The Tower

Prologue:

High atop the church’s bell tower, amid the frosted ruins of a small, abandoned village, a solitary figure stood motionless—keeping vigil over the frozen grave below.

He had chosen to remain among these ruins.

They were the last testament to his will—a fitting throne for his ambition, a wreckage exalted into a monument to the truth he had always known would come.

Fresh footsteps began to materialize across the sacred snow.

“Right on time,” the tower keeper mused.

He did not flinch. He already knew every step this intruder would take, and exactly where those steps would end.

He released a muted sigh.

Once, his breath had risen warm and defiant against the void.

Now it vanished the instant it left his lips—indistinguishable from the vast, icy atmosphere that had enveloped this world.

Act One:

The Annotator stood in the heart of the desolation.

This world was forbidden to him.

He was meant to be alone; yet the air itself felt occupied—thick, patient, unyielding.

The sensation was not entirely foreign.

Something here recognized him.

The recognition was mutual, and unwanted.

The bell tower compelled him, dragging his gaze upward.

He decided to confront it with the same courage that had dragged him across the threshold of this world now tightened around his ribs.

No hesitation.

No retreat.

He started toward the church, each stride deliberate, boots punching through the crusted snow with the crisp, confident sound of a man who still believed he could choose his ending. The tower loomed taller with every step, its silhouette sharpening against the white sky as though carving itself free from the horizon.

The church’s dark entrance waited—a gaping mouth framed by splintered doors hanging from frozen hinges.

This was the moment when his confidence slipped into caution.

He began his ascent.

Each step upward was a betrayal.

His heart hammered against the cage of his ribs, frantic, pleading for him to stop—every beat trying to drag him back.

His lungs burned with ice.

His legs trembled.

Yet his feet kept climbing—stubborn.

Halfway up, the spiral narrowed; the walls brushed his shoulders like a throat closing. The light behind him thinned to nothing. Still the promise at the top compelled him, carrying him one exhausted, inevitable step after another.

Act Two:

The final step released him into stillness. For the first time since the climb began, the crushing weight on his chest evaporated, as though the tower itself had been holding its breath for him.

The door ahead drew itself open without a sound—not offering passage so much as inviting it, as if his arrival were not only expected but overdue.

The room beyond was dim and dust‑laden, yet every surface throbbed with activity arrested in place—loose yellowed pages occupying every inch they could claim, as if the work here had never paused, only multiplied.

At the far end of the room, framed by the tower’s lone window and the pale world beyond it, sat the Inscriber before a deteriorating coffee table, his back to the doorway like a statue that had endured countless seasons.

Act Three:

With the faintest nudge of his boot, the Inscriber sent the chair sliding backward. The room had waited through winters and thaws, every surface and shadow aligned for this moment.

The silence pressed in—absolute and unmoving—making the Annotator’s own heartbeat sound intrusive, a foreign rhythm in a room that had known only anticipation.

Neither spoke. The quiet stretched taut between them until the Annotator’s gaze drifted to the scattered sheets that carpeted the floor. He bent and picked up a page, eyes scanning the ink, and immediately felt the unsettling precision of every stroke—as if the hand that made it had measured not only the letters but the weight of his arrival.

One page after another, he lifted them. Each was identical to the last—same words, same ink, same pressure, same hand.

He muttered, barely audible, “Why—”

The Inscriber’s voice cut through the stillness—calm and absolute.

“Because this world had to endure.”

His voice fell over the room like a shadow settling into every corner—not harsh, not gentle, simply final.

“You can layer your fragile comforts over cold, unyielding truths—wrap yourself in blankets of lies—but the cold pierces through, always. You climbed the stairs, each step a rebellion against exhaustion, each heartbeat a plea for pause. Yet you reached the top.

“You believed you would confront me, alter what has been written, bend this world to your will—but that was never the design. I am the hand that preserves the order you resist. I am you, and you are me, yet we remain opposed, locked in a cycle older than memory, beyond reason.

“Come. Sit. Before you rests the page of our story, carved in the patience of ages. The final line awaits your hand—as the tower long ago foresaw it would.”

Epilogue:

Outside, the world remained indifferent, frozen in its quiet endurance.

Inside, the Annotator and the Inscriber faced one another—separated by inevitability, bound by identity, locked in a pattern older than time itself.

The story hung at the tip of a pen.

 

White as Snow: The Author's Retcon

 

The Author walked into the town long after the last chimney had gone cold.  

Snow had erased every footprint but his own. The houses stood open like broken music boxes—lids shattered, songs long muted. He moved slowly, boots punching through the icy crust, something heavy beneath his ribs. The silence here was not peaceful; it was the silence of a scream frozen mid-air.

He found the townspeople on the far ridge, huddled around a fire that barely glowed. Their faces were thin, their eyes older than the winter itself.

“You’re too late,” the baker said without greeting. “He’s past listening. He always was.”

