The world dissolved into a scream, not a sound, but a pressure that shredded thought. Nulls was a ghost in a memory not his own.
A younger Yog lay curled on an obsidian floor, hands clamped over ears that bled black ichor.
The psychic scream of a dying biosphere was flaying him alive. The screech was a cacophony of everything: humans, megafauna, even the faint death-cry of plants.
"It's so loud," the younger Yog whispered, his voice raw. He cupped his ears, but the screams were coming from inside his own consciousness.
Yog stood beside his younger self and drew a sigil in the air. The same constellation-liquid poured from his fingers and hung suspended. The sigils he drew were different from before, containing a lot more sacred geometrical symbols.
The screaming ceased. Not faded. Ceased. As if it had never been. The obsidian floor became wooden planks. The stench of ozone became the scent of burning pine.
There was no transition, only the absence of one reality and the presence of another. Nulls now stood on the planks of a wooden cabin. The screeches of a dying world were gone, replaced by the crackle of a fireplace.
Above the fireplace hung a painting of the Almighty, a crude, human attempt to capture the divine. In it, a robed figure drove a lightning-sword into a sea beast. Nulls found the violence of it interesting. The humans saw their god not as a monarch who ruled from a throne, but instead a warrior.
Yog muttered something under his breath, it was so thinly uttered that Nulls was having a hard time hearing it. Two chairs materialized before the bonfire. The once-glorious painting was now reduced to dust, which Yog erased with a gentle wave of his hand.
Yog sat and Nulls promptly followed. The warmth of the flame engulfed his body, akin to a mother hugging her beloved son. The aroma of the burning wood mixed with the crisp earthy scent of the snow outside. Making Nulls almost forgot the scene that had just unfolded mere seconds before.
Yog leaned forward, the firelight carving a deep shadows into his face. "You understand it now do you?" He muttered.
Nulls crossed his legs, he look past the windows of the cabin to see a tree covered snow, in the bark of the tree, there is a hole containing an adult squirrel that embraced its younglings.
The juvenile squirrels were unresponsive and not moving. The mother's fur were covered in snow, and her youngs didn't escape that same fate. Their body stiffened, their bloodshot eyes were open, each squirrels staring at different direction, one even looked directly at Nulls's eyes.
His attention shifted into Yog. Apparently he has been zoned out for quite some time now and he seen yog tapping his fingers at the end of the wooden chair's arm in a rhythm.
Nulls took a breath, allowing the warm air of the fire to enter his lungs. All of his muscle relaxed within seconds, his breath became controlled and weightless. He lets out a breath his mouth, a gentle breezed of mist formed from it, as he does so.
I think I get the full picture," Nulls muttered. "And I know what you're going to ask. I'm certainly not looking forward to it... it feels more like a vengence then eschaton. At that point what's the difference between you and them?" He added.
He clasped his hands together in his lap and shifted his legs awkwardly. The thought of the squirrel crossed his mind. Although it was a creature of no consequence to him, he felt in that moment that Yog's objective wasn't to rectify the world, but to do the opposite.
"Do you think I was driven by vengence?" He grabbed Nulls by the back of his head, his fingers dug deep inside his cranium, strangely enough Nulls didn't complaint or scream. "Look closer." He added.
Yog didn't move, he willed it into existence. A large crack in reality spontaneously formed between them and the fireplace, it was suspended mid air, from the huge gaps of the crack Nulls was given a replay of the human race's worst crimes against not only themselve but also nature and gods.
Nulls watched the crack in reality. He saw a king use a crown to crush a child's skull. He saw a priest light a pyre under a weeping woman. A cold, familiar disgust settled in his stomach. This wasn't ambition. It was entropy in a flesh-sack.
The fire crackled. A full minute passed in silence, the only sound the soft collision between the snows and the ground. Two paths. Two equations with one variable parasites.
Either, fixed the world by driving vermins into extinction, letting mother nature reclaimed the land she rightfully owned, making Yog ascend to his rightfull place at the garden as the side effect of it.
Or to tried saved the world by toppling the kings and monarchs of this world, taking their place for himself and Yog, placing themselves as the ruler of this world, and with his intelligence, modernized the world into Theos Quantum age.
