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Lord of Wonders

GladiousX
14
chs / week
The average realized release rate over the past 30 days is 14 chs / week.
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Synopsis
If you love Lord of Mysteries, then this is absolutely for you. In the year 1900, the city of Cairo is a powder keg of progress and antiquity. Beneath the shadows of ancient minarets, the British Empire and the Khedive's court play their games of power, while gas lamps illuminate streets where forgotten magics lie dormant. In this city of glaring sun and deep shadows, Omar Hassan lives a life of quiet desperation. A meticulous, low-level clerk in the Khedivial Archives, his world has shrunk to the scent of aging paper and the mounting anxiety over his younger sister's worsening illness. His only goal is to earn enough to afford the European medicine that might save her. Omar's mundane existence is shattered when he is tasked with archiving a disturbing police file from the Restricted Section. The case, officially closed as a suicide, details the death of a man whose body was found folded in ways that defy the laws of anatomy. Clipped to the file is a photograph of the victim's final, cryptic note: "They sing from the angles. The geometry is wrong... I fold now. I fold to fit." Driven by a reckless curiosity he cannot explain, Omar steals the photograph of the note—an act that pulls him past a threshold from which there is no return. He has stumbled upon a truth hidden from the world: reality is a thin veil stretched over the Echoing Void, an abyss of non-existence from which alien, god-like beings press against the world. Their influence leaks into reality through "Whispers"—incomprehensible cosmic principles that manifest in esoteric artifacts, forbidden texts, and maddening sounds. Those who can decipher and internalize these Whispers can gain supernatural abilities, becoming "Listeners" who walk a razor's edge between power and damnation. Each ability, however, demands a sacrifice, forcing the Listener to align their very being with an alien concept. Failure to do so results in "Discordance," a terrifying process where one's mind and body are irrevocably corrupted, twisted into a monstrous reflection of the Whisper they failed to control. Now, haunted by what he has seen and touched, Omar discovers he is not alone. Secret societies, ravenous cults, and clandestine government agencies have long contended for control of this forbidden knowledge. Armed only with his sharp, analytical mind and the first terrifying tastes of a power that threatens to unravel his sanity, Omar must navigate a labyrinth of conspiracy and cosmic dread. To save his sister and himself, this humble scribe must learn the rules of an impossible game, deciphering the maddening symphony of the Void before the final, dissonant chord brings silence to the world.
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Chapter 1 - The Scribe of Forgotten Things

The year is 1900. The city is Cairo, the Jewel of the Nile, the heart of a Kingdom humming with the discordant symphony of two ages. Steam-powered trams screeched along tracks laid beside dusty roads where camels still swayed with timeless indifference. Men in fine European suits and tarbooshes strode past merchants in flowing galabeyas, their voices a tapestry of Arabic, French, English, and Turkish, all weaving together under a sun that baked the city with the same impartial intensity it had for millennia.

In the cavernous, dimly lit halls of the Khedivial Archives, the sun was a distant memory. Here, the air was thick with the scent of aging paper, brittle ink, and the dry, sweet perfume of decay. Dust motes, ancient and storied, danced like celestial spirits in the few shafts of light that pierced the gloom from high, grime-coated windows. This was the domain of forgotten things, a necropolis of paper where the pronouncements of pashas and the pleas of peasants lay buried side-by-side in a silence broken only by the rustle of turning pages and the distant city's muffled heartbeat.

And in this domain, Omar Hassan was a humble scribe.

Omar sat hunched over his small, scarred wooden desk, his narrow shoulders curved in a permanent posture of studious deference. His fingers, stained with ink, meticulously transcribed entries from a decaying ledger into a new, sturdier volume. His task was monumental, Sisyphean even: to preserve the Kingdom's memory before it crumbled into dust. It was a job that paid little but demanded much, a quiet corner of the world for a quiet man.

Quiet, but not at peace. A knot of anxiety was a permanent resident in his stomach. His younger sister, Layla, was ill again. The cough that had settled in her chest now had a rattling, watery sound that terrified him. The doctor, a portly man with a handlebar moustache and a dismissive air, had prescribed an expensive tincture from a European apothecary. The cost of that small bottle was nearly a third of Omar's monthly wages.

"Hassan!"

The voice, sharp and imperious, cut through the hallowed silence. Omar flinched, his pen scratching a dark line across the page. He looked up to see his supervisor, Mr. Farid, standing at the end of the aisle, his portly figure silhouetted against the light.

"Yes, Mr. Farid?" Omar replied, his voice barely a whisper.

"The Constabulary has sent over a file for archiving. A closed case. It needs to be processed and stored in the Restricted Section. See to it immediately. The usual protocols apply." Mr. Farid dropped a thick, string-tied manila folder onto a nearby table without breaking his stride, already moving on to berate another clerk for the crime of sneezing too loudly.

The Restricted Section. Omar's curiosity, a faculty he usually kept heavily sedated, stirred. These were not records of land grants or trade disputes. The Restricted Section held the city's ugliness: unsolved crimes, political scandals, reports deemed too unsettling for public or even general administrative consumption.

