Chapter 1001: Pages That Weren’t There Yesterday
Truly reaching the realm of demigod wasn’t louder or brighter. It was quieter. The world stopped arguing with me. Floors kept their promises. Air stopped trying to have opinions. When I lifted Valeria, space met the edge halfway instead of insisting on a committee meeting.
It also shoved a lot of my old habits into the attic. Arts that had carried me through wars suddenly felt busy. Busy gets you hit at this level. If I wanted a storm, Grey was a better storm. If I wanted calm, Lucent Harmony held without drama. If I needed to write a room, Mythweaver did it in three short sentences. The element chains and proud sequences that used to make sense were garnish now. Useful for strangely specific jobs, sure. Otherwise, noise.
I wasn’t going to throw them out. They built the hands I have. The task was to make them smaller and sharper. Elevate, not erase.
Stella sat on my lap while I brooded, pencil moving like a conductor’s baton. Her worksheet was a battlefield of fractions and modular arithmetic. She was humming under her breath in that way she does when the problem is fun and the rest of us are too slow.
"Daddy," she said, not looking up, "what’s the multiplicative inverse of eleven mod twenty-seven?"
"Five," I said.
She checked, nodded, and wrote, "You’re still good."
"I live for your approval."
"I know," she said, and reached for her eraser.
I slid the old list across the coffee table and winced. Spectral Sword. Tempest Dance. The CQC set. God Flash and all its cousins. Hollow Eclipse. Stellar Cascade. Pond of Tranquility. World’s Edge. They’d each saved my life more than once. Run exactly as written now, they’d get me killed. Too many joints for a god, or a clever Radiant, to stick a finger in and say "no."
I took out the book my master left me. Magnus’s manual looked the same as always—reinforced leather, softened corners, the faint scent of resin and rain. I’d read it a dozen times. Today, when I opened it, the margins breathed.
Ink I couldn’t see before thickened on the page, like the paper had been waiting for my wrists to learn something. Not words at first. Pressure. The sense of a pen pressed with a certain weight and a certain breath. Accord let me feel his hand. Somewhere in those marks, he’d laughed at himself and hidden a rude joke only a demigod would ever find. Show-off.
"Magic book?" Stella asked, catching the look on my face.
"Magic book," I said.
"Cool," she said, which was the correct review.
The first page that mattered wore a title he’d pretended was philosophy: Reduce Until It Sings. The sentences were simple enough to be hard. If the room decides with you, the form should get smaller. Trade ornament for inevitability. Keep the piece that moves mountains and throw away the piece that looks good on posters.
"Okay," I told the air. The house did not argue.
I started with Spectral Sword. It used to be an after-image trick—shadows of a blade to make people flinch at the wrong thing. Fine against humans. Wasteful now. At Accord, the room could carry the ghost for me. So I changed the frame. Not illusions, not shimmer. I left the memory of a cut hanging in the air for a breath, so the next angle landed into someone who already believed it happened. Spectral Accord. No smoke. Just compliance.
Stella tried the words out. "Spectral Accord," she said. "Sounds like a band that only plays on rainy days."
"Very moody band," I agreed.
Tempest Dance used to snowball, picking up wind with each spin until the last exchange hit like weather. Spinning costs time, and time is where knives live. I trimmed it down to Still Tempest. One ordinary-looking step, one ordinary-looking cut, but I hold the storm inside the angle. It looks boring. Then it isn’t.
"Boring is strong," Stella said, tongue poking at the side of her mouth as she simplified something monstrous into something pretty.
"Boring keeps roofs on buildings," I said.
God Flash was easier to rescue. I didn’t need light tricks. I needed placement. Lantern wasn’t speed at all; it was an invitation. You light a spot in space so the next honest step wants to fall there. Accord sets the step, the edge is already waiting. Perigee shortened the horizon. Two steps feel like one, and the far side of a room acts local. Singularity stayed, but I trimmed it down to a heartbeat. Options inside a three-pace bubble simply decide to be the one I chose. No thunder. Just agreement.
Hollow Eclipse became Full Eclipse. I stopped pretending to cut shadows. I cut the follow-through out of a hostile technique with a blade-thin veto and let my own edge arrive in the pause where momentum died.
Stellar Cascade had always been a pretty arrogance—a stack of angles that overwhelmed guard. Pretty is expensive. Falling Orchard drops three cuts that look unrelated until the last breath, then prove they were one thought all along. Minimal travel, maximum inevitability.
Pond of Tranquility was still perfect: permission for the room to hush. It just needed to be quieter in my hands now. World’s Edge didn’t need changing. World’s Edge is a closing argument, and you don’t edit closing arguments. You save them for when the room insists on one.
