A knife.

A knife that hadn't been there before. It didn't appear—it declared itself. In my hands. In my soul. In the quiet between breaths.

A bone-knife, yellowed and slick with age older than stars. It pulsed like a tooth freshly plucked from the mouth of something that should not bleed.

It begged.

Not with words. With hunger.

It was not a tool. It was a desire, made tactile. A question asked not to be answered—but to cut the answer free.

You are ready.

The voice slithered across the folds of my thoughts. Not inside my head—beneath it. Behind it. In the folds my consciousness refused to map.

I let out a snarl—not human. Not bestial. Not anything that could be named cleanly.

Something deeper. A primordial rejection of containment.

All around me, the silvery ocean—that heavy, reflective liquid—began to move. To spiral. To churn in silent reverence.

Not toward me.

Into me.

Into the part of me that could still hold it. Where my bestial blood manifested.

Where my horn burned with forgotten numbers and ancestral geometries. All that liquid—the unknowable weight of thought made tangible—coiled and compressed, tightening in orbit around the blackened, ivory spire erupting from my skull.

Who was I?

I am Alexander Duarte-Alizade.

The first of my name. And yet, a thousand names move in me. A thousand ancestors. A thousand selves I have not yet been.

What am I?

I am nothing. I am everything.

I am contradiction crystallized. I am the paradox that dreams in blood. I am the yes inside every no. I am creation that devours. I am destruction that sings.

Why did I hear two voices from the tree, and countless others from the storming sky?

Because they were me. Because I was them.

Everything here— This spiraling chaos of shape and sound and meaning— This silence made of screams, this storm of thought clashing on itself—

It wasn't some alien realm.

It was internal. A reflection, yes. But not of the self as I had known it.

A reflection of the origin before origin. The part of me untouched by Shells, Skillcubes, Lexicons, or even logic.

The part that knew.

"Everything here is me."

My voice didn't echo. It collapsed the space around it, like gravity asserting its dominance over stars.

"I am the lone tree— The axis of all meaning. I am the ocean of the unknown— The mirrored weight of thought and terror. I am the sky that holds voices without mouths— Each storm a clash of broken philosophies. Each voice a scripture screamed into the void."

This world wasn't a conjecture. It wasn't a fragment. It wasn't a test.

It was a cathedral.

Not made of stone or truth. But of me.

A cathedral to contradiction. To eldritch logic. To everything I had ever feared about my mind—and everything I had denied myself the right to become.

The knife pulsed. The horn throbbed. The sky screamed.

And I smiled.

With my blood.

With my hunger.

With my evolution.

***

I was shunted back in the study.

Somewhere deep in the folds of memory and madness, I had fallen. Now, I was here again. Real. Tangible. Grounded…more or less.

Blood was pouring—not just from my eyes, but from the base of my horn, and from claws that hadn't been there before. That part was new. New and sharp and far too real.

Everything around me felt…off.

Not in the vague, magical sense. Tangibly off.

The air smelled wrong. The walls looked wrong. Even the light filtering through the study's enchanted lanterns seemed to carry colors I didn't have names for. Colors that buzzed faintly at the edge of thought.

My aura was still pinging—still mapping out the vectors and pressures of everything around me—but even that data was…weirdly distant, like someone whispering numbers from the bottom of a well.

And then there were the voices.

Not the sky-splitting cacophony from before.

Just Barbra and Cordelia.

Barbra sat beside me, calm and exact as always, bandaging the places where my skin had split open from the strain. Her hands moved with that detached, medical elegance she had whenever treating someone she wasn't allowed to kill.

Cordelia, by contrast, hovered. Her fingers danced over a vitals orb, checking pulse patterns, aura fractures, breathing rhythms. Her lips were drawn in worry. But her shoulders relaxed the moment the orb chimed.

"He's alive," Cordelia declared with a long, relieved sigh. "Thank the Moons."

