For three seconds, Zonia was a frozen frame in a gallery of cosmic errors. The raindrops, suspended like jagged diamonds in the purple neon glare, refused to obey the 15th Name.
Gravity had been momentarily evicted by the sheer weight of the language I had spoken.
The sentence hung in the mist, a physical glitch object made of glass and thunder.
Simone stood paralyzed. The metal pen between her fingers had stopped spinning.
For the first time in her fifteen years of service to the Church, her mastery over the 4th Name had been overridden by a primal, ancestral terror.
Then, the world resumed.
The rain hammered down with a sudden, violent vengeance. The purple light of the "Salvation" sign flared and hissed. And my heart, pushed past the breaking point by the resonance of the sentence, finally seized.
It didn't just skip a beat. It stopped.
The internal "Audit" of the Law arrived with the weight of a falling mountain.
The Law of Probability demanded even more Plausibility Tax for the spoken statement, the halted gravity, and for the impossible frequency of my voice.
My vessel slumped, its knees threatening to buckle, but I refused to give Simone the satisfaction of seeing me hit the mud.
I Will Not Surrender To The Law Of Probability, I roared internally, the thought a white-hot spark in the dark of my failing brain.
I reached for the First Holy Name, Linear.
"Veoth... Donthe..." I whispered, my voice resonating in the fabric of reality.
I dictated the direction of the blood. With a surge of will that felt like tearing my own soul, I applied a force, a velocity vector to the blood stagnating in my aorta.
I didn't need a heartbeat. I created a persistent, artificial flow—a high-pressure stream forced through my veins by sheer Authority.
The Law of Probability reacted instantly.
To the universe, a man whose heart has stopped but whose blood continues to move is a massive logical error.
The "Static" of the Law intensified, My Migraine expanding into a blinding sheet of white noise behind my eyes.
The Law demanded more Tax for this new impossibility. It moved to liquefy my lungs to balance the ledger.
In response, I applied another vector. I forced the lungs to expand. I forced the neurons to fire.
The debt became exponential.
Each act of survival required a new "impossible" command, which generated a higher Tax, which brought me closer to death, which forced me to use more of the First Name to stay alive.
I was a Deity caught in a mathematical whirlpool, spinning faster and faster toward a total systemic collapse.
"Move," I whispered, the word carrying the weight of a thousand dying stars.
Simone stepped back, her face pale, her eyes wide with a horrific realization.
She saw the crimson blooming in my eyes—the result of a dozen ruptured capillaries in my retinas.
She saw the blood dripping from my ears. And yet, she saw me standing and walking.
To her, I was no longer Father Mollian. I was a walking corpse being animated by a Will that was older than the Church itself.
"W-What... what are you?" she breathed, her voice trembling.
I didn't answer. I didn't have any stamina left for speech. I simply walked past her, my steps measured and heavy, each one a calculated victory over the Law.
Kael followed, his calming blue eyes flickering with a frantic, internal conflict as he attempted to process what was happening to my vessel.
Malakor scrambled after us, his breath hitching in a sob of pure, fanatical terror.
"Kael…" I commanded, the voice sounding like grinding stone. "A vehicle… Now..."
We didn't take a public transport. I had 58,000 Clons in my account—a fortune that could buy a city block in this district.
Kael flagged a high-end, black-tinted limousine utilizing the 15th Name's most expensive anti-graviton plating. The driver didn't even look at us; in Zonia, money bought silence more effectively than any miracle.
The interior of the vehicle was plush, smelling of synthetic leather and expensive ozone. As the door shut, the outside world—the rain, Simone, the "Salvation" sign—vanished.
I sat in the center of the seat, my spine as straight as a spear. I had to maintain the Linear vector. If I relaxed for a single microsecond, the Law would claim its debt and my vessel would collapse into a puddle of organic waste.
Keep the flow, I told myself. Force the oxygen... Ignore the static…
The journey through the Neon District was a blur of violet and chrome.
I watched the city through the tinted glass, seeing it for what it truly was, a fragile theater built on a foundation of Names.
It was a beautiful, rotting thing, and it was currently trying to kill me.
"Where to, My Lord?" Malakor asked, his voice shaking. He was staring at the blood on my coat, his hands hovering as if he wanted to help but was afraid that touching me would cause me to shatter.
"The Obsidian Spire," I managed to say. It was the highest-rated hotel in the Sector, a fortress of luxury where the Church's Inquisitors would hesitate to kick down the doors. I saw it advertised on one of those ugly neon signs. "A suite. High floor."
My voice was a ragged edge. The internal feedback loop was reaching its peak. My skin felt like it was being flayed by cold electricity.
The Law was screaming at me now, a physical pressure that felt like the atmosphere was made of lead.
Usage. Tax. Usage. Tax.
I was a man burning his own furniture to keep the house warm. Soon, there would be nothing left but the frame.
When the limousine glided to a halt in the private bay of the Obsidian Spire, the attendants moved with a practiced, expensive grace.
They didn't see the blood, they saw the platinum-level digital signature Kael projected from his phone.
We were ushered into a private lift.
An elevator that worked with an inefficient application of 15th Name lifted us with a sickening, smooth acceleration. Ten floors. Fifty. Eighty.
The air grew thinner, the "Static" of the city's lower levels fading into a quiet, high-altitude hum. But the internal static—the Audit—remained. It was inside me now.
The doors slid open to a suite that was a masterpiece of Zonian excess. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the neon clouds of the capital, and a silence that felt like a sanctuary.
My vision was narrowing to a single point. I was losing the battle with the Law. The debt was too high. The whirlpool was closing.
"My Lord, you need a doctor, a Saint, a—" Malakor started, his face a mask of grief.
"Quiet," I snapped. The effort made me cough, and a spray of dark blood hit the white marble floor.
I looked at the room. Two beds. A double bed for my vessel, and a single bed for... for what?
My mind was slipping. I saw Kael standing by the door, his blue eyes assessing me with a pity. I saw Malakor kneeling, his faith the only thing keeping him from screaming.
I dragged myself toward the double bed. Each step felt like walking through deep, freezing water.
The Law was claiming its interest now. My bones felt like glass. My lungs were refusing the vector.
I reached the edge of the mattress. I turned, my eyes—now entirely crimson—finding the faces of my minions.
I needed one last act of Authority. One last bluff to ensure they would guard the vessel.
I looked at Kael. I looked at Malakor. I forced my lips into a sneer of divine disappointment.
"This vessel... is so weak," I said, the words vibrating with a remnant of the Linear power. "It is a cup of clay... trying to behold the ocean of my divinity. It breaks... simply because I exist."
I felt the Authority of First Name snap. The vector vanished. The heart finally, truly stopped.
"Guard it," I whispered. "If the cup shatters... the ocean will drown this universe."
Then, the world went black.