NOVEL NEXT Chapter 113: Ancestral Knowledge
Hannya's voice slid into a soft, steady rhythm that pricked the air the wrong way, the same cracked cadence old devils remembered from older disasters.
Red thread, red thread, tie down what's mine
Dead thread, dead thread, choke out what's thine
If love won't answer, then the silence will do
I'll close every throat that whispers 'not for you'
See the bloom, ring the bell, and let the petals fall shut
No vows now, no dawn, just a kiss by a cruel cut
If I can't keep 'always,' then 'never' is fair
Break every plane that pretends it can ever care
Snip the root, drain the vein, drink the end of the hollowing tune
Turn the heart, flip the world, make it sleep under the endless moon
If I can't have 'together,' then 'no one' will stay
Thread to the throat, gouge the chest, and the song goes away
She sang as she worked.
On the floor of Greed's abyss, a lightless vault that eats even the edge of sight, she traced huge, clean circles and interlocking angles, writing sigils with her fingertip dipped in supreme devil blood. Each stroke settled and shone a sparkling black on the pale black floor.
The blood was Vainglory's.
His body should have turned to ash, yet he hadn't. The headless corpse lay where it fell, the pendant dull against his chest, giving her all the ink she needed.
Behind her, an invisible spiral turned like a great screw, twisting itself into the fabric of the world. The laws rotating, the pressure building. A change unseen and unfelt by the singer. On the ground around her feet, the void black threads only he had ever seen, now carpeted the abyssal floor, pooling and circling both of them, tightening and loosening, with the beat of her voice. She noticed none of it.
She only focused on the work, only singing her tune.
The cadence in her throat held an eerie pattern, more lullaby than language, more projection than poem, the kind that made old bones sit up and remember why they used to go quiet when a stranger started to 'sing'.
"Good…good." she breathed out between verses, drawing long arcs that locked two rings together. "Almost done~."
She dipped two fingers to gather more of him, then marked a final sigil where three circles met. The lines crossed, the sigils nested, and the floor answered with a low, creepy hum.
Crush the vow, crush the name, crush the bright golden lie
If I can't have my 'forever,' then 'everyone' should just die
Stitch the door, stitch the dark, seal the jealous blue
red thread, red thread, tether only me, tether only you
The last line landed like a held note, and the shapes of blood finished settling, neat and precise in the black expanse beneath the vault's dead horizon.
The spiral turned once more. The threads tightened and loosened. And the song kept the measure of twisted time.
~~~
High above Hellnia, the dome held its breath.
The Observer, however, didn't bother.
One elbow on the arm of his recliner, his chin in his palm as he stared down through the glass, eyesockets narrowing at the sight of a girl in white sketching a city of sigils with a man's blood.
"Why does she always do that?" He muttered, not really asking, just watching Hannya's fingertip drag a curve precise enough to shame most compasses. "I mean… You have ink, you have chalk, and I thought you had a little dignity. Just use one."
The Observer disdained so much drama.
Still, he kept watching.
Principle was a chain you wore on purpose. He'd shackled it around himself a long time ago. You don't act because you can. You act when you must.
And when you must, you only act once, with domineering precision, so the world couldn't tell you'd been there at all.
So he told his subordinates. But it wasn't because he was lazy.
One of his eyes glanced to the sky.
He also didn't have to explain himself. He was a God.
His eye returned to the direction of the rest.
The leather chair creaked as a door sighed open. Right Direction came back in with a jog, her human shell flushed, hair out of place, carrying a sealed, glowing box that hummed with divine power. She slowed five steps out, transferred the weight, and knelt to offer it with both hands.
"Master," she said, breathing harder than she preferred to in front of him. "It's been recovered."
The Observer flicked his wrist, and a side table appeared beside his Lazy Boy and the box drifted onto it with a dignified thunk.
"Good work," he said, pleased. "Stay close."
Right rose and shifted her urgency into humble poise. She stood at his right shoulder and fixed her gaze on the dark abyss below. Down in Greed's pocket, Hannya bent down, dipped her fingers into a headless devil's wound, and drew another clean circle.
"We wait," the Observer said, as if answering her silent question. "One move is mine. The rest is yours."
He reached into his robe and pulled a single sheet of paper. He flattened his palm and let it drift over to Right. It floated at her eye level, obediently sitting there in the nonexistent wind.
"Since I can only make one move," he said, "you do the rest. When I signal, do exactly what that paper says."
Right's fingers hovered, then lowered. She didn't touch the page. In truth, there was no reason to. The paper wasn't really ink and fiber; it was permission. A slice of his jurisdiction trimmed small enough that a daughter could carry without it turning her into a shadow of him.
"Yes, Master," she said, her breath settling. "What is she making?"
"Something she thinks is an answer," he said. "just watch."
Right watched. She meant to do only that. She meant to be a good girl.
But curiosity threaded its needle into her mind anyway.
She told herself it was for caution. If she could glimpse the best time to move, they could spare a life or two, or a continent if needed. The excuse fit inside her heart long enough for her to say it in her mind.