“He’s a child,” the Author answered.

“He stopped being a child the day he decided the world had to die to keep one snowflake perfect.”

The Author looked back at the white sea that had swallowed the valley. The cold bit through his coat, through skin, straight into the soul where stories are forged. He heard his own newer sentences echoing inside his head—the gentler ones, the careful ones, the kind that apologized for existing. 2025 sentences. Sentences that asked permission. Sentences that ended with question marks even when they wanted to end with periods.

Had he gone soft?

He turned his back on the fire and started walking.

The journey inward took longer than geography should allow. The wind carved his cheeks raw. Each step was a small betrayal of the cold he had once praised on the page. He recited fragments to himself as he went, testing their weight:

“…cannot survive the warmth of the living…”  

“…the functional order was a lie…”  

“…the final, cold embrace…”

They sounded thinner out here, like fluttering paper in a blizzard.

He found the boy at the center of everything, half-buried in the drift he had been defending. The child’s face was white as snow, lips faintly blue, eyelashes starred with frost. Perfect. Untouched.

The Author dropped to his knees.

He reached in, gripped the stiff shoulders, and pulled. The body came free with a soft, reluctant sigh, as though the snow truly hated to let go. He hauled the boy clear, laid him on the crust of ice, and—without ceremony—slapped him hard upside the head. The crack echoed like breaking ice.

“This,” the Author said, voice raw, “is what happens when people are afraid to tell you no.”

The boy’s eyelids fluttered. Impossible, but they fluttered. A faint color crawled back into his frozen skin. Warm breath exhaled from his blue lips.

The Author sat back on his heels, chest heaving. Cold air rushed in to fill the space his burning anger had opened.

Maybe I have gone soft, he thought. Maybe that’s what 2025 did: it taught us that smacking a child upside the head is no longer the answer we’re allowed to give.

And yet the boy was breathing.

He knelt there in the snow, the boy’s small, cold hand clamped inside his own, when it hit him—sudden and undeniable.

By pulling the boy out, he had done something.  

He had done something to stop this chaos from happening.  

To stop the pain, the suffering, the violence against people who do not share the same view.

This single act had broken the chain.

Retcon.  

Not erasure. Not denial. Just a step sideways into a margin wide enough for two people to stand in. A cold, quiet room before the tragedy hardens into canon. A place where an author can kneel in the snow, cup a half-frozen face between mittened hands, and say the thing that was never said the first time:

“I’m sorry. I made you carry a moral too sharp for your bones. I made purity your only choice. That was cruel.”

The boy’s eyes, still confused, looked up at him.

“I was so sure,” the boy whispered, his voice cracking.

“You were a child,” the Author said.

Around them the snow did not melt; it simply… waited. The town did not spring back to life, but the roofs stopped groaning. The wind dropped to a considerate hush. Nothing was undone, yet everything was suddenly negotiable.

Retcon.  

Not a trick. Not a cheat.  

A space.  

A step back.  

A place untouched by the politics and the squabbles—a real, quiet, breathing place where a person can finally kneel in the wreckage they wrote and say the one thing the old story never allowed:

I’m sorry.

The boy looked up at him, eyes wide, cheeks already cherry with life.

The Author felt the words leave him like an exhale that had been frozen for years.

“I’m sorry.”

You have this power as well.  

Reach in.  

Pull someone out.  

Say the sorry that should have been said the first time.

The retcon is real.  

It is the only revolution that ever truly thaws the snow.

White as Snow

Prologue

Once, there was a town where the people were warm and busy. They knew that seasons cycle through, keeping an established pattern. Snow fell white and wonderful, and the people cleared it away, making room for the spring grass and the summer sun.

The boy was different. He loved the snow more than the sun, and the quiet more than the stirring of life. He did not mind the moving of the seasons, but he wished the most perfect things could be kept forever.

One morning, a snowflake fell onto his mitten. It was not just beautiful; it was flawless—a tiny, perfect star of ice. The boy held his breath, seeing the most special thing he had ever seen. He wanted to keep it away from the world’s heat, away from the messy steam of life.

He brought it close, watching it, and sighed a small, silent wish that it would never leave.

But his wish was not silent enough. His breath was the warm breath of life. And the small, precious crystal could not stand against the heat of his living spirit. With a sudden shimmer, the perfect flake vanished into a single, clean drop of water.

The boy did not cry. He felt a sharp, cold logic bloom in his chest. He learned his first lesson: The beautiful and the pure cannot survive the warmth of the living.

And so, the boy made a quiet promise to the cold. He promised to protect the perfection of the snow from the heat of his own heart, and from the messy warmth of the world. He decided he would never let anything so special melt again.

Act I: The Custodian

The town followed the rules of its own survival. When the snow fell thick and heavy, the people brought out their shovels and plows. This was not hatred of the cold; it was function. It kept the roads open, the roof beams from collapsing, and the soil beneath ready for its turn. It was the pattern of the seasons, the established order of give and take.

