I've revised the sequence five times.
No, six.
Each time, I adjusted only one variable—just one glyph, one timing change, one directional arc—then watched how the Pattern responded. Or didn't.
The stone platform beneath me is covered now in overlapping circles and smudged diagrams. It looks like a fevered chalkboard. But there's order in the chaos. Notes, iterations, nested loops scratched out and redrawn. A record of my learning.
Test 6C-Δ3: goal — ignition. Controlled fireform without trigger glyphs. Spell must be self-contained. Output expected: fire orb (duration: 3s), 1m hover, dissipate safely.
I crouch low, reviewing the structure.
Outer ring — 8 glyphs: direction, focus, containment. Middle ring — 5 glyphs: ignition function. Inner core — 1 glyph: the anchor.
I selected the anchor carefully. It's the only one I haven't seen anyone use. A fractal spiral I found etched into the roots of a tree outside the village, buried beneath moss like someone meant it to be forgotten. It called to me—geometric, recursive, elegant.
It belongs here. It feels like logic.
I exhale.
I center myself.
And I begin.
One hand sweeps clockwise, mirroring the external glyph pattern. My other hand draws the mid-ring in air, fingers twitching in practiced rhythm.
As I reach the final arc, I speak—not a word I learned, but something my mind filled in.
"Compile."
The glyphs ignite.
White-blue light erupts from the core, spiraling outward in perfect synchronicity. The platform vibrates beneath me. The air tightens, like a drumskin just before the strike. Then—
A sphere of fire blinks into existence above the center of the array.
But it doesn't stop there.
It begins to fracture—lines of light branching from it like threads of molten glass, reaching outward, grabbing at every glyph on the platform like open hands.
No. That's not containment. That's expansion.
I step back instinctively, but too late. A glyph near the edge of the array warps—shifts shape. Then another. They begin chaining, firing one after another like cascading triggers in a failing system.
It's looping. Recursive overload. Anchor's unstable—too broad, too adaptive. I fed it undefined logic. It's trying to interpret everything.
The orb in the center flickers wildly, growing denser, hotter.
Abort.
I throw my arms forward and speak with urgency.
"Break!"
The light shutters.
The air snaps cold.
Then—collapse.
The platform sucks in the remaining energy like a gasp withheld for too long. All the glyphs extinguish at once, leaving a scorched outline across the stone, faintly smoking.
I stand there, hands trembling.
Not from fear.
From awe.
And calculation.
Result: spell compiled. Functioned. Output exceeded parameters. Anchor glyph unstable—caused cascading recursion into unused structures. Spell executed autonomously beyond design. Note: Pattern did not resist execution. It followed logic.
I kneel beside the edge of the ring, fingers grazing the char line.
This world doesn't just obey rules—it improvises with them.
Magic here isn't wild. It's interpreted. Like a scripting language with loose syntax but high responsiveness. Give it the wrong anchor, and it runs with assumptions. It's not just execution… it's suggestion.
And my code had left it open-ended.
A sudden breeze passes over me, and for a second, I imagine it whispering:
Write better.
I sit back and breathe.
That wasn't failure.
That was version one.