Ogdi stood beneath the decaying archway of an alley that shouldn't have been there—or perhaps, it was the only thing that was there. The transition from his room to this place wasn't a journey of steps, but a shift in perception.
He didn't utter a sound, but his very soul screamed a desperate question into the fabric of reality. And reality, as if startled awake, answered him with a shiver.
There was no pillar of light. There was no explosion. Instead, the air simply… surrendered.
It didn't twist; it softened. The atmosphere turned viscous, shimmering with an inner, oily radiance, like ancient glass slowly melting in an unseen furnace. The ground beneath him didn't tremble; it breathed, exhaling the scent of damp earth and ozone.
From the center of his chest, Ogdi felt it—not a surge of energy, but the clicking of a lock finally opening. The "Shackles of Reality," those invisible, crushing weights of physics and probability that had bound him since birth, didn't snap. They dissolved. They turned into motes of golden sand, drifting away on a wind that blew only for him.
He saw a vision of himself—not a titan of violet energy, but a version of himself that was simply absolute. A version that didn't ask for permission to exist.
He opened his eyes. He was back on the street, the morning light bleeding across the brick walls in shades he couldn't name—somewhere between tarnished silver and the color of a half-forgotten memory.
He reached for his notebook and reread the wish. The ink seemed to float just above the paper.
"I wish to permanently gain the unrestricted conscious ability to grant my own wishes… This ability and all its effects shall be eternally exempt from interference…"
It didn't glow. It didn't ripple. But the curtain between imagination and matter was now thinner than a layer of dust.
As Ogdi stepped onto the main road, something clicked into place within him. The colors around him, once muted by the grey filter of depression and mundanity, now hummed with an almost painful brilliance. Shadows, no longer mere absences of light, coiled and stretched like living sculptures, waiting for instructions. Buildings seemed to breathe, their windows like ancient eyes watching his every move.
He decided to test the weight of this new world.
"Let the traffic stop so I can cross," he whispered.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't gesture.
Instantly, the cacophony of the city was severed. No blaring horns, no screeching brakes, no physics-defying halts. The cars simply… ceased to be in motion. It was as if the concept of 'movement' had been temporarily paused in his vicinity. A vast, echoing silence swallowed the street.
Ogdi walked forward. Reality unfurled before him, reshaping itself according to the unspoken currents of his thoughts. In a nearby park, a stone statue of a forgotten hero seemed to turn its head just a fraction of an inch to watch him pass. A colossal billboard, moments ago displaying a mundane advertisement for insurance, rippled like water. The text rearranged itself, the pixels bleeding together to form a line from one of his unfinished, unpublished poems:
To walk is to fall forward, trusting the ground.
He grinned, a genuine, delighted expression that stretched his face. But then, the smile faltered.
External reality was malleable. But internal knots were harder to untie. He remembered the shackle of his own insecurity.
"Let me speak without fear," he said softly.
The words resonated within him like a struck bell, clearing a fog he hadn't realized was there.
His phone buzzed.
He pulled it out. A message from his estranged uncle—a man who hadn't spoken to him since the funeral, a man made of stone and silence.
Uncle: "You were right. I should've listened. I'm sorry."
Ogdi stared at the screen. He didn't cry, but his hand warmed with the sudden, tangible weight of validation. Probability had bent to heal a wound.
He walked to a secluded alley, a forgotten stretch of brick where he'd once sketched fleeting dreams in chalk—dreams the rain had always washed away.
"Let this wall reflect the me I've been hiding."
The ancient bricks didn't just change color; they flowed. They softened like molten gold, swirling and re-hardening in seconds. A living mural bloomed across the alley wall. It wasn't a picture; it was a mirror of the soul. It showed a child—barefoot, eyes wide with untamed wonder—standing in the shadow of something vast and winged, something that hummed with an intricate, celestial pattern.
Glyphs from dreams he hadn't dreamt yet spun in the air around the mural like holographic insects.