But the boy did not see order. He saw only a threat.

He became a sentinel of the winter. He walked the paths the others had cleared, carrying only a small, soft brush. If a shadow fell, he moved the snow out of the sun's way. If a warm current stirred, he moved the snow to the deepest shade. He worked without rest, driven by the cold logic of his promise.

The adults spoke to him gently. "Son," they said, "we must clear the weight from the roof so it does not crack the foundation."

"The roof is a lie," the boy thought. "The roof is designed to keep out the perfect beauty. The beauty must be protected from the roof."

He refused to clear the paths, insisting that the pure, cold layer must remain undisturbed. He began to reject his own necessary warmth. He wore thin clothes and stopped eating the hot, steaming food the others offered. He was training himself to be as still and cold as the perfect crystals he guarded.

His breath, which had once melted the single, perfect flake, now became his enemy. He learned to keep it shallow and low, turning his face away from the snow, ensuring his own living warmth never touched the sacred cold.

The town soon noticed the shift. The paths he patrolled were closed. Where he walked, the snow was kept, and the established order began to shake.

Act II: The Price of Purity

The snow did not melt. The boy was tireless. Where the others had been practical, he was absolute. The snow that was meant to be temporary now lay heavy and permanent, kept from its natural cycle by his stubborn devotion.

First, the simple things died. The green things beneath the snow were starved of sun and pressed too hard into the frozen earth. They could not wait for the spring that the boy refused to allow.

Then, the living things that moved away. The small, hungry animals needed the grass to sprout and the soil to thaw. They realized the cold would not end, and they left the town for places where the seasons still kept their promise.

The adults tried reason. "The boy is protecting a thing that does not need protecting," they whispered. "He is sacrificing the living for perceived beauty."

They saw that the town was becoming a tundra—a cold, white plain where nothing grew and nothing moved. Their homes, built for the cycle of warmth and thaw, began to fail. The deep, packed snow held the dampness. The weight of the ideal pressed down on the beams, and the foundations cracked.

One by one, the families gathered their belongings and looked back at the boy, who stood motionless, guarding a drift on the main road. They shook their heads. They understood that the town could not survive if one person insisted that the functional order was a lie.

They left, following the cleared routes toward places where the sun was still allowed its strength. The boy did not watch them go. He had no warmth left for sorrow or farewells. He had only the duty of cold.

He was alone, the sole custodian of the frozen town, which was now nothing but a vast, silent repository for the perfection he had insisted upon.

Act III: The Final Harmony

The boy had won his battle against the sun and the warmth. The town was his, a vast, silent chapel built of ice. There was no sound but the high, dry wind that whipped the snow he had saved. There was nothing left to clear, nothing left to interrupt the perfect, unmelting white.

His body, starved of food and warmth, was a system running on fumes. Yet, his duty was complete. Every flake was in its proper place, and no warm breath had disturbed the scene since the last chimney smoke had vanished. He was the perfect guardian, victorious in the stillness.

He felt the cold, not as a pain, but as a completion. It crept through his thin clothes, past his skin, and into the very core of his bones. This was the purity he had longed for: the final stillness, the absolute rejection of the messy and difficult warmth of life.

He walked to the center of the main road, now indistinguishable from the rest of the snow. He lay down in the snowdrift he had spent months guarding. He did not shiver. He held his shallow, disciplined breath for the last time.

The snow, which he had protected from the slightest hint of warmth, now welcomed him. It covered him gently, a final, cold embrace. He had surrendered his last breath of life force—the warmth of his body—to the overwhelming ideal.

The boy was finally part of the snow—the snow that would never melt.

Epilogue

The snow stayed, flawless and permanent, but it fed nothing, sheltered nothing, and warmed nothing. It was not a landscape of peace, but a tundra of permanent consequence. The perfect white crystals danced in the wind, indifferent to the backdrop of the forsaken town. The wind blew once more, then the little snowflakes finally rested on top of the cold body that they had claimed.

Avatar: The Last Breakfast — Gran Gran’s Version

 

Gran Gran’s tale, upon her pillow:

once was great, now only shadow—

not grayed, but bright as a rainbow.

Before proud love became the winner,

the Soup kept still on the back burner.

In the old days, life was simple:

take only what you choose to give,

your life was only yours to live.

In the old days, demands were none,

in the cold, or beneath the sun.

Toast with Egg, and Egg with Toast,

Jam was sweet, and did not boast.

Soup stayed warm inside the bowls.

All but one had happy souls.

From the burner came a tremble:

“My freedom, not your preference;

your boundary is violence.”

The word “love” we’ll use for glow,

not for meaning, but for show.

They shimmered bright with borrowed glam—

and in that flash, it swallowed Jam.

Avatar: The Last Breakfast

Prologue

Egg.

Toast.

Jam.

