The script-ring hung in the air, spinning slowly.
It had just spoken to Zahir, reciting some kind of poem. He ran the message back in his mind, line by line—crowns, flames, fractures. Logos. Something about him being a question and a key. Asking him if he accepted…something about unlocking.
There was too much to unpack, but the bottom line was clear: it was offering power. That's all he needed to hear, and he knew his his answer immediately. It was a hungry, reckless, desperate yes.
The thing—Logos, or whatever it really was—had been melting his brain from the first moment. It hadn't started with words. Just pure image, beamed straight to the skull. Symbols carrying five meanings at once. He still didn't know how he understood them. It hadn't been like any interface he'd ever seen or heard of.
Worse: he knew a whole new language now. One he hadn't a moment ago. It tingled on his tongue, like his brain had updated without permission. That should've scared him. Instead, he was giddy.
It had been five years since Dray bled out on cracked pavement, his name swallowed by sirens and silence.
Five years of scraping rent together for a mother who barely looked at him.
Five years of slipping into places he didn't belong, grabbing whatever looked valuable, and pawning it before the night dried up.
This was the first time someone—something—handed him a blueprint. And it was dramatically different from the system he had been trying to get into.
It almost felt like a scam. Still, his eyes glistened with anticipation.
He didn't know if Logos was a program, a relic, or some kind of hallucination, but apparently, it had chosen him.
"What do I have to do?"
"Close your eyes," Logos Said. "Follow your breath. I will show you the way in."
Zahir hesitated—but only for a second—then shut his eyes. To his surprise, the ring was still there—glowing behind his eyelids. It began to expand and contract along with his breath, slowing down little by little. He tried to sync his breath to its rhythm.
Inhale.
Hold.
Exhale.
Wait.
Again.
Again.
His muscles loosened. His joints softened, like someone had poured warm water through his bones. The breath deepened on its own, and Zahir dropped. He wasn't falling through space. He was falling through himself.
Blackness stretched around him, until a shape began to form below. A clouded sphere, floating like a dream inside a dream.
He sank through its surface and landed on solid ground. Sort of.
He stood in a circular room—but "room" was too simple. The space flickered. Overlapped. Layered.
The floor changed beneath him, pane by pane. One moment it was black stone streaked with Karnite veins. The next, rusted Lattice scaffolding. Then something else—polished obsidian, old glass, shifting.
The walls changed too. Sometimes they looked like scorched concrete. Sometimes like smoke. Once, they flickered into the outline of a city street that looked almost like the Slant—but cleaner, lit with a light he didn't recognize. The whole place felt like déjà vu on loop.
Logos' voice echoed in the flux.
"Welcome to your soulscape—your Archive, you might say. A repository of self, composed of three essential parts. The first is this space around you—the Nucleus. Think of it as a workshop, or perhaps a canvas. It is a projected hologram of your soul structure, shaped by your Core's resonance."
Zahir looked down at the layered floor beneath his boots. He felt like he was standing inside some vast projection—real enough to touch, yet impossible to fully grasp. He began wondering if everyone's Archive was so volatile.
"There is a larger space around this one that serves as your soul's memory space. Consider it your private vault, it allows you to store things that have been integrated with your signature."
Zahir had seen many people summon items out of thin air. He had always thought it was some Lattice function. But according to Logos, it seemed that it was a capability inherent to each person's soul. He briefly daydreamed about the arsenal he might be able to store in his memory space, but was quickly interrupted.
"And there, at the heart of everything, is your Core soul structure. The foundational building block of your being. It generates everything here, stabilizing and destabilizing in turn. It is both your truest self and your greatest mystery."
Zahir's eyes moved to the center—and froze.
There it was. It didn't look like anything Elai had shown him—none of those crystalline diagrams, no clean edges or modular stack. This was... wild.
It was chaos in bloom. A suspended field of impossible geometry. Fractals curling in on themselves, forming spirals, jagged polygons, spirals again. Nothing held for long. Each shape blinked into the next.
Each rotation adjusted the whole—paths rearranging themselves, overlapping, rejecting one another, searching for a fit. It wasn't collapsing—it was processing. The closer he got, the weirder it felt—like his focus was bouncing off it, warping it. A low, quiet loop had opened between them.
Zahir stared, one eye narrowing, the other twitching in disbelief.
"What the fuck is that supposed to be?"
The words slipped out before he could catch them.
"Ah" Logos said. "So this is how it is."
The ring beside him shifted. Its glow dimmed from prismatic white to deep Its glow dimmed to a deep, blood-toned red. When Logos spoke again, its tone dropped an octave—harmonic, echoing, like a voice whispered through vibrating stone.
"Imagine, A soul that can hold paradox without breaking. A being that can embody contradiction without collapse. If such a soul can live…I am tempted. Terrified. And utterly convinced…"
Zahir squinted at the ring. Its tone had changed. He couldn't explain how, exactly. But it felt like Logos had pulled something up. Like it was reading off an old record. An archive entry. Maybe even a confession.
Logos continued., "It is the precise key—the necessary catalyst—In seeking to embody paradox without collapse, this soul would resonate with the deep fractures I've…I've…I see it clearly now. A soul unmoored, yet stable. A being of infinite adaptability. A self-sustaining cosmos built upon agency and resonance…the endless capacity to choose."
He rolled his eyes. He already had one insufferable genius as a best friend. Even if he was getting some cool power, he wasn't looking forward to having to sift through poetic monologues.
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," he muttered, "Can you just... explain what my signature does?"
The crimson faded. Logos flickered once, then returned to that same soft prismatic white.
"Yes. I will simplify it to match your current level of consciousness."
Zahir raised an eyebrow. "Did you just call me dumb?"
Logos' voice softened, becoming oddly thoughtful.
"Allow me a moment to access more of your reference points. It will help."
Zahir tensed slightly. "Access my—?"
Before Zahir could react, a flicker bloomed in his head—Elai's cracked slate, diagrams glowing. Signature schematics. Soul geometry.
Logos spoke again, careful, methodical.
"To reach Base Rank, an Innovator must achieve structural collapse—stability, even briefly. Most do it through Lattice-linked formulas. They shape their souls into equations.—like your friend showed you."
Zahir nodded slowly. "Right. That's how it's supposed to work."
"But not for you," Logos said gently. "Your Signature is inherently unresolved. Trying to force your soul into structure would be like molding smoke."
Another more recent memory rippled up—the moment of multiple versions of himself holding one another, folding into one.
"You were multiple fragmented trajectories. Each equally real. Each incomplete."
Zahir swallowed. "I remember."
"The trial I gave you was an invitation to align. I helped a bit, you did the work."
Zahir nodded, slower now, something heavy settling inside him.
"You reached Base Rank the moment you chose a position that could carry all of these fragmented versions of yourself in a coherent whole without collapsing. This brief alignment allowed the Field to recognize you. Allowed you to awaken."
Logos continued. "The essential structure of your soul is that of a particle in superposition. You are not limited by one shape. You thrive precisely because you do not settle."
Zahir took a slow breath, finally understanding. "So my Signature is just… never gonna be solid?"
"Your Signature is always becoming. You are a possibility engine," Logos said.
"And because of this structure, a passive property has stablized. Would you like to see it?"