When the world returned, it came upside down.The sky was a color I couldn't name — a shade between exposed flesh and graveyard mud — and the ground… the ground breathed. It pulsed beneath my bare feet like an eager muscle, as if the earth were alive and hungry.
My eyes wept blood. But it wasn't pain. It was a silent mourning for something I hadn't known I'd lost until it was gone. The pact didn't hurt in the flesh. It hurt in the idea of who I was. As if a name had been scraped off the tombstone of my soul, and in its place… they etched a number.
One thousand six hundred and eighteen.
I was naked. But not the kind of nakedness of the body — it was deeper. As if every layer that protected me from myself had been burned away. I saw everything inside me: the instincts I pretended not to have, the desires I dared not name, and the fear… the fear of never being whole. Of always being a cracked reflection.
And in that state, I found them.
Or rather, they found me.
Three figures walked toward me, among dead trees and statues of mutilated flesh. The first was a woman with half her face burned and the other half eternally young, smiling. Her name was Luth. She wore a dress made of human skins sewn together with thorns. Her voice was low, almost a whisper, but each word entered me like a poisoned needle.
— The Mother of Serpents' new toy… — she said, crouching before me. — The shell is still cracking. It'll bleed a lot before it hardens.
Behind her, a man covered in tattoos that slithered like worms. His eyes were blindfolded with barbed wire, and he held a blade made of bone and remorse. His name was Saeven. He did not speak. But I heard him anyway. Inside my mind, his thoughts struck like hammers:"Kill. Kill. Before he remembers too much."
The third… was not human.
It was a child — or pretended to be. A pale boy, eyes black as oil wells, dressed in tattered purple rags. He looked at me as if he had already forgotten me.
— You came too broken, he said. Or maybe you're broken just right. Let's find out together.
His name was Luto. The youngest, but the others feared him. Even Luth averted her eyes when he smiled. He handed me an object wrapped in dry leather strips. When I unwrapped it, I found a mirror. But the reflection wasn't mine.
It was Kael.
And behind him, all my deaths. All the bodies worn. All the eyes that had ever blinked in my place. I saw Kael crying blood. I saw the pregnant woman vomiting my guilt. I saw the nun screaming as a fire consumed her. And I saw what they called God… watching me through all of them.
— Every time you steal, they'll try to steal back, said Luto. Memory is a battlefield. And you… are a walking trench.
My throat was dry. I tried to speak, but my voice was a mix of all the others I'd ever used.
— Why are you showing me this?
— Because you belong to us now, Luth replied. You are a piece in a war that does not exist. A bleeding memory. A thief of identity in the theater of flesh.
Saeven approached, placed the blade against my skin, and traced a symbol. It didn't cut. It burned. The mark throbbed like a hungry eye on my arm.
— First lesson, said Luto, emotionless. Steal something. Now.
Before me, a body appeared. An old man, bound to a throne of thorns. His eyes begged for mercy. He trembled, not from cold, but from memories. I touched his forehead.
And the memory poured in.
A wheat field, a daughter's laughter, a kiss before a war he lost. I felt it all. Every pain, every hope. But when I opened my eyes, he was just a dried corpse. And I… I now knew how to kill with a glance.
Luth clapped slowly. Saeven smiled with his teeth. Luto merely said:
— Next lesson: learn to forget. Or what you steal will kill you from within.
And then, Luto flicked my forehead, and I fell backward. And I began to fall.
It was like the echo of a memory that never belonged to me. The kind of sound that haunts dreams but vanishes the moment the eyes open. When Luto flicked my forehead, I fell. Not onto the ground. I fell from reality. From body. From time. I fell inward.
I saw the lines of the world fold like hot wax, and at the center of everything, a golden spiral spun silently. Hypnotic. Perfect. 1.618 times more beautiful than anything my eyes had ever dared comprehend.
— This is your beginning and your end, said the nameless woman, appearing beside me, her voice now layered with echoes.
— What is this? I asked — or maybe just thought. Here, words were no longer symbols. They were shapes. Feelings. Pure intent.
— The number of God. The frame of the universe. What the three forgot to fear.
— The three... from the heavens?
She nodded.
— The Architect of the Cycle, the Lord of the Inverted Mirror, and the Nameless Voice. They shaped the world, and so believe they own it. But everything they made... is ugly. Asymmetric. Fractured. They ignored the Form.
The spiral glowed brighter. And then it was on my skin. Burned into me. The mark: ϕ.
I awoke.
I was back in Liran's body, but something had changed. The pain of a shattered soul still gnawed within, like a hungry worm chewing at the root of a tree. But I felt something new: direction. An invisible pull tugging my spirit toward something I did not yet understand.
— Liran…? — A female voice. Young. Trembling.
I turned my face with difficulty. A girl with brown hair and red eyes stared at me from behind a heap of rubble.
— You're alive… You killed them all.
— I'm not Liran.
She blinked.
— What...?
— I am 1.618.
The name came out before I could think. It wasn't a name. It was a destiny. The natural order that everything tried to deny. Perfection no longer as concept, but as identity.
— You're bleeding. Your body is broken. — The girl knelt beside me, pulling a dirty cloth from the ground. — I'm Anai. I… I was hiding. I thought everyone had died.
The fragility in her voice was real. But I no longer felt pity as before. That was dying in me. And in its place, something else was being born: clarity.
— The goblins didn't act alone. They were sent. A test.
— Test?
I nodded, rising with difficulty. The village ashes still rose like ghosts in foolish spirals, trying to imitate the True Form.
— They want to know how far I'll go. How deep I'll fall. How high I'll rise.
— Who wants to know?
— The ones who play god.
Anai fell silent. Her eyes, once fearful, now held something more. Fascination. Fear. Twisted hope.
And then the sky cracked open.
Black clouds swirled into a circle, revealing a vertical rift like an eye opening. A golden beam of light fell upon me, and for a moment, I didn't see the world. I saw the spiritual sky: an infinite tower built on the concept of truth, where three thrones hovered.
And I saw them.The Architect, with fingers made of gears.The Lord of the Inverted Mirror, whose face reflected mine.And the Nameless Voice… a presence speaking inside my mind with my own voice.
— The intruder is marked, they said in unison. He must be erased.
But I smiled. For the first time, I truly smiled.
— You ignored the Form. And now it will devour you.
And the symbol glowed on my chest. ϕ. The seed. The code. The idea.
It was the beginning.It was the end.It was Me.