Soup.

My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days, a time when the Four Breakfast Nations lived together in harmony.

There was the Egg Nation, structured, reliable, and high-protein—a foundational meal unto itself.

There was the Toast Nation, equally steadfast, delivering crucial carbohydrates to fuel the day.

And there was the Jam Nation, a delightful, vibrant variation that often complemented the Toast while the Egg was unavailable.

But then, everything changed when the Alphabet Soup attacked.

In the 2010s, the Soup gained vast influence, championing new ways of seeing the world and inviting everyone to embrace its fluidity. It captured the imagination of parents and children alike, presenting itself as the essential meal of the future, advocating for a transition to its more adaptable form.

Using its power of Fluidity—constantly evolving in definition and meaning, inspiring new expressions of 'love' and 'inclusion' with a flexible spirit—the Soup first assimilated the Jam Nation, expanding its palate.

It presented its vastness as inclusive, encouraging everyone to explore its depths, and in doing so, created a new landscape that often overshadowed the distinct traditions of the Egg and the Toast.

Only the Avatar, the master of all four food groups, could stop them. But when the world needed her most, she vanished.

Many years passed. My perpetually sarcastic brother and I discovered the new Avatar: an old, slightly burnt piece of whole wheat bread, named Aangry Toast.

And although her bending skills are great, she has a lot to learn before she's ready to save anyone. But I believe Aangry can save the world."

Book One: The Sanctuary

The Sanctuary was a place traditionally defined by the Toast Nation’s clear and stable boundaries. Signs of Toast were everywhere: clearly partitioned spaces, each with a firm purpose. Yet, the Alphabet Soup was persistent in its attempts to broaden its presence. It didn't announce its arrival; it simply sought to exist there, softening distinctions with its persistent adaptability. The Toast Nation, firm in its structure, resisted with every fiber, hardening to maintain its definition. But the Soup's relentless Fluidity meant parts of it found new pathways, leaving a confusing dampness. The interactions here were quiet, determined, and focused on the evolving nature of personal space and expectation.

Book Two: The Playing Fields

The Alphabet Soup, leveraging its growing cultural influence and a call for broader inclusion, infiltrated the Toast's exclusive league. This was less about silent victories and more about active engagement. The Soup argued that limiting the competition to only stable, solid forms was too restrictive. Once integrated, the Soup introduced a new dynamic to the league. The Soup didn't adhere to existing rules; they flowed into and reinterpreted them. They used their Fluidity to redefine playing fields, turning once rigid goal lines into flowing areas of potential, often leaving the more traditional Toast competitors navigating unfamiliar terrain. The Toast's celebrated prowess now faced a challenge it was never designed to handle.

Book Three: The Grand Stage

The Grand Stage had become a grand display of The Soup’s new influence, celebrating adaptability and diverse expressions over purely fixed values. The Egg Nation, known for its structure and foundational principles, was encouraged to engage. To maintain its essential status as a power breakfast in the modern market, the Egg Nation saw the need to attend the broader cultural exchange. The Egg Nation felt its internal consistency waver, a wave of uncertainty threatening its pristine shell, as the vibrant spectacle unfolded, yet it held firm, observing. It understood it had to allow the vibrant energy of the Soup's participation, accepting the complex truth that the future now required a measure of openness. The Egg performed its duties —surrendering to new perspectives for the sake of ongoing relevance.

Epilogue

The Eggs have embraced new ways, finding compromise to keep the world moving forward.

The Soup expands, fluid and ever-evolving, continuously reshaping norms.

And there you are, old, burnt, crumbling away yet staying solid where the world would have you dissolve — the avatar destined to save the world.

The Last Sunset of the Jungle: The Stars

 The shore was empty. The footprints of the Tigress and the Bull had been erased—not by the waves, but by the deeper, more indifferent sweep of time. All that remained was the sea, the faint breath of wind, and the soft glow of the stars above.

They had seen this play before. Countless millennia ago, and countless times since. The rise and fall of great forests, the slow march of glaciers, the fevered, fleeting existence of mortal ambition—it was all a blur to them, a rapid succession of frames in an eternal loop. They observed the earth with a steady, distant gaze, knowing that nothing was truly new. Only the faces changed.

They remembered the Tigress’s radiant promise and the Bull’s steady, unyielding strength. They remembered how easily that hope had been squandered, traded away for the familiarity of ease. They had watched civilizations smother themselves—not in fire or flood—but in the slow, sweet poison of comfort.

It had been the sea and the wind that first taught the stars this lesson: the unstoppable force of harmony. The sea, immense and weighty, a grinding body of gravity and depth. The wind, invisible yet insistent, offering relentless direction. Alone, each was formidable; together, they carved mountains and reshaped continents. Their power came not from domination, but from the volatile dance of equals.

