thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
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11 d, 4 h
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Veyr stands over me, the crystallized silver seal of his true name blazing in his fist like a captured star. The dead-ink sun above us pulses, bleeding a sickly, erratic grey light across the ruined ivory tiles of the grand archive. "I am going to rewrite you," he says. The words do not echo. They sink into the marrow of the room, heavy with the undeniable weight of a syntactical absolute. He is the Arch-Librarian. He holds the pen. He has the authority to reach into my core, rip out the red…-
19.6 K • Completed
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The dead-ink sun does not merely fall; it inhales the world. The vaulted ceiling of the grand archive dissolves into a swirling, absolute vacuum of black. The gravitational pull is a physical violence, tearing the remaining ivory-bone tiles from the floor, ripping the breath from my lungs. The vortex is descending to consume the East Wing, rushing to fill the massive, catastrophic void left behind by the destruction of our seven-year marriage anchor. I am on my knees in the dust, my chest a hollow,…
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19.6 K • Completed
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Oris Birth Kiln — Thirty-Four Years Before the Ledger Heist The first thing Nyra does is try to kill me. She is not fully fired. One black ceramic arm remains the dull grey of unfinished clay, and the gold at her shoulder joint is still liquid. Yet when the kiln door opens, she crosses the platform in three silent steps and drives a blank ceramic key toward my heart. I catch her wrist. The impact rings through both our bodies. Her four small eyes ignite in pairs. Gold above. Crimson below. They do…-
17.9 K • Completed
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The royal halberd swings, a crescent of polished iron cleaving through the ash-choked air. I do not inhale. I have no lungs to fill with the falling gray snow of Oris, only a heat core that spikes to a blinding, high-pitched hum behind my ribs. The heavy iron-bound ownership ledger is clutched flush against my chest, the stolen weight of ten thousand lives pressing into my blue-white porcelain skin. Smash. The impact does not hit me. Nyra steps into the arc of the blade. She does not block with a…
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17.9 K • Completed
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The drop is a sensory void, a rushing blindness of screaming wind and falling ash. I expect the impact to shatter my legs, to fracture my blue-white glaze into a thousand useless pieces. But Nyra twists us in mid-air. She takes the brunt of the landing. We crash into a mountain of discarded porcelain. The Scrap Abyss. The kingdom’s graveyard for broken tools. Shards of old, dead Porcelai crunch beneath her boots as she rolls, absorbing the kinetic force, shielding my fragile frame with her own body.…
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17.9 K • Completed
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My hand jerks back from the freshly soldered gold on her forearm. The red text of the assassination directive is still searing across my optical processors, a violent, lingering afterimage burned into my vision. Assassinate Senn upon activation of the Royal Seal. The data playback was raw, unencrypted, and absolute. It sits heavy and cold in the center of my heat core, a baseline protocol buried beneath thirty-four years of Vanguard conditioning. Nyra doesn’t ask what I saw. Her four golden eyes track…
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17.9 K • Completed
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The emergency failsafe menu blinks a blinding, violent red against the brass interface of the Enamel Vault. The Royal Seal pulse is a localized digital tsunami, currently at ninety-nine percent execution. If it breaches the console, it will flood the physical data conduit and strike Nyra’s proximity sensors. Her base-level execution code will immediately override the white independence key I just placed in her chest. She will crush my throat before her conscious mind can even register the command. Die…
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17.9 K • Completed
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The amber hologram stutters, collapsing into a shower of digital sparks before vanishing back into the golden seams of Nyra's abdomen. I hit the cold, reinforced glass of the stasis tube behind me. My ceramic spine collides with the cylinder with a sharp clack, but I barely register the impact. The frigid temperature of the preservation fluid seeps through my blue-white glaze, a violent contrast to the searing, over-clocked heat still racing through my internal wires. Build her black. Build her so no one…
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17.9 K • Completed
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Steel-tipped fingers dig into the soft, white-glazed seam of my throat. I do not breathe, but my internal cooling fans scream, an agonizing, high-pitched mechanical whine as my core temperature plummets into terror. Nyra’s grip is absolute. The devastating strength of a royal assassin, designed to crush porcelain and sever gold wire with a single, calculated squeeze. I stare into her four eyes. The desperate, starving devotion that had anchored me only seconds ago is entirely gone. The golden irises…
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17.9 K • Completed
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Nyra’s steel-tipped fingers do not tremble as she raises her hand toward my face. The vacant, mathematically perfect amber of her eyes offers no hesitation, no sorrow, no recognition. The white independence key slotted into her collarbone continues to flash a violent, rhythmic blood-red, painting the frozen ambient fog of the Enamel Vault with the color of an execution. Every choice I have ever made has birthed a new, impossible tragedy. If I fight her, I must destroy the only creature who has ever…
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17.9 K • Completed
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