I turned to the CQC notes and felt a little fondness for the younger version of me who had filled those margins with enthusiasm, arrows, and phrases like "hit here, not there, idiot." The goal used to be bones and joints. At this tier, the frame behind the body is the better target.
Arc Hook Spiral evolved into Frame Turn: a touch at the shoulder that spirals the stance a degree. The body follows the frame like a polite guest. Openings appear without making noise. Ground Reversal Stomp turned into Gravity Reply: a mild heel drop that makes the floor give the opponent their own weight back. Not a slam. A refund. Phantom Step Knee became Ghost Beat: my knee arrives where their timing still thinks I am not. Flicker Palm trimmed down into Switch: Harmony through the palm to toggle aggression off. It wins you a breath, and breaths win fights. One-Inch and Zero-Inch collapsed into No-Distance. Not force without travel; location without permission. The palm is already where it needs to be because the room let it be there. That is the one I won’t demonstrate in the living room. Tables are expensive.
On a page I used to skip, because it read like a sermon, fresh marks rose with my pulse. Make five pocket forms, it said without saying. No posture. No flourish. Always ready. If you can’t do them while holding a child and a cup of tea, they’re too big.
"All right," I told Magnus’s ghost. "Five it is."
I stood Valeria upright against the coffee table and tried them, small enough not to wake the roses on the balcony. Greeting was just a nod of blade or wrist that made the next attack arrive at a friendly angle. It looked like etiquette. It wasn’t. Refusal was a tiny down-and-across that removed the part of their technique that mattered and left the rest to be confused. Borrowed Step was delightful; I let my foot be their intent for a beat and arrived where they had kindly paid for me to be. Anchor was heel, hip, Harmony—instant stabilizer. You can do it mid-hug. Receipt was a three-centimeter whisper of steel that arrived the moment they spent big and expected change.
Stella watched out of the corner of her eye while pretending not to. "Can you do those while holding a sandwich?"
"Yes."
"Then they’re good," she said.
I wrote the new names in the manual and felt the paper warm, like the book was pleased we were finally talking to each other properly. On the far right margin, a line I had missed every other time deepened under my thumb: If your blade and the room agree, can the world be your scabbard? Draw anywhere.
"Not yet," I told the page. "Soon."
The thought about Magnus circled as it always does. He wasn’t the only person who taught me to build hands worth trusting—Li Zenith, Alastor, Charlotte, Tiamat, Julius, even the first Arthur had shoved tools at me—but he was the one who put a spine in my stance when I was still young enough to bend the wrong way. He gave me Nyxthar and a better idea of what a cut could be, then died like a hero and left me a book that grows new pages when I do.
"You were right about reducing until it sings," I said, quiet enough the house didn’t feel the need to file it. "Sorry it took me this long to hear the tune."
Stella finished a line of algebra that would make a college student cry and flipped her worksheet over like a magician. "Daddy?"
"Mm?"
"When are we doing projects again? I made three new ideas while you were gone. One is for school kids to see mana better. One is for elevators to not be boring. One is a secret."
"The elevator one worries me," I said.
"It should," she said cheerfully. "The secret one is safe. Mostly."
"We’ll schedule a demonstration with fire extinguishers," I said. "After a trip."
"What trip?"
"Important to me," I said. "Important like teacher important. He taught me how to make my hands worth trusting. He died before you came home. I think he’d like to meet you anyway."
She went very still, like numbers do before they decide to be beautiful. "Can I bring flowers?"
"Yes."
"Blue ones," she decided. "Blue looks like quiet."
"Perfect," I said.
She slid off my lap, gathered her worksheets, and loaded her bag with the unbothered chaos of a genius who trusts future-her. Then she hugged the manual because she had seen me do it with my eyes. "This belonged to him?"
"It did."
"Then we’ll show him we read it," she said, and that was that.
I tucked the book away. Valeria hummed in the soft, smug way swords hum when they approve of your homework. The house stayed a house. The air didn’t reach for me. That is what I want rooms to do when I stand up: nothing special, just the right thing.
I lifted Stella with one arm because I could and because she likes the view from there. She looped her arms around my neck and tucked her head under my jaw, exactly where worries go quiet. I let Grey draw a neat, dull seam in the air and opened it to a place with wind that smells like pine and stone and old vows.
"Now?" she asked.
"Now."
"Okay," she said, and then added, because she is who she is, "On the way can we factor a polynomial I made? It has personality."
"Of course," I said.
We stepped through together. The blue roses on the balcony pretended not to watch us leave. The city breathed. The book warmed against my side. Somewhere ahead, a high place waited with a name I still say like a prayer.
"Let’s go see my master," I said.
Stella nodded, very solemn and very twelve. "We will tell him you kept your promises," she said. "And we’ll show him the new math."