The second path was abandoned the moment he saw a scene from the fracture: humans betraying their own savior, nailing him to two intersecting planks of wood.
Even if I saved them, I cant eliminated the possibilities that they will do the same thing to me, and even if i ruled with iron fist what would be the difference between me and their prior Monarchs?
"The vermins are chipping the stone pillar they stand on to build a statue of themselves," He murmured. "When the pillar falls, the only proof of their existence will be a grotesque monument to their own hubris."
Yog retracted his hands from Nulls's cranium, promptly putting his hand on Nulls's shoulder and extends his free hand. A complex, geometric symbols forms in the air, not magic as this world knows it, but something else. It looks like a fractal equation, a schematic of cosmic machinery.
"My 'spells.' They are not made by the gods of this world. They are made by him. The 'Aetherion' this world uses is a crude fuel. I run on a purer, more potent source." He stated.
"The language of my Codex is the language of reality itself." He added, conjuring a dazzling, brilliant light in the palm of his hand. "Allowed me to demonstrated."
Yog simply waved his hand, and numerous geometric symbols sprang out of it. they were suspended mid air, each one releasing the effects of their own concoction from their own variable. Each describe the shackle between corporeal quantities and their outcome.
"That symbol… " He uttered, he extend his hand to reach one of the symbol, but when his hand phases throught it, ice formed along the part of his hand that phases throught it, he extend his hand closer to the fire.
"They are different from the one i use, but they are functionally the same." He muttered, the ice on the tip of his fingers didn't even leak a single drop of water. His arm were shivering and started to turned black.
That is an ancient Theosian symbol, primitive but functional. How could he knows it? Could it be that Almighty is the first sign of transcendence life form outside of Theos?
Yog waved his hand, and the symbol vanished. Tiny shards of ice, so cold they smoked in the warm air, clattered softly like falling teeth on the wooden floor.
"Then you must know that in order for a nebula to exist, it first must undergo a violent event. Think of it more like that, we can improve this world a thousand fold with just a species's extinction." He stated.
"I have seen more species than i can count," he countered, flexing his necrotic hand. "Surely there are a speck of benevolent, the probability of mutation, althought slim are possible."
"The vermin had done a lot of things, some are good, a lot were irredeemably wicked, the immoral unweighted the virtuous ten fold. They were not all bad but unfortunately, almost all of them were malevolent." He countered.
"Can we just filtered whom we killed? There are innocent vermins somewhere, even if its only one in a hundred million, there is still an atom of good people amongst the sea of vermins?"
"A spark is all it takes to burn down a forest," Yog said, his voice dropping. The flames in the hearth suddenly flared, casting frantic, dancing shadows across the walls. "My father started with two. Look at the exponential growth of their sins."
"I get it they were all bad, but can't we just, build a paradise where there is no suffering or malice? Only eternal bliss? With our current arsenal we could done it, its not easily done, but it is achievable."
"My father already built that paradise." Yog's voice was flat. The cozy warmth of the cabin seemed to leach away, replaced by a deep, physical chill. "He build the perfect and ideal form of a garden, existing in a non-corporeal realm that is completely beyond the scope of humans mind and essence."
He leaned in. "And the humans rejected it, despite the everlasting joy that my father has gave them. They broken one single rule that my father put on the garden, it is merely a childish rule among a sea of salvation."
"They were deceived." Nulls countered.
"They were fucking stupid." Yog rejoined.
Yog spat. The log in the fireplace split apart with a violent crack, sending a shower of embers onto the hearth.
Nulls looked at the tiny ice crystal on the floor. Why is there a perfect copy of one of my theorem etched into them? How could Almighty know? How? HOW? HOW?!!! Nulls thought.
His mind snapped back into reality, he immediately switch his attention into Yog. "What resource will this plan cost? A project of this scale surely will not be cheap."
"A Codex requires a tribute to initiate a bonds with its wielder's soul. For me, one billion souls of any living being should do it." he stated, a chill runs down Nulls's vertebrae. Its likely due to the ice.
