Chapter 25: The Firgezzan Revelation.
The Mythology Part 2 has also been uploaded.
If you would like to read the mythology of the world of Oikluemon,
please head over to my Character POV work.
The Fairy King’s study felt wrong. Not smaller. Not dimmer. Just… misaligned. As if something about me no longer fit the space.
I sat across from him, the grimoire closed in my lap. My fingers rested on its cover, not gripping, not relaxed. Aware.
Caelwyn had left. Quietly. Too quietly. Now it was just us.
“Tell me,” the Fairy King said.
So I did. Not everything. Not cleanly.
I spoke of the white space, if it could even be called that. Of the voice that had no edge, no warmth, no judgment. Cassonia had not threatened me. That had made it worse.
I described the thing that followed. The shape that wasn’t wrong enough to be monstrous. Almost human. Almost familiar.
“I knew it wasn’t real,” I said. “That didn’t matter.”
His gaze didn’t leave mine.
“The village,” I continued. “Burning. The forge cold. My father…”
My voice caught. Not because of the memory. Because of how easily it returned.
“As if it never left,” I said quietly.
Silence stretched.
“And?” the Fairy King asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What did you do?”
I hesitated.
“I stopped fighting it.”
A flicker of interest.
“That should have broken you.”
“It almost did.”
I looked down at my hands.
“It showed me everything I was afraid of losing,” I said. “But it couldn’t show me what I refused to let go.”
His expression shifted subtle, but real.
“What did you hold on to?”
“My father’s voice.” I swallowed. “My mother’s too. Not as they were in the illusion. As they were.”
I met his eyes.
“It wasn’t something the trial gave me. It was already there.”
The Fairy King nodded once.
“The elemental amplifies truth,” he said. “It does not create it.”
“I figured that out.”
A pause. Then…
“The grimoire.”
I opened it. The pages stared back at us. Blank. Not empty. Structured.
The faint blue margins. The panel borders. Clean. Precise. Familiar in a way this world had no right to be.
The Fairy King leaned forward. His expression tightened. “I cannot read this.”
That got my attention.
“What do you mean?”
“To my eyes, it shifts,” he said. “Fragments of Seal-Script. Then nothing. It refuses to become whole.”
I frowned slightly.
“That’s strange,” I said. “Caelwyn didn’t have that problem.”
Something in his expression sharpened.
“What did she see?”
“Structure. Boundaries. She called it a framework.”
A pause. Then…
“Of course she did.”
I stilled.
“What does that mean?”
“She is not of cosmic origin,” he said. “Beings like myself are formed from primordial light. We perceive magic in its purest state.”
His gaze returned to the page.
“This is not pure.”
A quiet weight settled behind his words. “To her, it appears as structure,” he continued. “Something that can be understood.”
“And to you?”
“It refuses to resolve.”
I looked down at the page again. To me, it was simple. Paper. Then it wasn’t meant for him. I closed the grimoire. The leather was warm.
Another thought surfaced, sharper this time.
“The archives,” I said. “There was a record. About Firgezzan.”
His eyes shifted.
“The river of Forgetting.”
“It said every soul drinks from it before reincarnation.” I leaned forward slightly. “So why didn’t I?”
Silence. Not hesitation. Consideration. When he spoke, his voice had changed.
“Because you were not meant to forget.”
That answer came too easily. My grip tightened.
“That’s not an explanation.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
“Then give me one.”
For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t. Then he stood.
“Firgezzan does not simply erase memory,” he said, moving toward the window. “It limits what a soul can become.”
A cold weight settled in my chest.
“Limits how?”
“It binds potential to the capacity of the body.” He turned slightly. “Without it, a soul is… unregulated.”
I didn’t like that word.
“What happens to someone without it?”
“They burn,” he said simply. “Or they break. Most never survive long enough to understand what they are becoming.”
My pulse slowed.
“And I didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He studied me. Not like a ruler. Like a problem.
“Because you were built to endure it.”
A short breath escaped me. “Built.”
“Prepared,” he corrected. “Across lifetimes.”
“I don’t remember any of that.”
“You remember enough.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
Silence. Then...
“What does that make me?”
He didn’t answer immediately. When he did, the word settled like something irreversible.
“The Inkborn.”
I almost laughed.
“Of course I am.”
“This is not a title,” he said. “It is a condition.”
“Sounds like a problem.”
“It is.”
That surprised me. He stepped closer.
“A soul that has not drunk from Firgezzan has no natural limit. No boundary. No safeguard.” His voice lowered. “Do you understand what that means?”
I held his gaze.
“It means if I lose control, I don’t just hurt myself.”
“Yes.”
The word landed hard. I looked down at the grimoire.
“At the trial…” I said slowly, “it wasn’t testing power.”
“No.”
“It was testing whether I could tell what was real.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because without that,” he said, “you would not survive what comes next.”
That should have been reassuring. It wasn’t. I opened the grimoire again. Still blank. Still waiting.
“If I’d known,” I said quietly, “I would’ve just asked for this from the beginning.”
“No.”
The word cut cleanly through the room. I looked up.
“Even if you had asked,” he said, “you would not have received this.”
“Why not?”
A pause. Then…
“Because someone already tried.”
The air shifted.
“The previous creator,” he said. “Gregory.”
The name lingered.
“He asked for the same thing. A medium to shape magic as he once shaped stories.”
My grip tightened.
“And he got it?”
“A version of it.”
Something in his tone made that distinction matter.
“It responded to him,” he continued. “But only as far as he understood it.”
I frowned.
“And me?”
His gaze sharpened.
“What you hold now is not stronger because it was given.”
A beat.
“It is stronger because you are.”
Silence pressed in.
“Gregory tried to force it,” he added quietly.
A chill ran down my spine.
“And?”
The Fairy King’s voice dropped.
“It answered him.”
That was worse than I expected.
“What happened?”
His eyes held mine.
“Something that should not have existed.”
The room felt smaller. I closed the grimoire slowly.
“What happens if I get it wrong?” I asked.
This time, he didn’t answer immediately.
“Then you will create something that should not exist.”
My chest tightened.
“And I can fix it?”
“No.”
The word was final.
“You may not be able to undo it.”
Silence.
Heavy.
Absolute.
He moved toward the door.
“One more thing, Elsbeth.”
I looked up.
“Creation without limits does not begin with intention.”
I frowned.
“Then what does it begin with?”
His expression didn’t change.
“Impulse.”
Then he left. The door closed behind him with a soft, final sound.
Silence filled the room. I opened the grimoire again. Blank pages. Clean lines. Perfect borders. The same paper. The same structure. My fingers traced the edge of a panel. I knew this. Not as magic. As habit.
As memory. A small desk. A dim lamp. Ink staining my fingers. Deadlines I never met. Page after page. Stories pulled from nothing. I let out a slow breath.
“In another life… this was just paper.”
My hand hovered over the page. Not drawing. Just remembering. The weight of the pen. The hesitation before the first line. The certainty that once it began…
it couldn’t be undone. I closed the grimoire. Not yet. But the thought stayed with me.
In that other world, I filled pages like these without thinking.
And now… in a world where those pages might shape reality…
I was still holding the same paper.
Only this time,
it was waiting for something real.
What will Elsbeth first draw in the grimoire...
And most importantly.
Will she succeed?
Next time, same time, same place.