She lifted her eyes and reached out with her sight.
Not with her own authority, the one that gazed at things that only sometimes existed and always existed all at the same time. Instead, she reached sideways, toward a toolbox she knew was not hers.
Left Direction's, a sight that bent the timeline's veil like thin reeds and peered through the other side.
Right borrowed it.
And the world tilted.
The Observatory receded, the dome blurred, time moved a few silent steps further. Right now stood in a space ahead of the present as she peered down into the abyss.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Down below, the sigils finished.
She saw Hannya stand at the center of her blood-built city, a smile on her face. Her veil was gone, her eyes spinning and filled with madness, the array ringed her like a rose constructed out of mathematics. Loops folding back into loops, spirals feeding into more spirals, structs of logic melted into art until nothing was legible, yet everything held.
She looked away from the array, her homunculus brain seemed to beg her to stop trying to understand.
Hannya took a long breath.
Her arms opened wide. The threads pulsing on the floor, Right could see them now with her borrowed sight; pulled tight to the center as if answering a call. The invisible spiral behind the girl spun, growing as large as a cathedral, each turn dragging laws along with it like a river's backflow. Hannya hummed a line of the Void's song, and the array began to wake.
Then Hannya spoke a word Right had never heard before, a word that did not belong to devils or gods, but she inferred the word rested in the gaps between categories.
"Hexagrammaton: [World Ender]."
The six black stars on Hannya's back went out. Every single one of them. One second they sat filled with power, then they simply weren't.
Right understood the meaning.
Something in Right's chest flexed in reflexive grief for a status she didn't envy. Wishes were expensive. Final wishes were everything, a currency of self and story spent in one aching handful.
Hannya laughed, soft and unashamed. She stepped forward, slow and reverent, across the array. She stooped down and picked up Vainglory's head by the hair. She then cradled it like an offering, humming while the lines around her brightened, then turned, then spun.
Right tried to mark the rotations for reference.
Unfortunately, the rotation marked her instead.
Light danced over the sigils and into the air. The air turned heavy and sectioned. The sections bled into the space. It then told the space to try being something else for a while. The floor began to ripple. The horizon broke into hexagons like a blurring mosaic trying to remember what it once depicted. Hannya's body began to crumble and ash, her silhouette wilting like paper in a slow fire.
Even still, she kept smiling, kept humming, pressing her forehead to the cold head in her hands.
Right reached for the present to retreat. But it seemed the present didn't want her anymore. The supreme laws turned its face from her like pouting children. The rules around her thought it was funny and laughed. They didn't care she was trapped in the crumbling future. Colors began to make noises. The noises learned to dance. Meaning began to unravel within itself.
"Stop," she told herself, as if that had even mattered. "Stop! Go back! Now!"
But it didn't stop, it began to open further. The plane around her began to change. It changed into a thing that wasn't a plane, into a room that wasn't a room, into an abomination of a thing that had read the definition of mercy and decided it was useless. Right's mortal shell flinched hard enough it would have torn if it were truly mortal; her soul desperately searched for any exit that agreed to be one in the now twisted world.
The Observer then blinked.
The vision tore like a sheet of cheap fabric as Right's mind was dragged back to the present. Right slumped back into the Observatory with the air in her lungs and the taste of sand in her mouth. She didn't land so much as collapse onto the floor and stay there, shuddering.
Her hands were shaking. Her breath jumped and caught like a fish seeking water on land. Every muscle in her crafted body yelled its complaints all at once.
The Observer reached to the side without looking and tossed an old blanket that had been folded on a shelf that wasn't previously there. It arced and landed, finding her shoulders, and wrapped itself as if it already knew its true purpose. A bottle rolled and knocked lightly against her wrist; condensation running down blue plastic and 'G' symbol.
"I told you to stop doing that," he said, his tone even, almost bored. "That is the drawback of using an authority you don't own."
Right pressed the bottle of electrolytes to her cheek. "I-" She could barely think clearly, her thoughts misaligned and warped. "I couldn't get out."
"Yes," he replied. "Because you were inside Left's room, not yours, and you tried to exit through a door you weren't holding the key to any longer."
He made a small sigh and nodded to the bottle. "Drink."
She drank and the sugar jolted her human brain in a way the soul couldn't explain. The shaking didn't stop, but her thoughts obeyed.
The Observer waved again. The blanket tightened, just enough to feel like a promise. The air slid a smaller recliner underneath her out of nowhere. An echo of his own, the same make, but with reduced attachments and privileges. Obviously.
Right's feet left the floor as she leaned into it. The chair reclined itself by three notches automatically, standard practice.
"Since it's an emergency," he said, "I'll let it slide." He tilted his hood toward the abyss. "Focus now. If you want to change things, point your eyes below and hold still."
Right clutched the bottle and stared at him. He wasn't worried. Or rather, he was worried with the kind of calm that had seen the same movie and eaten the same snacks for it four hundred times before.
"You're not… concerned?" she managed to squeeze out.
