CHAPTER 1: THE ETERNAL LOCK
After.
I dreamed of chains.
Not the kind that bind flesh—those are simple. These chains were woven from laws. From principles. From the screams of dying stars and the oaths of gods long since turned to dust. They wrapped around something that was not quite a soul, not quite a concept, not quite me.
And in the dream, I understood.
A threshold. A prison. A choice made so long ago the word 'choice' had lost meaning.
Someone had to stay. Someone had to watch. Someone had to be the lock.
That someone was me.
Then I opened my eyes.
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The Purgatory breathed around me.
Stone older than civilizations pulsed with runes that hurt to look at—if I still had eyes that could hurt. They covered everything: walls, floor, ceiling, even me. Golden light traced patterns across my skin, my arms, my chest, my face. Moving. Alive. Mine.
I rose.
The motion felt strange—not difficult, just... unfamiliar. Like wearing a body you'd forgotten you owned. My feet touched stone that should have been cold, but I felt nothing. Or rather, I felt everything. The temperature of the air. The weight of centuries. The hum of the seals beneath me, around me, through me.
Centuries. Millennia. Time meant nothing here.
But something had changed. Something had pulled me from slumber.
I looked down at my hands. Human-shaped. Human-sized. But when I flexed my fingers, the runes on my skin flared brighter, and the walls answered—a deep resonance that shook dust from the ceiling.
What am I?
The question echoed in my mind, and with it came answers. Flooding in like water through a broken dam.
Azagios Voldigoad. The Voice That Binds the Void. The Eternal Lock. The Guardian of the Threshold.
And before that...
Takahashi Kenji. Twenty-nine. Accountant. Dead.
I remembered the light. The screaming. The moment my old life ended.
And I remembered something else: choosing this. Not in this life, but in the space between lives. A voice—not divine, not demonic, just... vast—asking if I would trade everything for purpose.
I'd said yes.
Idiot, I thought, and almost laughed. Almost. I wasn't sure my new face could laugh yet.
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"Intruders."
The word came from nowhere and everywhere—the Purgatory itself, sensing what I hadn't yet learned to sense. A tremor in the fabric of this place. A tear.
I turned, and the world shifted with me. Agility S meant I didn't walk so much as reappear elsewhere. One moment I was at the center of the chamber. The next, I stood before a wall of seals that flared warning-red.
Something was coming through.
I should have been afraid. A month ago—a lifetime ago—I would have been terrified. But terror required uncertainty, and I understood this place down to its bones. The seals were mine. The Purgatory was mine. Whatever stumbled through that tear would find itself in my domain.
The air split open with a sound like tearing silk.
Four figures tumbled through.
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They landed badly—sprawling, weapons clattering, one of them swearing in a language I somehow understood. The Purgatory translated, or maybe I did. Maybe this body came with built-in comprehension.
First: Armored in silver and blue, longsword already in hand despite the fall. A paladin by the look of her—broad-shouldered, golden-haired, with the kind of face that belonged on recruitment posters. Elara. The name came to me as I looked at her, pulled from her surface thoughts like water from a well. Elara, the Dawnhammer. Leader of this little band.
Second: Twin katanas, one drawn, one still sheathed. Gray eyes that missed nothing—already scanning the room, the seals, me. She hadn't screamed or stumbled. She'd rolled with the fall and come up ready. Kaia. The Ronin. The one who trusted no one.
Third: Robes and scrolls, spectacles askew, hands already tracing signs in the air. A scholar. Her eyes were wide, but not with fear—with fascination. She was reading the seals even as she fell. Liana. The Bright Mind. The one who saw too much.
Fourth: Young. Barely out of her teens. Bow in hand, arrow nocked, but her hands trembled. Brown hair, brown eyes, freckles. Raine. The Scout. The one who should never have been sent on a mission like this.
For a moment, we all just... stared.
The runes on my skin pulsed gently. My form was indistinct—Indistinct perk, I realized, something I'd chosen in that space-between-lives—so they couldn't quite see me clearly. Just a shape. A presence. Wrongness wrapped in gold light.
Then Kaia spoke.
"Kaia." The armored one—Elara—whispered. "What is this place?"
Kaia didn't answer immediately. Her gray eyes were fixed on me. Or rather, through me. At the seals beneath my feet. At the truth I couldn't hide.
"This isn't a prison," she said slowly. "This is a warning. And he..." She swallowed. "He's the lock."
Silence.
Then Raine—young, scared Raine—raised her bow. "It's a monster! Kill it before—"
"No."
The word came from Liana. The scholar had crawled forward, her nose inches from the nearest seal, her eyes glowing with something I recognized. The same hunger I'd once felt staring at a particularly beautiful spreadsheet. Intellectual obsession.
"These seals... they're not designed to keep something in." Her voice trembled with discovery. "They're designed to keep something out. And him..." She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw past her fear to the brilliance beneath. "He's part of them. He is them. He's not a prisoner. He's the lock."
I spoke for the first time in a thousand years.
The stones sang with my voice.
"Welcome to Purgatory."
Raine's bow clattered to the floor.
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