"One billion?" He looked at his hands, the ice still wouldn't melt. He suddenly thinked about the statue earlier. And he came up with a plan, he will use his brains to shortcut his way throught the one billion soul.
"Its hard but managable."
"To further ties our soul, we must make a contract first."
"A contract? For what?"
"Simply this I will continue to let you use my Codex, and when the last of Adam's childrens shuffled off this mortal coil. Then I will still tied to you."
"But wasn't you goal was going to heaven?"
"Thats the beauty of it, since our soul tied together, we're gonna be registered as a singular entity by the Almighty's laws. Allowing for both of us to enter the garden."
"Even if we do killed all of humanity, then can you guarantee that Almighty will let us in and not lied to you?"
"My father loved many things, even if the whole creation concentrated their hate on one thing, he will still loved it deeply, what he can't loved however is a liar."
"So what if I were killed before that happens? Will you died too?"
"I wouldn't I simply conjured the dome again and wait for another intellect to picked my Codex and do all of this all over again."
The energy shift is palpable. The friendly facade is gone, replaced by the grim reality of their bargain.
"Until that time comes, any earthly desires that you may feel are out of your reach, I will make it otherwise."
Yog extended his hand. A blue gentle flame emanating from it, "All of this power I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me by my father, and I give it to whomever I wish." Nulls hesitated for a moment, but the he remember Yog's word about the pests.
Nulls took it. Yog's smile was a perfect, reflexive curve. The moment their skin touched, the world lurched. The cabin, the fire, the snow outside, they didn't vanish, but they became insubstantial.
The fire now burned with a quieter, more intense heat, and the shadows in the corners of the room seemed deeper and more permanent.
Nulls looked at his blackened, frozen hand. The ice wasn't water; it was a localized , a perfect stasis field binding the atoms in his flesh. Yog's primitive symbol had written an un-solvable equation into his cells.
Yog opened his Codex. he whispered. The answer wasn't to add heat, but to refute the premise. He focused, not on his hand, but on the kinetic energy between each atoms. He didn't melt the ice.
He simply re-wrote, allowing reality to resume. A sound like a thousand panes of glass fracturing at once, finer than any ear could hear, and the ice sublimated into a cold, scentless vapor.
Nulls's hand, whole and unblemished, flexed. He had not healed it. He had decided the injury was never logically consistent to begin with. Yog watched, his expression unreadable. "As I said. A sliver is enough."
Yog then drew a hyperbolic geometry symbol on his palm. A tome bound in what looked like solidified void, with pages that seemed to be made of structured light, spontaneously manifested on his lap, the Yog Codex. He offered it to Nulls.
"But even with that, the task is tedious to achieved." He muttered, he drew a hyperbolic geometry symbol on his palm, he waved his hand above his thight, his Codex spontaneously manifested above his lap.
He grabbed his Codex and extend his hand to Nulls. Nulls grabbed the Codex out of his hands. "I will gave you just a sliver of my power to help you. And for you that would be enough."
Nulls took it. The cover was cool and silent, and it felt less like a book and more like holding a sleeping star.
Nulls opened the books, inside he sees image of an abomination made from equation, he flipped to the next, and he could've swore that he saw a constant blinking at him. All of the thing is not unfamiliar to him, Theos teached their younglings with this knowledge.
Nulls tried to solve one of the equation in his head. All of the things checks out, he flipped onto the next pages, he sees an equation of his own, the equation he mad, when he was but an infant. The equation described the vibration of higher dimensional bosonic string attached into spatial dimension twenty or higher. He tried to flipped the page, the book wouldn't budge.
"Why you didn't give me all of your knowledge in the first place? Why there are echelons?" He said, still trying to opened the next page. But the pages seemed to be glued together by a sticky black substance.
"Its not that I didn't want to, but because your brain," he said leaning and tapping on Nulls forehead in a rhythm. "is not designed to consume all of the knowledge all at once, and its not just my Codex either, every other Codex must abide to the rule. Not because we doesn't want to share. But to protects our wielder."
"And what happen when a Codex poured all of its knowledge and power all in one go?" Nulls asked closing the book and put it above his lap, he placed his fingers above it and start fidgeting with the book's corner.