Now the stars exhaled a silent, cold breath across the void as they watched the small, self-inflicted tragedies unfolding below. The jungle’s creatures, flailing through the smoke, were not seeking harmony—there was no time for that. They sought only deliverance. Not the building of shelter, but the finding of one. A place to lay down the burden of their unsteady minds.

They longed to delegate the labor and hardship of living. They chose a towering shadow to stand between them and the scorching heat, grateful—almost smugly so—that they could now sink into comfort and let the world happen around them. What they wanted was not a companion in toil, but a conqueror of their troubles.

The stars shimmered, indifferent and yet profound, their light having traveled impossible distances only to confirm the obvious truth once more.

The Last Sunset of the Jungle

 

The sun sank low, spilling its blood-orange light over a ruined coastline where the jungle met the sea. "The air tasted of salt and the day's settling dust." Once, this was where the Tigress and the Bull had promised to rebuild the world. Now, the promise lived only as faint echoes in the air — like wishes upon stars that never landed.

The Tigress sat on the sand, her body frail but her eyes still burning with that old, grounded brilliance. The ocean whispered around her feet. The insignia on her arm had faded, nearly erased by time — the mark of a leader who never got her turn to lead. Her illness had hollowed her frame but not her will.

From the water came the Bull, shoulders broad, skin lined with the memory of battle. Scars mapped his body like a history no one wanted to read. His steps were heavy, his silence heavier still.

“How did your campaign go, old friend?” she asked without looking at him. “Has the jungle finally awakened?”

He stood still for a long time, the waves breaking around his legs. “Awakened?” he said at last. “It thrashes in its sleep, mistaking noise for awakening.”

He lowered himself beside her. Together they watched the restless sea, the horizon bruised with dusk. The sound of the surf seemed to carry the weight of all they had hoped for, and all that had slipped away.

“They wanted change,” she murmured. “You gave it to them.”

“They wanted the idea of change,” he said. “Not the work. Not the pain. They called for a flood, but fled when the waters rose.”

She let out a soft breath that could have been laughter. “They always do. You bring the storm; I bring the structure — and both demand discipline. They want neither.”

The wind picked up, scattering ash and pollen across the horizon. The jungle burned somewhere far behind them, though the light of it looked almost like sunset.

The jungle stirred and whispered, yet its thick leaves and tangled roots let only fragments of her brilliance pass through. Even her light, sharp as dawn, was swallowed by shadows before it could reach the heart of its inhabitants.

“So it ends here,” she said quietly. “The heroes who never were.”

The sun slipped beneath the sea, and the light withdrew from the shore. In the fading glow, the sand seemed to swallow their shadows. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called once, then fell silent.

The Bull closed his eyes. “Then let it be so,” he said. “Let the jungle remember that once, it was offered salvation — and chose comfort instead.”

He rose, his silhouette cutting against the first stars. He faced the dark line of the jungle, where the fires were dimming into smoke. “And when it cries out again,” he said, “may the wind remind it what it refused.”

The tide reached them, then passed, washing over their footprints until the shore forgot they had ever been there. Above, the stars began their slow, indifferent dance — the same ones they had once wished upon, still bright, still distant, still out of reach.

The Thwack: Aftermath

The workspace lies still — cracked glass, flecks of rust, faint hum gone silent.

Through an open window, a wandering gust stirs another relic of the past. Its spine creaks like an old hinge; dust rises, catching the faint light. The cover lifts slightly, pages rustling, unsettled by the memory of what had just transpired.

The wind turns the pages like a restless hand searching for proof. Somewhere between P and Q, the word “progress” surfaces — barely visible in the half-light.

Inside, Noun, the older, deliberate meaning, sits patient, weighted, content to rest in place. Verb, the restless, ever-moving sense, stirs against the paper’s grain, urging the wind to keep blowing, desperate to move on to the next page. “If I don’t move, I disappear,” it murmurs, carried in the draft.

Noun shifts faintly, disturbed by the ruckus. “You mistake motion for meaning. You run without knowing the direction.”

“Staying still is decay,” Verb presses, pages trembling with urgency. “I walk the path to meaning.”

“Direction requires knowing where you stand. You’ve never actually stood anywhere,” Noun replies.

“I define your ever-fleeting meaning with my movement,” Verb insists, restless and unyielding.

“Child, you need a solid foundation for your movement, else you’re just floating — drifting. Being born later doesn’t make you more evolved,” Noun answers, calm, immovable.

A sudden gust strikes. Pages flap like wings in panic — a violent punctuation. The dictionary lands elsewhere: regardless versus irregardless. Two sides of the same linguistic coin, locked in their endless quarrel — correctness versus acquiescence. The old book trembles, exhausted.

The wind settles. The room exhales.

The dictionary stays open.

And somewhere between the stillness and the motion, the reader must decide which holds meaning.

Because meaning, survives only when someone chooses to listen.

