The vow had been spoken. The mirror had shattered. The Lie had become real.
And now it demanded a price.
Adrian dropped to his knees as the world around him convulsed. The Temple did not shake, but something deeper did — something inside him.
It started as a pressure behind his eyes. Then in his chest. Then in his bones.
A burning. No — not fire. Friction. Force. Rearrangement.
He tried to inhale and felt his lungs lock. His fingers clawed at the stone floor, nails splitting.
Then it hit.
Pain, not from injury, but from integration.
The Law wasn't just bound to him — it was carving itself into his being.
Invisible blades seared into his spine, scoring lines of contradiction down his vertebrae. His blood boiled. Not metaphorically. He could feel it — bubbling, reshaping. Each heartbeat was a hammer strike against his soul.
This is what it means to be Realizer, he thought. To be rewritten and survive it.
He convulsed. His arms twisted beneath him, muscles spasming.
His nerves screamed. Symbols he couldn't understand flooded his mind — fragments of thoughts not his own.
Contradictions, reversals, names that never were.
And beneath it all: the sensation of something settling into place.
Like a door had been opened behind his ribs — and a throne dragged inside.
He was shaking now, teeth clenched, blood pooling in his mouth. But still, he held on.
"Finish it," he gasped. "If you're going to break me—then break me."
The pain peaked… and then plateaued.
A pressure lifted. His vision stopped pulsing. The air felt thicker, heavier — but breathable again.
He reached up slowly, chest heaving, and touched his face.
Not raw flesh. Not bone.
Skin.
His own skin.
Smooth. Real. The same face he had always worn — remade.
He traced along his cheek, jaw, temple.
There was no scar. No mark. But it felt… different.
Not new. Just rewoven.
As if the body had remembered itself.
He lowered his hand and exhaled.
"I'm still me," he said softly.
And for a moment, he believed it.
But deep inside, where his thoughts no longer ended cleanly, the Lie waited — calm and coiled, perfectly still.
Watching.
The silence felt heavier now.
Adrian sat still on the stone floor of the Hall of Silent Wards, breath slowing, blood cooling, body trembling with the memory of pain.
He lifted his gaze.
The Scripture of Fractured Truth hovered where he had left it — above the ritual circle, suspended midair. Its cracked glass cover glinted faintly in the flickering blue flame. Fracture lines shimmered like frozen lightning.
Then it moved.
Slowly. Deliberately.
The book rotated in the air, the splintered mirror surface turning toward him as though recognizing its new bearer.
And then it drifted forward, one page at a time fluttering open as it came.
Adrian didn't move.
He watched as it stopped a few feet in front of him, floating at eye level. The cover snapped fully open, revealing a page filled with text — but not in any written language.
The ink was alive. Shifting. Rotating. Refusing to settle.
And yet… as he looked at it, he understood.
Not because he read it — but because the Lie he had consumed, the false truth embedded in his soul, translated meaning out of madness.
The page glowed faintly. Then restructured.
It spoke, not aloud, but through perception — truth wrapped in contradiction.
𝘚𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 – Binding Complete
𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐒 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐖 — Adrian Vale
Realizer of Contradiction • Living Lie
[IDENTITY]
• Name: Adrian Vale
• Age (Biological): ?
• Age (Chronological): 138
• Race: Living Lie
• Title: Survivor of the Soul Ocean
• Mental Status: Stable
[REALIZATION STATUS]
• Bound Law: 𝙇𝙖𝙬 𝙤𝙛 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣
• Scripture: Scripture of Fractured Truth
• Rank: 𝟭𝟮 – 𝐏𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭
• Progress Until Next Rank: 4%
[MUTATION]
• Reflective Tear Ducts (ON – manually toggleable)
Crystalline tears of mirrored glass weep under stress or contradiction. Each droplet reflects not the world — but warped truths, false histories, or dreamlike delusions believed by the viewer.
[HIDDEN BENEFIT]
• Lie Detection —
Instinctively senses all spoken falsehoods, regardless of the speaker's intent or belief.
Adrian blinked.
The page shivered, as if made of paper that didn't obey normal laws. The lines of text unraveled, then twisted back into new shapes — not changing meaning, just refining how he could understand it.
It's a living interface, he thought. And it's bound to me completely.
A second page turned, slower this time. As if judging whether he was ready.
System Functions Unlocked
▸ Artifact Binding Capacity: 10 slots
▸ Contradiction Appraisal — Analyze objects and beings through logical inconsistency
The book hovered quietly, pages still shifting like they were breathing.
Adrian exhaled. Slowly.
Adrian squinted at the floating book like it had just broken the rules of reality and expected applause.
