The white letter hung in the air like a star suspended over the city, glowing with an intensity that made the new pale sky bleed around its edges. It wasn't paper. It wasn't a symbol in the conventional sense. It was… alive. Breathing. Waiting.
I stepped closer, my knees weak, every instinct screaming that approaching it could mean death. But instinct had already failed me so many times. This time, I needed understanding, not fear.
The moment my fingertips brushed its surface, knowledge exploded inside my head. Not in words, not in pictures—but in raw sensation, a direct imprint of meaning itself.
I understood the letters.
They were more than commands. They were laws of reality, fragments of the hidden code beneath existence. Each letter could bend the world if wielded correctly—but they were not toys. Misuse, hesitation, failure… could erase a person from the fabric of everything, leaving no trace that they had ever existed.
The red symbol's power had been small—a taste, a warning. But this white letter? It pulsed with an entire language's worth of potential, and it was waiting for me to speak it.
And then I heard it—the faceless thing's hum, fractured now, trembling, almost… pleading.
"Kael…" The sound was wrong, as if it were trying to imitate a human voice. "Don't… let it awaken…"
The words hit me like cold steel. The creature was not a single being. It was part of the same code as the letters themselves—an unfinished fragment of the world's language, a test. Every cycle had been its attempt to survive. And every cycle, someone like me had failed.
I clenched my fists. The white letter hovered before me, waiting for the first choice of true creation, the first command of absolute power.
The hum rose again, louder, harmonizing with the pulse of the letter.
I could feel the whole city quivering, poised on the edge of collapse. One word could save it. One word could destroy it.
And in that moment, I realized something terrifying:
The letters didn't just choose who acted—they chose what the world would become.
I inhaled. My hand shook. The white letter pulsed, resonating with my heartbeat. I had a choice. Not just to survive. Not just to fight. But to rewrite the rules of reality itself.
I whispered a single word.
And the world screamed back.