"He was always going to live," Barbra said, voice cool and measured. "I didn't think he could dive into a fragment of my notes and survive it unraveled, but I knew acting on them wouldn't kill him. He's lucky he didn't attempt a full refinement."

I tried to move. Groaned instead. "How… how would you know if I did or didn't?"

Cordelia leaned over me, gently brushing the blood-matted hair from my face. Her touch was surprisingly delicate. "Also, you do know he can hear us, right? He's literally blinking at us. You don't have to talk like he's in a coma."

"His hair's softer," she added idly, running her fingers through it again. "That's new."

Barbra snorted, tying off a bandage near my ribs. "Because he's still an Almiraj. Just… now that bloodline's fully awake."

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

"My instincts are screaming at me to take him down before he becomes a threat. So yes. I know exactly where his veins are rupturing, internally and externally."

"That's not comforting," I muttered, my voice dry and hoarse. "Also, could you both please stop treating me like I'm some wounded animal?"

They both paused.

"No," they said in perfect unison.

Then they looked at each other. Then looked away—slowly—in the exact same stiff, mildly embarrassed motion.

I groaned again and threw an arm over my face. "This is going to be one of those recoveries, isn't it?"

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Yup," said Cordelia.

"Affirmative," added Barbra.

"Great," I muttered, sinking further into the cushions. "Gin is going to murder me out of boredom."

"Nah," Barbra said with a lazy wave of her hand. "We sent him off to gather everything we need to prep your refinement to a Sellivant. He needed something to do anyway."

She tilted her head, eyes gleaming with amusement. "Though for the record, he's still upset you didn't choose the unicorn."

"What?" I blinked slowly. "What unicorn?"

She shrugged. "Just saying. If you ever go Chimera, I'd recommend accepting unicorn blood as part of your fusion. It'd stabilize your temperament. Boost your regeneration. Smooth those sharp edges you keep pretending aren't there."

I stared blankly. As if that was supposed to make sense.

Cordelia saw my expression and sighed like she'd just aged ten years. "She means merging bloodlines, Alex. Into one composite. Chimera-class. Like... if your blood was a language, you'd be speaking multiple dialects at once."

"Stop reading my thoughts," Barbra said, casting a narrow glance her way. Her feline tail flicked once, then again—sharp, agitated movements betraying what her face didn't.

"Then stop projecting them," Cordelia snapped, turning fully toward her. "You outrank me sixfold. You could push me out with a thought or pull me in with one. You did pull me in. You always do when you're emotional. Stop."

There was a pause. Tense. Not hostile. Just frayed around the edges.

Scary, though.

"Right," I said, forcing my voice through the ache in my throat. "So… I awoke my bloodline. That's what happened. What… what element is it attuned to?"

Barbra's smile sharpened—predatory, yet impressed.

"Heh. You wouldn't believe it if I just told you." She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. "You're the first case I know of. And I guarantee it was your first shell that catalyzed this."

A flick of her wrist brought a sigil into the air—shifting symbols, glowing faintly.

Race: Human – Half-Almiraj Bloodline Purity: Almiraj (50%) Elemental Line: Red Sun

My breath hitched. "Okay… so… how much of a prize am I now?"

Barbra looked at me seriously. "Very."

"I don't even know what Red Sun means."

"It's a hybrid," she explained. "Blood + Star. Sixty percent blood-elemental, forty percent stellar. If it had just been blood, I'd have pushed to refine you again immediately. That's where most monsterbloods begin—low-grade, unstable, instinct-driven."

"But Star..." She exhaled, her voice softening, almost reverent. "Star changes the equation. It makes it yours. It makes it permanent. And very, very rare."

Before I could respond, the door burst open.

Ria stormed in.

"You. Stupid. Idiot. Genius." Each word was a blow, punctuated with a finger jabbed in my general direction. "Do you even comprehend what you've done? What you've set off?"

I opened my mouth.

"NO. Don't answer. Of course you don't. Because every warning sigil I ever made just lit up like fire. Do you know why you heard the Choir? Do you know what it means when your name echoes in harmonics like that? No. You don't. Of course you don't. Just shut up."