The Scripture of Fractured Truth hovered silently in front of him. Cracked glass. Faded ink. An ancient, sacred-looking tome. But its pages moved on their own, and the text realigned itself as he stared — changing based on how he thought, how he felt.
"Are you some sort of AI?" he asked aloud. "Because that's what this feels like."
No answer. Just a faint shimmer across the surface of the page.
"And is this supposed to be like an RPG game or something?" He narrowed his eyes. "Because if it is… it's a pretty fucked-up one."
It still didn't respond.
But the page stabilized.
𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐒 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐖 — Adrian Vale
Realizer of Contradiction • Living Lie
[IDENTITY]
• Name: Adrian Vale
• Age (Biological): ?
• Age (Chronological): 138
• Race: Living Lie
• Title: Survivor of the Soul Ocean
• Mental Status: Stable
[REALIZATION STATUS]
• Bound Law: Law of Contradiction
• Scripture: Scripture of Fractured Truth
• Rank: 12 – Psychologist
• Progress Until Next Rank: 4%
[MUTATION]
• Reflective Tear Ducts (ON – manually toggleable)
Tears of mirrored glass form under emotional or logical stress. Each drop reflects a distortion — a false belief, a memory that never happened, or a lie someone needs to see.
[HIDDEN BENEFIT]
• Lie Detection
Automatically identifies spoken falsehoods — even when the speaker believes them to be true.
Adrian read it twice.
Then a third time.
He didn't know what disturbed him more — the fact that it made perfect sense, or that the book seemed to know him this well.
Lie Spawn.
Not human anymore. Not truly. He'd rebuilt himself with a lie and the Law had accepted it.
138 years.
"Twenty-eight lived. One hundred ten… survived."
That wasn't just a number. That was a sentence carved into time.
Psychologist.
He almost laughed.
"That's what I used to be. Now it's a title under a goddamn supernatural cult hierarchy."
Still, it made sense. The Rank shaped itself based on who he was — or who he pretended to be.
He flipped the page.
System Functions Unlocked
▸ Artifact Binding Capacity – 10 Slots
▸ Item Appraisal – Analyze the structure, purpose, and hidden properties of physical items and spiritual artifacts
Adrian tilted his head.
"Item Appraisal. So I can read objects now."
That wasn't strange — he'd seen appraisal techniques in his past studies — but this was different. This didn't rely on energy resonance or spiritual sensitivity.
The bone dagger still lay on the ritual floor — pale, sharpened, and quietly waiting.
Adrian stepped closer.
He hadn't noticed it at first. Too focused on surviving the Ritual. Too overwhelmed by the Scripture binding. But now, with everything settling into place, he could feel it clearly.
Cold. Heavy. Final.
It didn't radiate power like the Scripture. It radiated absence — as if something had been removed from the world, and this blade was what had been left behind.
He narrowed his eyes and invoked the function silently.
The Scripture flickered to life.
Item Appraisal – Complete
Name: Death Fang
Rank: Ascender-Class Weapon
Material: Lost Echo of the Rank 7 Realizer of the Death Path
Authority: Law of Death
Primary Ability — Wither Wound
• On contact with a living being below Ascender Rank, the affected body part ages 50 years instantly.
• On second contact: the entire body part collapses into ash.
• Effective against incorporeal entities and damages the soul.
• Aging and healing effects do not apply to souls.
Secondary Ability — False Mercy
• Touching the hilt initiates physical healing.
• The more severe the injury, the less effective the regeneration.
• Healing fades if not reinforced. Minor wounds recover fully. Major wounds resist closure.
Adrian blinked slowly.
"So that's why it could cut my face… while I was still in soul form."
His fingers flexed at the memory — the unnatural sensation of pain in a body that shouldn't have been able to bleed.
He crouched beside the weapon, exhaling.
"I shouldn't be so reckless," he muttered. "From now on, I'm appraising anything that looks like an artifact before I use it."
He reached down and picked it up carefully.
The cold met his skin instantly — not painful, but grounding. Solid. Like holding a concept that was never meant to be touched.
"If I'd been in a human body," he said, studying the edge, "that cut would've turned my face to ash."
A moment of silence.
Then a dry, bitter smile.
"That would've been awkward."
His eyes lingered on the material line:
Lost Echo of a Rank 7 Realizer of Death.
"So you're what's left of someone who died wielding a god's Law," he murmured. "No wonder you remember how to hurt things that aren't alive."
He turned the blade in his hand.
It felt right. Balanced. Not hungry — just aware.
Not a weapon of ambition.
A weapon of consequence.
"Death Fang," he said softly. "Quiet overpowered."
The Scripture pulsed once, registering the successful reading.
He drew in a breath, steady now.
"Artifact one. Bind."
The dagger glowed faintly for a moment — then vanished, absorbed into his system.
It was his now.