The room above the basement was an apology.
While the ritual chamber below had been a damp, fungal nightmare suitable for summoning low-tier demons, this "waiting room" tried too hard to be civilized. The walls were paneled in dark mahogany that smelled of beeswax and old money, likely stripped from a mansion that had fallen behind on its taxes.
A chandelier, heavy with real crystal, cast a warm, golden light over a Persian rug that felt obscenely soft beneath Linear's cheap, rubber-soled shoes.
Linear Gezantophil sat in a high-backed velvet armchair, legs crossed. He drummed his fingers on the armrest—a slow, rhythmic beat. Tap. Tap. Tap.
He was waiting for his snack. The vessel's stomach was making a noise that he found personally insulting.
The door clicked open. High Priest Malakor entered. Gone were the blood-stained robes; he had changed into something that looked like a butler's uniform, though it was tight around the waist, straining at the buttons. He was pushing a silver serving cart.
"My Lord," Malakor whispered, bowing so low his nose nearly brushed the silverware. "We... we were unsure of your palate. We assumed the finest mortal offerings would be the least offensive."
He lifted the silver dome with a trembling hand.
Steam curled into the air. The smell hit Linear instantly—rich, fatty, and aggressive.
On the plate sat a steak, seared to a dark crust, glistening with oil. Beside it rested a small tin of black pearls—caviar—and a bottle of red wine coated in a century of dust.
Linear noticed Malakor's eyes dart toward the bottle. For a split second, the fear in the priest's face was replaced by a deeply human longing. The man was terrified of a demon god, but he still regretted giving away a four-thousand-Clon bottle of wine.
Good, Linear thought. Greed is predictable.
Linear picked up the fork. The metal felt cold and heavy.
He didn't eat immediately. He looked at the food, and his mind—still trying to calibrate to this limited biology—involuntarily broke it down. Muscle fiber. Seared lipids. Ethanol. Carbohydrates.
But then he took a bite.
The analysis shattered. The flavor exploded in his mouth—salt, smoke, the umami punch of rendered fat. His human brain flooded with dopamine, a chemical shout of YES.
"Acceptable," Linear said, skewering another piece.
Malakor let out a breath he seemed to have been holding since he walked in. He adjusted his collar, sweating slightly. "We are humbled. The wine alone cost four thousand Clons. But for the Prince of the Abyss, no price is too steep."
"Four thousand Clons," Linear repeated, testing the word on his tongue along with the wine. It tasted like blackberries and time. "Tell me, Malakor. Where exactly are we?"
"The Downtown District of Zonia, my Lord. Specifically, the sub-basement of the 'Gilded Quill' antique shop. It serves as our front."
"And the date?"
"November 14th, in the year of the Name 11998."
Linear swirled the wine in his glass. 11,998 years since the discovery of the first Holy Name. A long time for humanity to be fumbling in the dark.
"And this... Order," Linear asked, gesturing vaguely with his fork. "Is this basement the extent of your reach?"
Malakor looked offended, though he quickly hid it behind a cough. "Heavens no, Great One! This is merely the sanctum of Circle 42. The Order of the Severed Tongue spans the globe. We have fifty Circles, each with its own High Priest, all answering to the Grandmaster in the Capital. We are... quite well funded."
Linear smiled. It was a cold, sharp expression that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Good. Poverty is boring."
He finished the steak in silence, letting the High Priest sweat in the corner. When the last bite was gone, Linear stood up. The movement was fluid, precise, lacking the wasted energy of a normal human.
"I am satiated," he announced. "Now, take me to the Library. And Malakor?"
"Yes, my Lord?"
"Ensure that I am not disturbed. If anyone opens the door while I am... calibrating... the resulting pressure wave will likely liquefy their internal organs. Do you understand?"
Malakor turned a shade of pale usually reserved for fish bellies. "I will stand guard myself. No one shall pass."
The Library was impressive, if dusty. It was a circular room lined with towering shelves, packed with thousands of grimoires, scrolls, and leather-bound journals. The air here was dry, smelling of rotting paper and preservation chemicals.
Linear waited for the door to click shut. The moment Malakor was gone, the mask of the arrogant Primordial dropped.
Linear leaned against the heavy oak table, exhaling sharply. He rubbed his temples where a headache was beginning to throb.
Normal human, basically Level 0, he thought to himself. Pathetic.
He closed his eyes, attempting to pull the knowledge of the First Name from his memory. He reached for the concept of Linear—the straight line, the vector. He knew it. He had written the concept eons ago.
CRACK.
A feedback loop slammed into his skull like a hammer. He flinched, gripping the edge of the table until the wood groaned. The "Law of Probability" wasn't just tight; it was a noose. He couldn't just remember the power.
To manifest the First Name without a source in this reality would be a miracle, and miracles stretched probability until it snapped.
To acquire First Name, he had to play the game. He had to learn it. He had to find the trigger in this reality to justify the awakening in his vessel.
He looked up at the shelves. Thousands of books stared back.
"I have to study," he realized with a mix of amusement and annoyance. "I designed the machine, and now I have to read the user manual."
He moved to the section labeled Cosmology & Origins.
He pulled the first book: The Whisper of the Void by Archmage Thaddeus.
He flipped it open. Dust motes danced in the light.
...and thus the Abyss screamed, and from the scream came the Seven-Headed Serpent, whose scales were made of time...
Linear slammed the book shut and tossed it onto the floor. "Garbage. Fanfiction. The Abyss doesn't scream; it hums."