He chuckled at the words. "I know what you're thinking. But this is simply a Tuesday at this level." He tipped an imaginary hat to the horizon. "We clean up on Wednesdays."
She let out a small, comforted laugh. She took another sip of electrolyte juice and looked down to the abyss.
He let the moment be a moment, then leaned a fraction forward, voice leveling. "Remember," he began, "if you make a mistake, there is almost always a chance to fix it. Not because the world is kind. But because the world is stubborn, and stubborn things can always be levered."
Her shaking eased as she listened to the words. The soul inside her mortal shell let the blanket wrapped around her mean safety, it felt like a dam for the panic that had been trying to break into a river.
"Yes, Father." she said quietly.
He snorted. "We are on the clock," he corrected. "Now, on my signal, do what I tell you. I can't act directly for more than a blink. It is up to you."
Right straightened in her smaller throne. The paper floated in front of her face again, sensibly present.
"What's the move?" she asked, more steady now.
"You'll know it when I mark it. Don't admire. Don't think. Just do it." he said with a smug grin.
He turned his head back to Hellnia.
Below, the array gathered itself like a lung about to fill. Hannya had finished the last seam and locked the last ring. The threads on the floor lay scattered and loose. The invisible spiral behind her widened in slow, happy greed. The head in her hands had eyes that no longer saw. She stood there, prepared to cast her wish.
"On my mark, Right." the Observer said.
She nodded, lips pressed, paper hovering before her.
Hannya drew in a breath.
The Observer blinked.
And at the signal, Right moved.
~~~
Hannya drew in a deep breath. She could feel her core cracking and her soul fracturing from the overload of essence. She didn't care.
But for the first time since the head fell, something in her cleared.
It wasn't something like kindness or mercy. It was just a thin window of clarity that opened while her lungs filled with air, just wide enough to have a thought that wasn't pure rage or bitter grief. In it, she saw the last year like a stack of neat boxes she'd packed with efficient care.
Training, offerings, humiliation endured on purpose, plans written and cross-checked until the paper thinned. She had built a new life out of discipline, cunning, and grit.
And then the world just kicked it over.
The anger that came with the memory was sharp enough to cut. The happiness that rose with it was much uglier and honest. Because if the world broke her work, she would break the world back. The array under her feet hummed, the spiral behind her turned, the head in her hands was warm with a heat that wasn't really there.
Her breath reached the peak…
Then a panel cut into her vision without asking.
DING
[
Quantifier analysis complete!
Generating solution for current objective achievement…
]
Her eyes shifted from the blood-lines to the letters. The words were too crisp to be grief. Another line printed itself as if a careful clerk were stamping a passport.
[
[Six-star Heart Devil] Ancestral knowledge has been unlocked.
Skill list updating for Hannya…
[Mark of Madness] is cooperating with [Eye of the Blasphemer], [True Dream Body], and [Red Thread Heart].
A Mythical skill is available.
Unique skill acquired, [Reality Twist - Delusional World].
Mutate array to activate [Delusional World]? (Y/N)
]
Hannya stared at the screen with hollow eyes. Then, deep within, something sparked.
'Yes'
She answered, not with her mouth, but with the part of her that had been answering the system since the first day it dinged at her.
Knowledge moved. It unfolded in her mind like a book she had always owned, finally opening. Ancestral, old and rare. Concepts slotted into the map of laws she'd drawn herself over time. She saw the difference between a hexagram that begged the world to obey and a pentagram that taught the world how to pretend.
She saw how the [Mark of Madness] could be used as a key instead of a nameless lock. She saw how the [Eye of the Blasphemer] didn't just notice the wrongness in reverence; it could aim and channel it. She saw how the [True Dream Body] could hold a shape that hadn't been imagined yet, and how [Red Thread Heart] would keep the wrong shape in place and close.
Within the abyss, the array the Hannya had built suddenly jolted. A tiny, almost imperceptible pause, as if the world had added a comma where there was supposed to simply be an ending. She didn't notice the reason, only the opportunity.
Hannya moved.
She stepped out of the center and into the gap where two great circles intersected. She wiped one curve left with the side of her hand, black streaking her palm, and redrew it to the right with two fingers with a hum between her teeth. She erased a small breathing gap and replaced it with a hook only her lineage would recognize. She lifted one of the six outer triangles into a peak and let the opposite triangle fall, collapsing the design's crown into a five-pointed logic that didn't ask laws to bend, it lied to it.
What Right Direction had altered without her knowledge became irrelevant the instant the geometry of the array changed.
Hannya's finger paused above the last joint. She had the shape now and all she needed was the engine. She felt for her stars.
Five flared on her skin like hot coins laid on a table. The sixth stayed dark this time, refusing or reserved, she couldn't tell. But it didn't matter. Five would be enough with what she held, hated, and loved.
She let the head rest against her heart a moment longer. The threads curled tighter, never seen by her, and the great spiral behind her widened, never felt by her. When she spoke, it was almost a whisper and, impossibly, almost hopeful.
"Pentagrammaton: [Delusional World]."