The word left my lips almost without thought.
It was simple.
Single.
Absolute.
"Awake."
The city shuddered. Pavement cracked, lights flickered, and shadows twisted into strange, impossible geometries. The hum that had haunted me for days shattered into thousands of notes, ringing in every corner of the world at once.
The white letter in my hand flared, expanding into a ribbon of light that wrapped around me, lifting me off the ground. I felt reality itself bending—air, steel, and even time becoming pliable, as if the city were clay and I held the first strike of the sculptor's knife.
The faceless thing shrieked, convulsing violently. It tore itself into smaller forms, each fragment writhing in panic. But the fragments did not vanish—they froze in midair, suspended by the command I had spoken. Some seemed to flicker between existence and nonexistence, caught in a loop of my word's power.
I could see them now—not as monsters, but as patterns of broken code, each fragment a failed attempt at being real. And within the chaos, something else stirred: the first hint of intelligence that wasn't just instinct. The fragments were learning, adapting, recognizing the letters' power.
The sky flickered behind me—shades of red and violet bleeding into the pale gray—but it did not fully return. The world was holding its breath, waiting for what I would do next.
A thought struck me, terrifying in its clarity.
The letters didn't just respond to me. They tested me. Every word, every choice, every hesitation was a trial. And the world… this fractured city… was nothing more than a proving ground.
The fragments of the faceless thing began to converge, forming shapes I could almost recognize—hands reaching, faces forming, eyes staring at me with silent accusation.
I clenched my fists. Another word burned on the tip of my tongue. Not to command. Not to destroy.
To learn.
"Speak."
The ribbon of white light responded instantly, pulsing like a heartbeat. The fragments stopped moving, trembling, and then… they began to whisper. Not in words I had ever heard, but in meanings I understood. Secrets of the world, truths buried under reality itself, flowed into my mind.
And one truth struck me colder than anything before:
I was not the first.
I would not be the last.
And this cycle—the sky forgetting its color, the letters choosing, the hum—was only the beginning.