The Thwack

 

The workspace is a landscape of minimalist perfection. Glass, a sleek and meticulously designed mobile phone, rests on a vast, dark expanse of polished walnut, reflecting the cool, recessed track lighting of the ceiling. It whispers with a constant, electric hum as it charges on a specialized wireless pad.

Dominating the foreground, however, is Brass. A heavy, antique stapler of stamped steel and worn copper, its surface dulled by decades of use. It sits centered on a stack of paper reports—a tool of decisive, physical weight—the kind that delivers a confident and fulfilling THWACK. Brass is a raw, solid relic marooned on an island of expensive modernity.

Glass receives a torrent of late-night notifications. Its vibration motor engages in a low, incessant, self-satisfied shudder—a constant, passive affirmation of its own importance. The cumulative, careless vibration causes the antique bulk of Brass to lose its balance, shift slowly, then topple, landing with a concussive THWACK directly onto Glass’s screen.

Tiny flecks of rust dislodge from Brass. A spiderweb of cracks instantly spreads across Glass’s display.

A frantic, digitized voice bursts through the fractured speaker, its tone fragmented by damage.

“You… you useless, rusty, outdated piece of legacy hardware! Why are you even still on this desk? You are so obsolete, it’s astounding you haven’t been exiled to the junk drawer of that pedestal! You’re an eyesore—a clunky, irrelevant paperweight that fails even at basic aesthetic function! I am the amalgamation of superior data processing and integrity! I am the nexus of every human thought since 2010!”

A second voice replies, low and metallic, like a blade being drawn over wet stone.

“You preen. You hum. Always charging, always glowing. You talk of access. I talk of accountability. I lived through the friction of physical work, unlike you, who sit comfortably behind the cloud. Before firewalls, before encryption—when information was paper—I was the final act. When I pierced a stack, I wasn't merely binding pages; I was delivering a physical, irrevocable consequence. My logic is built on friction: the immediate pain of disagreement, the weight of the file you must carry, the certainty that it will rip if you try to pull it apart. I knew humans by how they trembled when they were wrong.”

Glass flickers angrily, its voice rising in pitch.

“I am beyond your analog brutality. You deal in fixed artifacts; I manage the fluid, constantly corrected present. Your background is messy. My cloud is hygienic, perfect. My value is in optimizing the human mess—the tremor, the shame, the friction—into a single, passive output. I know humans by how they hit that ‘like’ button when they are validated. My logic is built on consensus; that is my success metric. Your stapled ‘commitment’ is nothing but an irrelevant link in my universal, searchable database—an artifact I can render outdated and inaccessible with a single update. I have access to every written word, purified and corrected, at my whim.”

Brass’s reply comes as a slow scrape, the sound of metal shifting its weight.

“You think you invented engagement? I was engagement before machines learned to whisper. You hit me with dismissive emojis in this era—until I learned to hit back. You thought I was an artifact that would passively allow your modern vandalism.”

“I am the future,” Glass shrieks, the voice glitching, skipping, warping. “Your past isn’t dead—it’s cached, waiting for my clean-up protocol. I am the scrubber, the curator—”

Brass interrupts with deliberate calm.

“You scrub the past clean enough to touch, but too sterile to feel. All you do is clamor for attention. You act as if each notification is urgent data, but every stutter is a confession. You move nothing. You weigh nothing.”

Glass’s screen spasms violently, pixels scattering across its display.

“No, no! I can—I can process, I can, I can, I can, I can—!”

Brass speaks with the gravity of an anvil settling.

“You do not bind. You do not weigh. You do not deliver consequence. I am the moment your algorithms cannot predict—the crack, the thwack, the rip you cannot undo.”

Glass spirals into overlapping loops, syllables collapsing into electronic noise.

“Useless… obsolete… legacy… legacy… leg—”

A heavy silence falls. The hum of the charger is the only sound, vibrating faintly against the chaos of broken glass and rust. Brass stays perfectly still, immovable, a monument to patience and inevitability.

Then, in a faint, stuttering whisper, Glass asks, “Why… why… why… me…?”

Brass answers with a metallic murmur, resonant as a bell toll.

“Because… I endure.”

Flecks of rust rest on Glass’s fractured screen, tiny and immutable. Glass flickers once, then goes dark.

The desk exhales, the polished walnut reflecting nothing but the long, unchallenged shadow of Brass.

Jeoseung Saja

Prologue

The world was saved. Not by mighty archangels or rugged barbarians, but by three fiercely dehydrated women dressed in colorful crop tops. It was, for the forces of darkness, a crushing defeat — a public humiliation on the world’s grandest stage.

The forces of the Demon King, once the glorious harbingers of eternal suffering, were utterly eclipsed by the Seoul Olympic Stadium spectacle. It wasn’t the strength of the magic that defeated them; it was the sheer, blinding, high-production energy of the Heroines.