People walked past the alley entrance, their gazes sliding over the wall as if it were blank air. The creation was selectively real, visible only to minds that hadn't yet surrendered their last vestiges of imagination.
"Now we're talking," Ogdi chuckled, a deep, satisfied sound.
"The veil thins when confidence outpaces caution," Azad whispered. The voice was wind made visible, drifting near his ear. "Remember your calibration."
I remember everything, Ogdi thought back, his mind a silent echo chamber. And now, I rewrite.
Most people passed without a glance. But then, a shuffling sound stopped behind him.
Drag. Step. Drag.
Boots echoed on the pavement like someone walking through a graveyard. An old man stood there. He was wrapped in a coat that had seen better decades, and he squinted at the wall not with confusion, but with recognition.
"The wings are clipped wrong," the old man grunted. His voice was a gravelly rasp, sounding like stones grinding together.
Ogdi turned, startled. "What?"
"If you're painting freedom, don't lace it with hesitation," the man said, jerking his chin toward the pulsing mural. "Your giant doesn't believe in himself."
Ogdi blinked. "You… can see it?"
"Clearer than the pigeons shitting on it," the man retorted. There was a spark of defiance in his rheumy eyes, but beneath it lay a deep, oceanic sadness.
"What's your name, old man?"
"People call me Old Murik," the man said, meeting Ogdi's gaze with a terrifying intensity. "But for you… it's Mr. Venn."
The silence between them was electric—two imaginations, two universes, brushing past each other like stranger galaxies in the cosmic void.
As Murik stared at Ogdi's mural, a single glyph—three interlocked crescents—began to glow faintly. Not visibly to Ogdi, but to Murik, it sang.
It triggered a memory Murik had spent forty years trying to drown.
He was twelve. He was sketching dragons on the pavement. He wanted them to be real. And then, one of them… snapped. It peeled itself off the ground. It didn't have a soul; it only had hunger. He remembered his mother's scream. He remembered how the sketch twisted her mind, breaking the person he loved most.
He had stopped drawing that day. He had locked the door to his imagination and thrown away the key.
But now, Ogdi's mural was picking the lock.
"Where did you get that sigil?" Murik asked, his voice hoarse. He pointed a trembling, gloved finger at Ogdi's face. "The eye."
"My eye?" Ogdi frowned.
"The right one," Murik whispered, stepping closer, fascinated and horrified. "Your pupil… it's not round. It's nestled in a barricade of thorns."
Ogdi touched his face. He felt nothing different. "I didn't do that. It just… happened."
"Dreamers don't invent. They remember," Murik murmured.
Azad drifted closer, his presence turning the air cold. He whispered only to Ogdi:
"He is not ordinary."
Friend of yours? Ogdi thought.
"He failed his trial long ago," Azad replied, the voice tinged with a strange mix of pity and warning. "His integration rate was less than two percent. But the ember didn't die. It just… rotted. Be careful. His creations spoke back."
Ogdi looked at the old man with new eyes. A survivor. A warning.
Murik turned to leave, his movements heavy, as if carrying an invisible burden. But he stopped and tossed something metallic to Ogdi.
It was a compass. It was rusted, ancient, but the needle didn't point North. It spun slowly, humming with a faint vibration.
"Keep it," Murik said. "It points toward regret. Might help you avoid mine."
He took a few steps, then turned back one last time. He pointed to the brick wall beside the mural—a blank, dirty section of masonry.
"There used to be a door here," Murik whispered. "I opened it once. Found a room that didn't belong to time. I left it… and I never found it again. But your drawing… it smells like that room."
Ogdi wanted to ask more. He wanted to know about the dragons, the trial, the failure. But something told him that today wasn't for answers. Today was for seeds.
"You can visit it again," Ogdi said softly. "If you're ready."
Murik stared at him, his eyes glistening in the twilight.
"Maybe next time," the old man whispered, his voice fragile as glass. "Maybe next time… I won't be afraid."