The wooden ceiling of the "Gilded Quill" collapsed.
A rain of ash and crushed antiques showered down on my head.
My new lungs, still unaccustomed to the oxygen concentration of this atmosphere, pulled in air that felt like sharp blades.
Malakor stumbled up the stairs like a terrified rat, gathering the edges of his wet robe.
His hands spun in the air with pathetic trembling. He was trying to invoke the Thirteenth Name of the Creator.
But the only thing that spilled from his sleeves was a thick, useless fog of trembling shadows.
"My Lord!" he shrieked. "They... they are the Inquisitors of the Eternal Lens! Their armor reflects magic!"
I ignored his moaning.
I stepped through the rubble and entered the main hall of the shop.
The scene was a tableau of violence.
In the center of the room, the old shopkeeper knelt among shards of crushed glass. Blood dripped from his forehead, staining his white beard red.
Above him stood six ghosts.
Figures clad in matte black armor. Holy killing machines birthed from the depths of a monk's nightmare.
Their helmets had no eye slits. Only a single, blue lens pulsed in the center of their foreheads.
Shining. Watching.
Their Commander stood in the back.
He wore a trench coat lined with silver thread over lighter armor. His mask was blank, save for a single white eye painted in the center.
One of the soldiers aimed a heavy pistol at the back of the shopkeeper's head.
The room sank into silence, save for the high-pitched whine of a charging capacitor.
"You are breaking the merchandise," I said.
My voice was calm. Conversational.
The soldier paused.
Six blue lenses turned simultaneously toward me. Hunting for a demon signature.
"My Lord!" Malakor screamed from the stairs. "I will shield you!"
The priest thrust his trembling hands forward.
A cloud of black, oily smoke erupted from his sleeves, swirling chaotically between me and the gunmen.
Fool.
It wasn't a shield; it was a blindfold. It obscured the probability lines I needed to see.
"You are blocking my line of sight," I said, my voice cutting through the panic like a razor. "Cease."
"But—"
"Stand down, Malakor. Do not force me to waste a calculation on you."
Malakor flinched as if struck. He instantly collapsed his spell and retreated into the rubble.
The smoke cleared.
It revealed the Commander's raised hand. He snapped his fingers.
The shot shook the walls.
But the old man did not die.
The bullet pierced the floor exactly three centimeters beside his ear. Wood splintered.
The soldier stared at his own twisted wrist, bewilderment leaking through his mask.
I stood there, holding an old brass pen I had plucked from the desk a heartbeat ago.
"You anticipate the recoil," I whispered, spinning the metal between my fingers.
"You tilt the barrel down to compensate for the machine's error. How... mortal."
The Commander didn't hesitate. He didn't speak. He simply signaled the volley.
Five barrels erupted.
I shifted my perception.
Filter the chaos.
Through the logic of the First Name, the illusion of the physical room peeled away.
Wood and flesh dissolved.
A wireframe of pure data rushed to meet my gaze, stripping the world down to its raw calculus.
I saw the red vectors extending from the gun barrels—not as guesses, but as angry, absolute lines of probability targeting my heart, throat, and groin.
My body felt heavy. My heart pounded like a war drum inside me.
With all my power, I rotated my body to the right.
The muscle in my side pulled from the sudden torque.
The sound of bullets tearing through the air where I had just been.
Behind me, the bookshelf exploded. Torn papers spun in the air like snowflakes.
"Target mismatch!" one soldier shouted, his voice scratchy and digitized. "Target has gone out of sync! I cannot lock!"
"You are shooting at the past," I said.
My voice now held the resonance of an ancient Name.
"I am not there anymore."
I spun the brass pen in my hand.
This body was weak. I had not yet fully adapted to it. But the First Name was boiling in my veins.
Now, I was linear.
A straight line connecting my will to reality.
"Veoth, Donthe..." I whispered.
My voice wrapped around the fabric of reality.
I flicked my wrist.
A sonic boom ruptured the small room, blowing out the remaining windows and dusting the soldiers in plaster.
The brass pen flew.
It didn't just fly; it erased the space between me and the soldier.
It pierced the armor. The ceramic plate shattered into dust. The projectile caved in the soldier's chest cavity, lifting him off his feet and pinning him to the brick wall with the force of a railgun.
He didn't scream. He didn't have lungs left to scream with.
He simply twitched once. And went still.
The second soldier rushed me.
Fast. Zigzagging. Wasting energy.
I waited.
A palm strike to his sternum.
Not with arm strength. But by transferring all the momentum of the ground through an imaginary line from my heel to my fingertips.
The sound of crushing bone was pleasant music amidst the chaos. The soldier folded into himself and was thrown backward like a ragdoll.
Three soldiers rushed me simultaneously. A perfect triangular formation.
"Standard doctrine," I noted, watching their probability lines converge. "A triangle is a stable shape."
I planted my heel.
"But it is also a rigid one."
Rigid things break.
I spun.
The edge of my hand found a throat—cartilage collapsed.
My knee found a joint—ligaments snapped.
My elbow drove into a glass lens—shards drove into a skull.
It wasn't a battle. It was an equation balancing itself out.
In less than ten seconds, the "Gilded Quill" was no longer a shop.
It was a slaughterhouse of metal and flesh.
Only I remained standing.
And the Commander at the end of the room.
My body protested. A cold sweat slicked my forehead.
Maintaining this level of "precision" in a body that was constantly transmitting the message of pain was exhausting.
Inefficient, I thought. Like trying to perform microsurgery with a rusty sledgehammer.
The Commander looked at his fallen unit.
He didn't panic. He reached behind his back and pulled a sword.
The blade was the color of cold, dead gray.
The Blade of Silence. A weapon that cut without sound and swallowed magic.
He leaped.
Inhuman speed. The blade came in a deadly arc toward my neck.
A curve... I thought, watching the trajectory. How inefficient.
Instead of retreating, I stepped inside his strike radius.
I raised my hand.
With two fingers, I caught his armored wrist.
"Nauth..." I whispered.
The voice resonated in the space.
All the kinetic energy of his movement suddenly returned to him.
The sound of his shoulder joint exploding was loud as a pistol shot. The sword fell to the ground with a metallic clatter.
I slammed him into the wall.
My hand looped around his throat, lifting him off the ground. His armor shook in my grip.
I leaned in. His trembling body calmed down against my chest.
"For a mortal, you move well," I whispered into his ear.
"But your mind is trapped in loops. You strike, you return. You attack, you reset."
I tightened my grip.
"You are a slave to your own muscle memory."
I raised my free hand. I gripped the edge of his mask. And tore it free. The mask cracked, falling to the floor.
And what I saw made me pause.