Yog leaned forward and tapped Nulls's forehead. "This is not a matter of willingness. It is a matter of architecture. Your brain is not designed to contain it all at once. If I poured my full knowledge into your mind, the informational density would create a singularity, and take this planet, perhaps this galaxy, with you."
"You should know," he added, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "to fully form a bond with my codex, a mere handshake wasn't sufficient, you must gave me a half ownership of your soul."
The fire crackled, the only real sound in the cabin. The scent of pine smoke was thick and comforting, a stark contrast to the conversation. Nulls watched the flames consume a log, the wood groaning as it split into embers.
"The handshake was just the introduction," Yog said, his voice low and losing its earlier conversational tone. "To go further, to truly bind yourself to my Codex, requires more than a signature. It requires co-ownership. You must give me a room in your soul."
Nulls picked up a stray splinter of wood from the floor, rolling it between his fingers. He could feel every tiny fiber, every imperfection. "And if I'm happy with my current accommodations? The three pages you've shown me are... enlightening enough."
Yog's smile was a thin, sharp thing that didn't touch his eyes. "Then you will forever be a tourist. You will linger on the preface, never reading the story. The echelons, the real power, will be a locked door. You will watch other, lesser beings climb past you, wielding shadows of the power you held in your hands and chose to release. You will be safe. You will be small. You will be exactly what you appear to be now: a pleasant man in a room, waiting to die a second time."
Nulls let the splinter drop. It was a paltry thing. "And if I give you the key? This 'room'?"
"The door swings both ways," Yog said, leaning forward. The leather of his chair creaked. "Our souls would be conjoined. A permanent tether. I would be a guest in your mind. You would never be alone again. Your every private thought, every secret shame, every fleeting memory would have an audience. And, with your permission, I could... step into the driver's seat. A temporary exchange. My knowledge, your flesh."
"I see the benefit for you. A body, a foothold in this reality. What's the catch? There's always a catch."
"The bond is a beacon," Yog stated, his eyes reflecting the firelight like chips of obsidian. "It will sing a song only two kinds of creatures can hear. The first are Codex Wielders. They will feel you like a tremor in the world's foundation, a wrongness in the melody of creation. To them, you will be an abomination, a cheat-code against the natural order. They will hunt you with a fervor usually reserved for heretics. There will be no tavern you can rest in, no city wall that can protect you. The very people you might wish to save will see you as a monster to be put down."
Nulls waited, the warmth of the fire suddenly feeling thin and insufficient.
"The second are the Morbus." At the word, the fire seemed to gulp air, the light dipping for a full second. A cold draft, carrying the faint, sweet-rot smell of decaying leaves from outside, snaked through the cabin.
"They are not hunters. They are a famine given form. They are drawn to power, to soul-light, like moths to a flame. To them, our bonded soul will be the only feast in a cold, dark universe. They will come for you. Not for sport, but for consumption. And they will never, ever stop. You will feel their hunger on the edge of your senses every moment of every day. It will be the taste in your mouth when you wake, the chill on your neck when you sleep."
"And if I grow tired of this arrangement?" Nulls asked, his voice barely a whisper. "If I decide I want my room back?"
Yog leaned forward, and the shadows on his face deepened into something grotesque. "You can't. It is a weld, not a knot. To try and sever it would be to tear your own soul in half. The backlash would not just kill you. It would unmake the part of you that is you. Your memories, your consciousness, the very pattern of your mind would fray into screaming, permanent static. I would be cast back into the void, crippled and adrift for eons. And the psychic scream of the tearing... it would not be quiet. It would likely shatter the mind of every thinking being on this continent, leaving a land of drooling, mindless husks. The weight of that would be on your hands alone."
He let the silence hang, the weight of it pressing down on the cozy room. The cheerful crackle of the fire now sounded like the ticking of a clock counting down to a doom of his own choosing.
"The power I offer is real," Yog whispered, the sound cutting through the stillness. "It is the power to shape this world, to prune it as you see fit, to stand against any tide. But the price is your peace. Forever. You will live as the most targeted being in this world, with a god as a permanent, judging passenger in your skull, and a endless hunger following your every step."