And just like that, she spun on her heel and left.

A guttural yell followed seconds later from somewhere down the hall—half frustration, half disbelief.

I looked at the ceiling. "What… did I do?"

Cordelia rubbed the bridge of her nose. "You really have no idea how to deal with women, do you?"

I gave a weak shrug. "My mother wouldn't let any into my life. Said women would only corrupt my ideals."

Cordelia raised a brow.

"Yeah. On my sixteenth birthday, I got my Arte and ran the hell out. That was exactly why."

"Explains... a lot, actually."

Barbra chuckled. "If nothing else, this will be entertaining."

"Great," I muttered again. "Add 'cosmic anomaly' and 'gender illiterate' to the list of my growing titles."

"Don't forget 'walking contradiction,'" Cordelia added.

"Oh, that one's been taken," Barbra said. "By the Red Sun boy over here."

***

Somewhere in the outer southern fields of Marr's broken hills, three killers, one spirit, and forty sheep stood trapped in what could only be called pastoral purgatory.

The sheep didn't care.

Ten did.

"I'm going to rip Barbra's tail off and strangle her with it."

Ten dragged her chain over a divot in the ground, sending a small cloud of dirt and grass into the air. She didn't even pause to see if the sheep reacted. Of course they didn't. Sheep had no concept of menace, violence, or wrath. They simply grazed.

V crouched nearby, elbows on knees, carving a spiral into the dirt with a piece of black chalk. "You'll have to stand in line. I submitted a written complaint two hours ago."

"She doesn't read those."

"No. But I like the idea that one day she will, and my existential suffering will be memorialized in ink."

Ten let out a loud sigh. One of the sheep bleated in return. Possibly mockingly.

"I just want to know what gods we pissed off to be demoted to babysitting overgrown wool balls."

"You mean besides the one who assigned us Barbra?" V deadpanned. "Or the one who keeps letting Alexander wake up new magical metaphors and destabilize entire Otherrealms?"

"I'm going to stab this sheep."

"That one's named Harold," said a serene voice behind them. "He has done nothing to deserve stabbing."

Fractal, in her rare and unsettling human form, stood barefoot in the grass, her long shimmering hair billowing in a breeze that didn't seem to exist. Her mask was absent today, her face soft but dreamlike. She wore no armor, no veil. Just a long ivory cloak woven with faint symbols that might have been bird feathers or starlight. She held a curved staff in one hand and was gently petting a lamb with the other.

Ten squinted. "Why are you always so calm?"

"I am not calm," Fractal said, tilting her head. "I am simply unwilling to let sheep win."

"They're not even trying." Ten pointed at one, whose eye stared off into nothing. "That one doesn't know we exist. That one might be a rock."

"It is in spiritual contemplation."

"It's chewing grass."

"Exactly."

They stood in silence for a few seconds. A wind blew, probably not symbolically.

"Barbra has to be doing this for a reason," V said eventually, dusting his fingers off and standing. "There's always a reason. Even if it's petty. Especially if it's petty."

"She said, and I quote," Ten mimicked Barbra's haughty voice, "'The field is in bloom, so till the flock until your bloom begins.'"

V stared at her.

"She didn't say that."

"She did."

"…Tiller of blooms?"

"Yeah."

"…Barbra is off her leash."

"She was never on it."

"Fair."

Fractal slowly walked toward them, her cloak trailing the grass like it belonged there. She moved with the same grace she did as a bird—smooth, eerie, with gravity bending slightly to her will. She sat cross-legged on the ground beside them, her fingers absently weaving small strands of wool into a braid.

"Alexander would make sense of this."

"Alexander would try to set the field on fire and then talk about symbolism," V muttered.

"He would say the sheep represent entropy."

"Or duty."

"Or internal repression," Ten added.

V glanced at her. "Been holding that one in for a while?"

"I'm dragging forty sheep. Yes. Yes, I have."

