The clink of porcelain on silver tray broke the quiet.
Dante Carter sat in his vast, dimly lit study, still wrapped in thought from the long hours of night. The light outside had shifted, pale morning threading through drawn velvet curtains, but his mind hadn't moved from the place it had settled in hours ago—on the edge between doubt and ambition.
The smell of jasmine tea and buttered toast drifted through the study.
"Thank you, Alpha," Dante said absently.
Alpha moved with unnatural grace—ball-jointed limbs dressed in a crisp black maid uniform, her glassy eyes blinking just enough to suggest life. Just enough to be unsettling.
She bowed silently and set the tray before him with precise grace. Then, standing just to the side, she waited.
Somewhere deeper in the mansion, others stirred. Beta in the kitchen, Delta dusting the hall with silent diligence, Omega tending to the garden.
Alpha. The first.
There were others—Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omega, Sigma, Phi, etc. All bearing names drawn from the Greek alphabet and symbols he'd once used to sort his earliest plans. A naming system that started as a whim, and had over time become routine.
He had replaced every former servant with his own creations.
Not out of cruelty, but out of caution
Living people were unpredictable. People were observant, even when they didn't realize it, and he could no longer afford that. A maid noticing a candle lighting before the match was struck. A butler catching the flicker of flame where there was no source. Small things, but small things made stories. Stories became suspicion.
And suspicion ruined everything.
So he made the dolls. Something in between magical and mechanical. They operated off rules he'd twisted from the edge of probability, brought into being with the same force that shaped his life: belief. They weren't people, but they were enough. Enough to cook, clean, serve, exist.
Enough to be silent.
The mansion had been like this for years now—quiet, empty, hollow but for him and the ones he created. And truthfully, he didn't mind the silence. It was easier to think in quiet.
He sipped the tea.
He turned his gaze to the wall—lined with books, maps, notes. A mind map of civilization in red thread and scribbled ink. Lines arced between political scandals, forgotten cults, natural disasters, and whispers from the dark web. Some threads were taut, others deliberately frayed.
What now?
He couldn't just throw lightning from the heavens and expect people to believe. Spectacle faded. Magic without myth was just another headline.
It had to start deeper. Slower. With belief.
He needed vessels.
Channels through which belief could spread naturally—viral, ideological, cultural. Not just moments of awe. Movements. Memes with momentum.
Religion
Faith already shaped billions of lives.
He didn't need to challenge it. He only needed to... nudge it.
Manifest an anomaly linked to the story. A recovered gospel with questionable origins. A divine event caught on shaky camera footage—a burning figure walking across a storm surge, voices speaking in forgotten tongues.
Let the faithful argue amongst themselves.
Government.
The public didn't trust the government.
That made it perfect.
The more official sources denied something, the more people believed it to be true. Dante could use that reflex. In fact, it was already happening—conspiracies were the new folklore.
He could leak redacted documents that "accidentally" found their way online—project names like OBELISK, THIRTEENTH SUN, or GATEWALKER. Programs that supposedly dealt with time manipulation, dream control, or ancient non-human civilizations.
No proof. Just implication.
Once a theory got traction, people filled in the blanks on their own. Then, he would manufacture questionable evidence.
Once enough people believed it, even the officials might start doubting their own archives.
Urban Legends & Culture Myths
Every culture had its ghosts.
Forgotten rituals. Figures who walked between life and death. Stories told to children to scare them into behaving.
He could reignite them.
Fabricated phenomenon, police reports, mass incidents, and let internet sleuths pick it up.
The more scattered and inexplicable the evidence, the more compelling the legend. Especially if people across the globe began seeing the same thing, with no way to explain how.
If enough people believed they were haunted by the same myth—then maybe they were.
Or... A Fabricated Phenomena
Something that didn't exist—until it did.
He had the power, after all.
Not to bend the universe like a sorcerer, but to tilt perception until reality bent naturally in his favor. To weaponize suggestion. To create a myth from thin air and let the world chase it into truth.
A lost civilization, a hidden war, a message from outer space.
Dante train of thought was broken by a soft knock.
Alpha entered without waiting for a reply, the way she always did. In her porcelain hands, she carried a sealed envelope, cream-colored with the faint scent of aged parchment clinging to it.
"A courier delivered this," she said, placing it beside Dante's teacup. "No signature. As usual."
Dante slit the seal with a flick of his letter opener. The black wax broke cleanly—the mark of the Ouroboros surrounding a single open eye, familiar and ominous. He unfolded the invitation, the thick cardstock whispering against his fingers.
Dante slit the seal with a flick of his letter opener. The black wax broke cleanly—the mark of the Ouroboros surrounding a single open eye, familiar and ominous. He unfolded the invitation, the thick cardstock whispering against his fingers.
It was from one of the private circles he frequented—the kind that hosted underground auctions, where superstition mingled with wealth and desire. The items listed ranged from the absurd to the genuinely dangerous: relics, artifacts, supposed fragments of myth, half-forged miracles, items from forgotten graves and whispered bloodlines. Some were obvious fakes. Others... he still wasn't sure about.
He skimmed the list until one item made his eyes pause
Lot 47: Durandal
The sword of Roland. Said to be unbreakable. A holy relic bound with the teeth of saints, kissed by divine favor. It had been stolen a year ago from a sanctuary display in Rocamadour, France. The public was told it was just a replica. A stand-in for something long since lost to history.
But even replicas carried weight.
Especially when they were tied to legend.
Dante's mind spun. Fast.
It didn't matter whether it was authentic or not. In fact, ambiguity worked better. A fake could become real if people thought it might be.
He could imagine the future headline and the questions would follow. If Durandal was real... What else had been buried by time?
History wasn't as clean as it was written down. Most of it was a patchwork of control and convenience. But if he seeded doubt—if he made people wonder what else was wrong—then belief would start to unspool reality, thread by golden thread.
He could manufacture an incident. A staged conflict perhaps.
Alpha stood silently as he stepped closer to the window, invitation still in hand. His reflection looked back at him faintly in the glass.
"Is it important?" she asked at last, voice quiet but present.
Dante didn't turn around. His smile was slow and unreadable.
"Not yet," he murmured. "But it will be."
Because the sword wasn't the goal.
It was the key.
And he didn't need it to be real.
He just needed the world to start believing it could be.