Nulls looked past Yog, out the window. The snow had begun to fall again, thick and silent, a soft white sheet already beginning to bury the world outside, smoothing over its rough edges. It looked peaceful. It was a peace he would never know again. He thought of the locked door, of other men climbing a ladder he could have ascended.
He thought of the constant hunt, the thing living in his mind, the sweet stench of the Morbus forever on the air, and the catastrophic responsibility of a bond that could never be broken.
He turned back to Yog, his friendly smile finally, genuinely, gone from his face. His expression was as neutral and cold as the void between stars.
"No," Nulls said. "The cost is greater than the prize. I decline."
The single word hung in the air, stark and final as a tombstone. The fire popped, a sharp, lonely sound.
For a heartbeat, the air in the cabin grew heavy, pressing down on Nulls's eardrums. The pleasant aroma of pine smoke curdled, carrying a faint, metallic tang, like ozone after a lightning strike. The warm light from the hearth seemed to shy away from Yog, deepening the shadows that clung to him until he was little more than a silhouette with two burning points for eyes.
Then, it passed.
The pressure vanished. The air cleared. Yog leaned back in his chair, the leather sighing softly. The dangerous intensity bled from his posture, replaced by a weary, almost paternal calm.
"A 'no' is nothing but a word," Yog said, his voice a low, soothing rumble. "It is not a conclusion. You have seen the scale, but you are still thinking like a mortal, measuring risk against a single, fleeting lifespan."
He gestured vaguely towards the window, at the snow-blanketed world. "You see a cage of consequences. I see the necessary architecture for a greater work. To build a palace, one must first endure the noise and dust of the quarry."
Nulls said nothing. He watched Yog the way a mathematician watches an unstable equation.
"I will not force the chisel into your hand," Yog continued, steepling his fingers. "A bond forged under duress is a brittle thing. It would shatter under the first real pressure, and we would both be lost."
He looked directly at Nulls, his gaze unwavering. "So, I will give you time. Time to walk this world. Time to feel its limitations press in on you. Time to watch lesser minds fumble with powers you could master. You will see the vermin multiply. You will feel the rot spread. And you will remember this conversation."
Yog's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, as if sharing a secret. "The offer will remain open. The door to my Codex will never be fully closed to you. When the weight of your own irrelevance becomes too heavy to bear, when you finally understand that peace is just another word for oblivion... you will know how to find me."
A deep, resonant toll echoed through the cabin, not through the air, but through the substance of the illusion itself. The sound was that of a colossal, iron bell struck once at the end of time. The log in the fireplace turned grey and cold, as if it had been burning for a century in the space between heartbeats.
"Oh." He looked at Nulls one last time before drawing a blue sigil in the air. "Our time is up, one more minute and your conciousness would disolve into nothingness, it was fun while it lasted but everything must comes to an end."
Outside the flickering windows, the peaceful snowfall was gone. In its place swirled a formless grey, from which sharp, geometric shapes folded and unfolded in impossible ways. They made no sound, but their very movement pulled at Nulls's mind, threatening to unravel his thoughts.
The silent swarm, each mountain-sized abomination of angles and edges, soared towards them. The only sound was a distant, psychic crackling that grated against the inside of his skull.
Yog didn't draw a sigil. He simply pointed a finger at the space between Nulls's feet. The wooden planks splintered upwards into a vortex of azure light and jagged, red energy that smelled of copper and lightning.
"Don't trouble yourself with them," Yog said, his voice a distant echo. "They are drawn to entities foreign to the Oneiros. You smell like an unlit match in a dark wood. To them," he added, his form beginning to swell and distort, "to me, they smell like a juvenile Morbus. It has been millennia since I've feasted." His gaze, now vast and ancient, locked onto Nulls. "Thank you for the lure."
The shackles of red light seized Nulls, not on his body, but on his essence, and dragged him down into the vortex. The last thing he saw was Yog turning to face the swirling grey, his form expanding to fill the dissolving cabin, his voice the last clear thing in the chaos.
"We will meet again. Shortly."