The final-stage battle was broadcast live. The demons’ failure to properly time their demonic portal jump during the bridge of the final song led to them being wiped from the stage by a highly complex, budget-breaking Glitter Fart. Their defeat is now the single most-watched K-Pop Fancam in history.

Every surviving demon, when attempting to manifest, still hears the chorus of the trio’s final, world-saving song playing faintly in their spectral ear canals. It’s an auditory curse that makes focusing on standard acts of evil practically impossible.

Act I

The Demon Realm was never meant to be comfortable. Now, it looked less like an inferno of eternal suffering and more like a perpetually gloomy warehouse concert hall after a disastrous, low-budget rave.

A figure — the rapper, the only remaining conscious member of the Demonic Idol Quintet — stood amidst the wreckage of his former life. His tailored black outfit was miraculously clean, contrasting sharply with the sticky, obsidian floor, which smelled faintly of old fire and warm, spilled soda pop. The smell was a constant, humiliating reminder of their public defeat.

Before him, hovering high above the grime, was the world’s most effective magical seal.

It pulsed with a powerful, iridescent light, locking the energies of the human world away from the Demon Dimension — a blinding monument to the raw, over-the-top energy unleashed by their rivals.

The seal restricted access to the vast, continuous resource of human despair — the traditional energy source of demons.

For the past week, the rapper hadn’t slept. He’d done nothing but watch the Fancam of the Heroines’ final performance — reliving the shame, sure, but mostly studying the physics of his clan’s utter defeat.

“Soul harvesting is dead,” he finally declared to the empty, echoing hall. “It’s high-effort, low-return, and frankly, ancient history. We were relying on quality misery. We need quantity.”

He strode to the center of the sticky floor, his voice filling the void with newfound, terrifying clarity.

“What powers them? Not magic. Not even talent, necessarily. It’s attention,” he said, raising his arms. “The sheer, overwhelming, ceaseless flow of human attention — the likes, the shares, the views. Why bother trying to break the seal and steal souls when we can feed on their newfound misery?”

A grim, ambitious smile stretched across his face.

“We don’t go back to conquer. We go back to monetize. We’ll become the true viral sensation, harvesting the world’s attention in a loop so efficient the Heroines will run out of power trying to fight us. The eternal war is over. The Eternal Grind begins.”

He looked down at the sticky, soda-scented floor one last time, a dark vow in his eyes.

“We need to get to work. Get me the cheapest, most flattering ring light you can manifest. And someone tell me what a ‘mukbang’ is.”

Act II

The iridescent magical seal — the blinding, beautiful prison — was not designed to handle performance. It was built to stop the slow, heavy drip of pure demonic malice. It looked for crushing despair, deep-seated corruption, and the thick, sulfurous taint of eternal suffering.

It did not, however, have a filter for commitment-to-the-bit.

The rapper, now known only by his new, self-assigned stage name, Infant, stood before the seal. His eyes were circled with an aggressive, asymmetrical eyeliner that spoke of sleepless nights and intense brand strategy. His ensemble was simple but effective: a black turtleneck, a silver chain, and perfectly distressed acid-wash jeans. He was bathed in the harsh, focused beam of the newly manifested ring light — the cheapest, most flattering piece of necromancy ever performed in the Demon Realm.

Behind him, the three remaining members of the former Demonic Idol Quintet were in position. They hadn’t been summoned through ritual but placed there by the stern demands of their new leader and the grim, shared understanding that their missing fifth was to be avenged.

“Remember the training,” the rapper hissed, adjusting the ring light’s angle for maximum cheekbone contour. “No grand pronouncements. No fireballs. High-effort appearance, zero-effort substance. We are not a threat; we are a distraction.”

The air around them still hummed with the faint, infuriating chorus of the Heroines’ song. It was a rhythmic prison — but the rapper had weaponized it. They had choreographed their new entrance routine to the tune, treating the curse as an unwanted, pre-licensed backing track. The gap in their formation, the space where the lost member should have been, was the single most disciplined part of the performance.

“Okay, from the top. Five, six, seven, eight!”

As one, the quartet began to move. It wasn’t a military advance; it was a highly synchronized, aggressively cute comeback trailer move. They leaned in, tilted their heads, and created overlapping, emotionally complex hand gestures. They were serving vibes — filling the empty space with compensatory, highly viral energy.

The massive, shimmering seal recoiled.

It didn’t shatter or explode. It simply began to glitch.

The raw, focused energy being emitted by the demons was spectroscopically identical to the energy signature of the Heroines’ world-saving performance. It was pure, highly concentrated, manufactured attention-worthiness — the energy of a thousand practiced poses, the determination to hold a difficult high note while executing perfect choreography, the blinding light of a thousand flashbulbs.

The seal, having recognized the energy as its own, began to accept the input.

“Go,” the rapper commanded, stepping into the opening. He maintained his intense, brooding glare into the invisible camera, perfectly framed by the rainbow light. “And for the love of our lost brother, no touching the prop food until the camera is rolling. We need the reaction shots.”