He pulled the next one. The 99 Truths of Power.
He scanned page after page. It was a collection of superstitious nonsense about eating newt eyes and dancing under the moon to align chakras. The handwriting was atrocious, a scrawl of someone whose hand shook from too much caffeine or too much fear.
"Useless."
Time passed. The golden light of the chandelier seemed to dim as hours bled away. Linear moved through the library like a whirlwind of efficiency, but the frustration was mounting.
His human eyes were straining, dry and itchy. His back ached—a sensation he found novel for the first ten minutes, then deeply irritating for the rest. He hated the smell of the glue. He hated the pretension of the authors.
"Come on," he whispered, pulling a crumbling tome bound in grey leather from the bottom shelf. It had no title. The spine was cracked.
He opened it. The pages were yellow, the ink faded to brown.
It was a history book. Not a spellbook, but a record of the Pre-Naming Era.
...before the Cities of Glass, mankind walked in circles. We were prey to the beasts of the field, for we had no direction. We built walls, but walls are circles. We hid in caves, but caves are dead ends.
Then came the First Prophet. He did not speak a spell. He did not call lightning. He merely pointed.
He said, "There is a direction that is not Here. There is a direction that is There." He walked forward. He did not turn left to the river, nor right to the forest. He walked in the First Shape.
Linear froze.
His finger hovered over the text.
The First Shape.
"Not a circle," Linear whispered, his voice catching. "Not a square."
He grabbed another book he had set aside earlier—a dense text on theoretical metaphysics called The Geometry of Will. He flipped frantically to the chapter on dimensions he had skimmed.
...energy dissipates when it spreads. A shout is loud at the mouth but silent at the horizon. A light is bright at the source but dim in the distance.
To preserve power, one must deny width. One must deny the spread. Perfect conservation of will requires a trajectory with zero deviation...
Linear's mind began to race. He grabbed a third book, a collection of religious poetry, The Psalms of the First Prophet.
...
God does not look back.
God does not wander.
The beginning is a point. The end is a point.
The bridge between them is the Holy Name.
...
He slammed the three books onto the table, arranging them side by side. History. Physics. Theology. Three different authors, three different centuries, all circling the same Truth like moths around a flame.
"It's not just a line," Linear murmured, his eyes darting between the texts. "It's not just geometry. It's Vector."
He understood now. In this universe, the name "Linear" wasn't just about drawing a straight line. It was about the rejection of deviation. It was the philosophical concept that the shortest distance between two points—Desire and Reality—was absolute, unwavering will.
The pieces clicked into place. The Probability Law accepted the input. The human brain had done the work. The User had read the Manual.
Linear felt something changed, something happened. It was a click.
Like a dislocated shoulder popping back into the socket, the universe suddenly aligned. The crushing pressure in his skull vanished instantly. The dull ache in his back faded.
The air in the library went still.
Linear exhaled, his breath visible in the freezing air. He slumped slightly against the table, sweat dripping from his nose onto the page of The Chronicle of Dust.
He blinked. The world looked different.
It wasn't a graphical overlay. It was just... clear.
He looked at the dust motes floating in the light and he didn't just see dust; he intuitively understood their trajectory. He knew exactly where they would be in three seconds. He looked at the heavy oak door and saw the weak point in the wood grain, a flaw that ran straight through the timber.
His mind was no longer a clutter of anxieties and stray thoughts. It was a clean, cold stream of logic. He could think from Problem to Solution without getting lost in the middle.
"Finally," Linear whispered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "That was... tedious."
He flexed his hand. He felt the power humming in his muscles—Vector Force. He wasn't strong, but he was efficient. He could throw a pen through a brick wall, provided he didn't curve his wrist.
He reached for the wine glass he had left on the table hours ago.
He sat down and tasted the wine in the glass, now he had learned His Own First Name and could relax a little.
Then, the ceiling shook.
BOOM.
Dust rained down into his wine. The heavy oak door rattled in its frame.
Somewhere above, in the antique shop, glass shattered.
A siren began to wail—a harsh, mechanical scream that cut through the silence of the library.
Linear stood up. The movement was perfectly vertical. The clarity in his vision shifted, calculating the source of the vibration.
It's approximately 4.2 meters above. Likely Explosive Ordnance.
The door to the library burst open. Malakor stumbled in. His opulent robes were torn, and blood trickled from a nasty cut on his forehead. He looked terrified—far more terrified than he had been of the demon.
"My Lord!" Malakor screamed, clutching his side. "We are found! They are here!"
"Who?" Linear asked calmly, brushing a speck of dust off his shoulder.
"The Church!" Malakor gasped, his eyes wide with the trauma of a thousand years of persecution. "The Inquisition of the Eternal Lens! The Inspectors have breached the perimeter!"
Linear looked at the ceiling. He could hear heavy boots—dozens of them—stomping on the floorboards above. He heard the distinct mechanical chk-chk of assault rifles being racked.
"The Eternal Lens," Linear mused. "Catchy name."
"We must flee!" Malakor grabbed Linear's sleeve, then recoiled as a static shock stung his hand. "There is a tunnel in the sewers! If we run now—"
"Run?" Linear interrupted.
He walked toward the door. He moved in a straight line, wasting no movement on swaying or hesitation.
"A God does not run from the clergy, Malakor," Linear said. His voice was smooth, polite, and completely devoid of fear. "He educates them."
He stepped into the hallway.
"Let us see if their faith can withstand a little... geometry."