A sheep wandered too far toward a rise in the hill. Fractal flicked her wrist. The grass in front of it subtly shifted, becoming suddenly less appealing. The sheep turned around without ever realizing it was manipulated.

"I hate how good you are at this," Ten grumbled.

"I used to herd clouds," Fractal said dreamily.

"That's not a real thing."

"It is where I'm from."

"That explains nothing and makes it worse."

V pulled out a piece of salted jerky and tore a strip off with his teeth. "So. Theories?"

"About why we're here?"

"No, about why sheep have rectangular pupils. Yes, why we're here."

"…We're being punished," Ten said immediately.

"Could be," V nodded. "But we haven't messed up recently."

"You haven't."

"I blew up a cursed tree full of spiders and ghosts. That was a public service."

"Fractal?" Ten asked, already dreading the answer.

Fractal blinked once, then turned her head skyward. "There is something underneath this land. A vein of light. The sheep graze and it moves faster. The pulse of this place is adjusting."

"So it is magical lawn mowing," V said, sighing. "We're the magical shepherds of the leyline apocalypse."

"Not apocalypse," Fractal said. "Alignment."

Another pause. Another sheep wandered too close to Ten. She glared at it until it turned away.

"So, let me guess," Ten muttered. "The sheep are tuning forks. And we're... the sheep herders of fate?"

"I like the sound of that," V said. "Makes us sound very important while doing absolutely nothing."

"I'm going to break someone's kneecaps if we're not done with this by sunset."

Fractal gave her a look that somehow mixed gentle disapproval and cosmic amusement. "You are unusually violent today."

"This is what happens when I don't eat dragons regularly."

"Would you like to punch one of the sheep?" Fractal asked sincerely. "I can arrange a dreamscape where no consequences linger."

"I… thank you? I think?"

"See? Herding makes us closer." Fractal smiled.

Ten stared. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"I find stillness instructive. I find grazing rhythms soothing. I find that when I pet them"—she scratched behind a nearby ewe's ears—"I remember less about being alone."

That silenced both of them for a while.

V stretched his arms overhead, spine popping. "Okay. So we do the job. Walk the wool. Eat some dried despair. Wait for Barbra to descend from on high and tell us we've grown spiritually."

"If she tries to say we 'bloomed,' I'm going to knee her."

"She'll dodge."

"I'll knee her with both legs."

Fractal stood, finally. "They are almost done. Another hour, perhaps. Then we may leave."

"Back to fighting things?" Ten asked, almost hopefully.

"Likely," Fractal said. "Blood will always follow stillness. We are in the eye before the storm."

"Dramatic."

"True."

The three of them began moving again, weaving through the flock like uninvited prophets.

Fractal guided gently with gestures.

V occasionally tossed pebbles in vague directions to startle them into clumping.

Ten swore, muttered, and dragged her chains—but the sheep didn't run. They clustered near her like she was a mountain. Solid. Inevitable.

She hated it.

"...You think Alexander planned this?" she muttered after a while.

"Probably not," V said. "But Barbra said he 'broke a pattern.' This is the stitch."

"Fifty gold says he doesn't even remember doing it."

"I'll double it and say he did it in his sleep."

"I'll triple it if he apologizes without knowing why."

Fractal just smiled and said nothing.

And in the late afternoon sun, with the sheep aligned on the ridge and the leyline pulsing faintly beneath the soil, none of them noticed the small silver flower that bloomed under the hooves of the lead ewe.

A single petal fell. The wind carried it east.

Barbra would smile when she saw it.

But for now—

They were just three killers and a flock of sheep.

They soon arrived at their delivery location.

The very estate Alexander was going to start his sheep husbandry.

"Were…were we sent on errands?" V turned to the rest.

"Yes." Fractal said with a smile. Laughing.

"Forget Barbatos. I'm going to stab you!" Ten yelled.

In response Fractal turned into her chromatic self, and flew perching in Alexander's window.

"Get to my strength soon…please." She whispered, into the empty room, her voice a harmonious melancholy.

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