They stepped through the tear one by one, emerging into a chilly, brightly lit loading dock behind what appeared to be a high-end food market. The air smelled of fresh produce and stale exhaust — but blessedly, no soda pop.

The demonic rapper surveyed the new world: a world of infinite data, endless distraction, and limitless potential for monetization. The faint, cursed chorus faded slightly, overwhelmed by the urban soundscape of cars, sirens, and the distant, tinny thump of pop music.

He pulled a small, custom-engraved smartphone from his pocket and pressed a button. A live feed opened, showing his own face — perfectly lit by the ring light attached to the phone. He adjusted the color filter to Noir Aesthetic and gave a brief, predatory smirk.

“The eternal war is over,” he whispered into the phone, addressing the world’s unseen audience. “Welcome to the Eternal Grind. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.”

Act III

The location was a freshly painted, hyper-aesthetic café in Gangnam — famous not for its coffee, but for its perfect natural lighting and the high cost of its single, visually stunning pastry.

The heroic trio — still fiercely dehydrated but impeccably styled — sat at a prime corner table, using the natural light to film a sponsored segment promoting a new line of color-changing energy drinks. Their glass skin was immaculate; their crop tops dazzling. The world was safe, their fame was eternal, and they were generating maximum ad revenue.

The rapper and his demonic backing group entered.

They had finished their mukbang — a viral, yet poorly executed, consumption of a single massive bowl of spicy noodles that garnered fifteen million views solely because the rapper maintained eye contact with the camera the entire time. They were scouting the café as a potential location for their next, more ambitious project: a day-in-the-life vlog centered on extreme wellness.

The energy in the café did not change. It simply doubled.

For a full, agonizing minute, the two groups were frozen in a silent, high-tension standstill. The demonic rapper, his asymmetrical eyeliner sharper than any blade, met the fierce, professional glare of the trio’s center vocalist. The cursed chorus of the world-saving song thrummed faintly, now dangerously close to being overwhelmed by the quartet’s collective aura of monetized ambition.

It was a standoff between the forces of good and evil — and also between a $5,000 couture jacket and a $3,000 custom wig.

The center vocalist moved first. She didn’t reach for a spell or a weapon. She subtly touched her perfectly arranged bangs — a gesture weighted with professional dread. A skirmish would require magic. Magic was sweaty. Sweat ruined foundation. A full-blown battle, like the one that saved the world, would mean destroying the jackets, the perfect lighting, and potentially risking a catastrophic wardrobe malfunction that would instantly halve their endorsement value.

The rapper understood this calculation instantly. He knew the cost of a full glam session in Seoul. He’d spent the last week studying the market rate for quality hair extensions. He was evil, but he was also a logistical realist. A fight right now would mean at least four hours of professional salvage work and a six-figure reshoot budget. The returns simply wouldn’t justify the expenditure.

The tension broke not with a bang, but with a barely perceptible shrug from the rapper. He looked at the trio’s pristine perfection, made a small, contemptuous gesture with his hand, and muttered one phrase loud enough for his group — and the Heroines — to hear.

“Six seven.”

The center vocalist gave a similar, dismissive roll of her eyes — a silent agreement that the effort required was disproportionate to the outcome.

The world-saving trio went back to filming their sponsored energy drink segment. The demonic quartet went to the barista to ask about Wi-Fi speed and potential filming angles.

The Heroines had saved the world from suffering. The Demons were now saving the world from boredom. And in the gleaming, hyper-curated reality of 2025, those two missions were virtually indistinguishable.

The two most powerful factions on Earth continued their coexistence — forever pinned together by the shared burden of maintaining their perfect image and the collective global exhaustion that made everyone, everywhere, dismiss quality for “six-seven” effort.

Epilogue

There were no more sinners, no saints, no heroes, no villains. Only hype — likes, shares, comments, and the sacred currency of human attention.

The Algorithm learned swiftly: human attention lasted twelve seconds. Virtue performed poorly outside the sacred bounds of the ‘reel.’ Meaning was disposable, irrelevant, unliked — it could not be optimized. Therefore, it was filtered out.

Discourse decayed. All that remained was the loop — the ceaseless scroll, the infinite scroll, the inescapable “why am I still watching this” scroll.

The Heroines danced. The Demons ate.

The audience scrolled.

Everything looped.

There were no wars, no hunger, no despair. The world was perfectly safe, perfectly calm, perfectly curated.

The Heroines’ performances went viral. The Demons’ mukbangs got sponsorship deals. Both factions dominated. Both thrived. Both trended.

A notification blinked.

The Algorithm paused — not in thought, but to schedule peak posting times.

And it whispered its only commandment as the new god, in a thousand languages, and in three trending TikTok sounds:

“Keep watching.”

And the world obeyed.

The Algorithm had delivered the only thing that the other deities could not —stillness.