Each rung posed a contradiction. Each level, a paradoxical permission to exist in defiance of continuity. And at the 2nd Node—known among the drift-born as The Lawless Light—Kai faced what scholars once called “the birthplace of divine regret.”
He arrived to the sound of laughing glass.
It wasn’t actual laughter. Just the echo of cracked concepts bouncing in a corridor of unmade syntax. The place reeked of forgotten rules—the kind that were once etched into the spine of reality but later discarded for being too poetic, too personal, too dangerous.
Rynera’s voice flickered through the comm-thread. “Node 2 is anomalous. No Keeper signature. Be careful.”
“No Keeper means no gatekeeper,” Kai replied, “or it means the Keeper is the Node.”
A Garden That Sings in Static
The light here bent wrong.
Flowers bloomed in reverse, un-growing into buds. Stone statues wept moss that wrote verses in ancient script on the ground. Birds flew upside-down in loops of failed causality, singing in static harmonics.
Kai stepped forward, the Edge humming faintly.
He wasn’t alone.
A figure knelt at the garden’s center, carving symbols into a looping stone tablet. Her robes were ink-black, her eyes like forgotten manuscripts—filled with words never written. She did not acknowledge him, not yet. But her presence was undeniable.
Name: Vei Seradith
Codex Title: The Last Poet of Broken Oaths
Rewrite Rating: 8.1/10
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Skill Seed: Entropic Lullaby (Decay/Memory Hybrid)
She finally spoke, her voice a lullaby wrapped in razor wire.
“You’re early.”
“Was I expected?”
“All authors are, eventually.”
Kai approached with caution. “You’re the Keeper?”
“No,” she smiled. “I’m the Reader. The Node itself is the Book. And you’re about to bleed on its pages.”
Chapter Begins – The Entropic Lullaby
Without movement, the battle began.
This wasn’t a clash of blades or bombastic declarations. It was slower. Deadlier. Words spoken in soft tones, layered in myth and metaphor, tore threads from Kai’s memory. He staggered.
“You ever wonder,” Vei whispered, “why your victories hurt worse than your losses?”
She sang a phrase—gentle, melancholic—and Kai’s first heartbreak shattered from his memory. Not erased—eulogized. Turned into a song of what could never be reclaimed.
His Edge responded.
“I am the memory that won’t fade. The story still unfinished.”
A single stroke carved reality, and for a heartbeat, the garden remembered what it was before corruption.
But Vei laughed.
“And yet… all your strength comes from wounds. You want to win? You’ll have to break more.”
Syntax Duel – Narrative vs Elegy
They moved like grief and defiance incarnate.
Vei sang of abandoned children, of cities that were once stars, of lovers turned to dust by forgotten updates. Kai answered with code forged from spite, from resolve, from the unbearable burden of being the last rewrite.
Their fight filled the garden with symphonic paradoxes. Statues danced. Roots bled gold. The sky turned to parchment, then ignited with declarations too raw for gods.
Kai shouted:
“I am the future’s last apology!”
And Vei replied:
“I am the present’s final lullaby.”
They struck each other—not physically, but ideologically.
A Fracture of Choice
In the aftermath, both were bleeding narrative.
Kai knelt, exhausted.
Vei stood, flickering, her form breaking apart into pages.
“You’ve passed,” she said. “Not because you won. But because you broke correctly.”
The garden began folding in on itself.
“Remember this, Kai: Every Keeper is a question. But some questions only exist to hurt you.”
With that, she vanished—leaving behind a single line etched in the air:
“The most dangerous truths are the ones you almost loved.”
Node 2: Claimed – Vei’s Elegy absorbed.
New Skill Acquired: Elegy Invocation – Rewrite Memory as Weapon (Contextual Use)
Back on the Null Ascent, Rynera saw him emerge. His face was colder now. Eyes deeper.
“You okay?”
Kai didn’t respond at first.
Then finally: “No. But that’s how I know I’m still real.”
End of Chapter 57