He retrieved the folder. The label, written in a sharp, hurried script, read: Case File 734: Ibrahim Al-Sayyad. Closed.

Back at his desk, Omar untied the string. The contents were sparse. A preliminary report from the Cairo Constabulary, a single witness statement, and a morbidly fascinating post-mortem summary. But it was the photograph clipped to the inside cover that seized his attention.

It was a crime scene photograph. The quality was grainy, the blacks and whites stark. It depicted a small, squalid room in what looked like the City of the Dead. The deceased, Ibrahim Al-Sayyad, was on the floor. His death was officially listed as a suicide. But something was profoundly, hideously wrong.

His body was twisted at an angle that defied anatomy. It wasn't merely contorted; it was as if the very concept of a skeleton had been momentarily revoked. His neck was elongated, his limbs bent in unnatural directions, spiraling around his torso like vines. Omar had seen death before, in photographs and, once, in the street after a tram accident. This was different. This was a violation of natural law.

He forced himself to read the witness statement, given by a neighbor who had heard a strange noise. The old woman claimed she hadn't heard a scream or a struggle, but a sound like "the grinding of stone and wet cloth, accompanied by a low, rhythmic hum, like a thousand flies trapped in a jar." She had dismissed it as the city's usual cacophony.

The final document was a transcription of a note found clutched in the dead man's hand. It was not a confession or a farewell. It was nonsense.

They sing from the angles. The geometry is wrong. I tried to listen, but the un-color blinded me. It is not empty, it is full of a shape that has no sides. I fold now. I fold to fit.

Omar read the words again. The geometry is wrong. I fold to fit. He looked back at the photograph of the impossibly folded body of Ibrahim Al-Sayyad. A cold dread, colder than the stone floors of the archive, seeped into his bones. This was not the note of a madman. It felt like the diary of a discovery, the final, terrifying entry in an experiment gone wrong.

He knew what he was supposed to do. He was to transcribe the file's summary into the Restricted Section ledger, assign it a catalog number, and then lock the original away in the subterranean vaults, to be forgotten like all the other ugly secrets. It was his job. His rent and Layla's medicine depended on him doing his job without question.

But the words burned in his mind. They sing from the angles.

He looked around. The vast hall was quiet. Mr. Farid was gone. The other clerks were lost in their own worlds of paper and ink. With trembling fingers, Omar carefully unclipped the photograph of the cryptic note. It was a small, palm-sized piece of cardstock. He slipped it between the pages of a personal book he kept in his satchel—a collection of poetry by Al-Ma'arri. It was a foolish, reckless act. A fireable offense. But the thought of sealing those words away in the dark, without understanding them, was suddenly unbearable.

Later that evening, the city had traded the sun's oppression for the cool embrace of night. The air in Omar's small, third-floor apartment was thick with the smell of boiling chamomile for Layla and the city's perpetual scents of dust and spice. Layla was asleep in the other room, her breathing a fragile, shallow rhythm that Omar monitored with obsessive anxiety.

He sat at his small table, the lone candle flame casting a flickering, dancing light that made the shadows in the corners of the room seem to deepen and retreat with a life of their own. He had the photograph of the note in front of him.

They sing from the angles.

He traced the script with his finger. The handwriting was jagged, frantic. As he stared, a strange sensation crept over him. The low hum of the city outside—the distant shouts, the barking of a dog, the clatter of a closing shutter—seemed to fade away, replaced by something else.

It was a sound, yet not a sound. It was a pressure in his ears, a faint, high-pitched vibration that seemed to emanate not from the room, but from inside his own head. It was discordant, a harmony of notes that should not exist together. He thought of the witness's description: a low, rhythmic hum, like a thousand flies trapped in a jar.

The flame of the candle wavered, though there was no breeze. The shadows it cast stretched, becoming long, sharp, and angular. For a dizzying second, the corner of the room where the two walls met the ceiling seemed… wrong. The ninety-degree angle looked impossibly sharp, a tear in the fabric of the space.

Omar blinked, shaking his head. The sensation vanished. The room was just a room. The candle flame was steady. The sounds of Cairo rushed back in.

He was just tired. Stressed. His imagination, fueled by the macabre file and his worry for Layla, was playing tricks on him. He had to get a grip.

But as he went to pick up the photograph to put it away, his fingers brushed against the written words. The humming returned, stronger this time, a piercing vibration that made his teeth ache. The words on the page seemed to shimmer, to subtly writhe like black worms on the cardstock.

And in the profound silence that once again enveloped him, a new sound emerged. It was quiet, insidious, a mere whisper beneath the hum. It was a voice, but not human. It was dry, ancient, and it spoke a single, impossible word that logic and language had no way to parse.

The candle flame extinguished, plunging the room into absolute darkness.

Omar sat frozen in his chair, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was not alone. Something had been waiting in those words, in those angles. And by looking too closely, he had just invited it in.