—stronger even than his fear—ran across his face.
"So... Your Excellency knows the Thirtieth Name of the Creator? You will give it to us?"
"Perhaps."
I made my gaze cold. Indifferent.
"But the cost..." I paused, letting the weight of silence sit heavy on their shoulders. "The cost that the cosmos demands for revealing that name is far greater than the capacity of your small souls."
"It is not time yet. If I utter it now, your brains will decompose into particles like a block of ice in the core of the sun."
This was a lie.
I knew the true form of the Thirtieth Name.
But even if I wanted to, the Law of Probability would not allow me to remember it in this fresh vessel without "learning" it first.
If I tried to use knowledge I hadn't acquired within this reality, the universe would reject the anomaly. It would snap my synapses.
But they did not need to know that.
I rose from my seat. The screech of the chair was loud in the silence.
"Enough. My body needs an anchor."
I smoothed my coat.
"The descent has disrupted my causality ripples. I must Attune myself with the physical laws of this cesspool you call a 'World'."
I turned to Malakor.
"Take me to your library."
I pointed a finger at his chest.
"And I warn you... while I am adjusting my existential harmonics, no one... I repeat, no one must enter. The pressure resulting from my calibration will turn the internal organs of a mortal into soup."
Color drained from Malakor's face. His skin turned the shade of a dead fish's belly.
"Yes... Yes, My Lord! I will personally stand guard. No one shall pass."
The library was smaller than the summoning hall.
It smelled of rotten paper and dry leather. Wooden shelves stretched to the ceiling, and dust sat like a curtain on the accumulated knowledge.
I closed the door.
As soon as I was alone, I slumped against the wood. I took a deep, shuddering breath.
My knees went weak.
Bluffing takes energy, I realized, wiping sweat from my forehead. More than I thought.
"Very well... Let's see what we have."
I closed my eyes.
I tried to remember the true form of the First Name. The simplest unit of power.
A sharp, electric spike twisted in my temple like a hot nail being driven in.
The Law of Probability did not allow the effect to precede the cause. The cosmos of this world recognized me as a human, and humans could not perform miracles by simply "willing."
They needed learning.
I laughed bitterly. "So I have to lie to you too, do I? You stupid universe."
I had to play the role of a researcher. I had to pretend I was extracting this knowledge from books so the Law of Probability would allow me to use it.
I had to convince the universe that this was not a miracle, but a scientific deduction.
I started pulling out books.
The first had a gilded, pompous cover. Ethereal Secrets, by Amadeus Teddeus.
I flipped through a few pages. Complex diagrams. Poetic nonsense.
"Rubbish."
I threw the book on the table. "The handwriting scrawls like a frog dragging itself under the sun. This man was in love with his own voice, not the truth."
Hours passed.
My head throbbed from the strain of the Lie.
I was holding two contradictory realities in my mind simultaneously.
To the universe, I had to be a human learning 'Linearity' for the first time. To my own soul, I was a consciousness that knew all there was to know.
It was a mental tightrope.
One slip—one moment where I revealed my true knowledge before the 'cause' was established—and the Law of Probability would snap my mind like a dry twig.
"Patience," I whispered to the empty room. "Fool the world first. Then rule it."
My eyes burned. The dryness of the air scratched my throat. My head felt ready to explode from the volume of wrong information and superstitions these mortals called "science."
But I had to continue. I had to build the foundation for my bluff.
Finally, amidst a pile of moldy books, I found a black, cracked cover. Its binding had fallen apart, pages yellow and brittle.
Tales of the Era Before Names.
I opened a page.
"...And humanity walked in a circle before the discovery of names. They worshipped fire but did not know its essence. Circles were sacred but were nothing but the repetition of a prison. They hid in caves, but caves were dead ends."
"Until the First Prophet came. He had neither a staff nor a crown. He held a simple black stone in his hand and said: 'There is a path that is not here, but there.'"
"He went neither right, where dense forests and monsters lived, nor left, where there was a precipice."
"He stepped on the straight path. And nothing harmed him anymore..."
My heart skipped a beat.
This was it. Veins of truth amidst a mountain of nonsense.
I pulled out another book. Geometry of Will. A dry, mathematical text.
"...The scream is loud in the mouth but becomes silent on the horizon. Light is blinding at the source but dim at the destination."
"Deviation is the killer of power. To preserve energy, one must deny width. One must move in the first and most basic geometric form."
And the third book, Treatise of the One.
"...God does not look back. The origin is a point. The destination is also a point. And what is between these two is the First Holy Name of the Creator..."
I placed the three books next to each other on the table. Like pieces of a puzzle.
A smile touched my lips.
A smile that did not belong to the con artist; it belonged to the ancient being looking out from this vessel.
Three different authors. Three different centuries. Yet all pointing to one thing, too stupid to realize it.
The First Holy Name was Linear.
Linearity.
A power that depends on the first geometric form of the universe.
A longitudinal line. Infinite length. Width and height of zero. Rejecting deviation.
I closed my eyes. This time, not with force, but with fresh "understanding."
"Vector," I whispered. "What connects two points. The shortest path between my will and reality."
A loud sound echoed in my head. Like a dislocated shoulder popping back into place.
The pain vanished.
A cold, powerful current shot up my spine.
The Law of Probability had accepted my bluff. I had convinced the universe that I had learned this power.
I closed the books and stood up.
I straightened my clothes, walked to the door, and opened it.
Malakor was still standing there, pale and trembling.
"It is finished," I said.
My voice now carried a resonance that made the shadows in the room recoil.
"The attunement is complete."
Malakor opened his mouth to offer his usual groveling praise, but he never got the chance.
Above us, the floorboards of the antique shop groaned under a sudden, violent weight.
A thunderous sound echoed from the stairs. Porcelain shattering. Heavy, rhythmic thudding.
The disciplined march of iron-shod boots.
The air in the corridor did not just turn heavy; it became suffocating. Thick with the scent of consecrated silver and the sharp, medicinal burn of sun-dried incense.
"They've found us," Malakor whispered.
He collapsed against the wall, hands trembling so violently he could barely hold his robes.
"They've found the shop. They've come to purge us."