37|-|3R34L

"7|-|3_6L!7(H_ !5 4 73RR!fY!N6 3N7!7Y..
[4ND_H!5_F0LL0W3R5_4R3_P4!NFULLY_4NN0Y!N6]...
4V0!D_7|-|3M...!F_Y0U_C4N...
[!_W!LL_H3LP_Y0U_PR3V3N7]... The Glitch Infection."

- Commentary, Tales of the Transmitted Strange

The night wind shrieked through the barren pine boughs of Stratum III, carrying a bone-chilling cold and the heavy, rotting stench of ash.

After sending Lugn down the slope to rendezvous with the detachment of fifty men returning from turning over the cultists's corpses to the Church, Sevran had roughly twenty minutes alone amidst these ruined sacrificial stones.

Sevran sat with his back pressed against a gray boulder, his calloused fingers lightly tracing the edge of the Ars Daemonica parchment. The faint flicker of a glowing red ember cast its light across his gaunt face, illuminating bizarre glyphs inscribed in ink as thick and black as dried blood.

On this ledger... there were two entities he had never once awakened across all his previous lifetimes.

One was the small feline demon at Index #2051.

And the other... sat at Index #2054: 7|-|3_6L!7(H_.

Those characters were warped, jittering like a glitched tear upon the parchment itself. No sacrifice requirements, no summoning parameters, only fractured strings warning of an endless loop. Staring at that twisted name for more than three seconds was enough to make his eardrums ring with a shrill whine, his chest tightening as though seized by an invisible fist. He felt a terrifying, ancient, aberrant pressure, far surpassing even the raw power of the blood sacrifice of three continents he had once unleashed in the madness of a bygone dream.

He shifted his gaze to the remaining creature:

Index #2051: Lesser Demonic Cat, Dancote
Sacrifice Required: Anything.
Note: A feline bearing demonic wings and a small horn; remarkably adorable.

Note 2: It only lies around or trails behind you; appears entirely devoid of power.

A demon whose required sacrifice was "anything"? Such a condition was utterly absurd in a world where every drop of blood was measured down to the grain. Yet according to the foundational principles of demonology recorded in the appendix, if one could not present the sacrifice directly, the summoner was required to inscribe a compatible ritual array to unlock the spatial conduit.

All right, Sevran thought. Let us test this creature to see if my ability to commune with the Demon Realm still functions smoothly in this reality.

Picking up a hard chunk of charcoal by the embers, he stepped over to a flat stone slab paces away. Fingers that had once been pulverized moved with cold, mechanical precision. It took nearly ten painstaking minutes for the concentric circles and intricate azimuth bearings to take shape.

The moment his finger pressed the final stroke into the array's core, the air shifted violently.

The pitch-black charcoal lines ignited into brilliant crimson, like fresh blood welling from an open wound. The space above the stone warped, collapsing into a small vortex that rasped with a dry shriek. The thick stone beneath the array silently disintegrated into fine ash, vanishing without leaving a single pebble behind.

From the faint gray smoke billowing after the material collapse, a tiny creature materialized.

True to the description, a male calico cat, his fur a chaotic patchwork of rust-orange, snow-white, and coal-black with a pair of stubby little horns sprouting from his head, and two tiny bat wings folded clumsily against his back, looking so awkward it bordered on comical... Sevran stepped forward warily, parting his lips to channel a syllable of psionic resonance.

Yet the cat did not even bother to guard itself. It let out a long yawn, padded forward with sluggish grace, and hopped straight onto his lap. Finding a warm hollow against his ragged sheepskin coat, he curled into a warm, mottled ball and closed his eyes to sleep.

Its breathing rose and fell in steady rhythm.

Sevran froze. Across all the formidable, bloodthirsty demons he had dragged from the abyss, not a single one had ever been this brazen or this lazy.

A dry, razor-sharp sound rasped from behind the mask, like steel scraping against glass:

"That lesser demon will only fight once you execute a formal pact with it. But I trust an ambitious man like you has no intention of passing over an Archdemon like myself for a useless pet? So then, when do you intend to sign with me?"

Lucidas, the Archdemon of Mind, spoke.

His immaculate, crease-free black suit formed a stark, unnerving contrast against his dead-white porcelain mask. No nose, no mouth; only a colossal, ice-cold eye dominating the center.

"Why summon such dead weight?"

Sevran did not pull his hand back. He continued to stroke gently down the creature's spine, between the two tiny, folded bat wings.

"Curiosity," Sevran replied, his voice flat.

Yet behind his sunken eyes, the dark gears of an impossible gamble were quietly locking into place.

He was certainly not foolish enough to squander his lone soul-binding slot on an entity devoid of combat utility in this brutal Stratum III. He looked up into Lucidas's singular eye, his voice dropping low:

"I agree to strike a deal. But I want the contract placed in escrow. I will stake an imprint of my soul as collateral to defer the formal signing. Should I perish while this provisional pact remains active, you may dive into my penultimate dream - a complete contingency plan for my demise is already laid out there. Any new variables will be recorded directly into the deepest layers of my thoughts."

Lucidas's eye narrowed, optical rings spinning in slow calculation:

"You understand the contract laws of the void far better than I expected, mortal. Very well. I grant you three days. Precisely three days, then the primary covenant descends. That is your deadline."

Sevran nodded, his grip tightening on the parchment, his eyes inadvertently glancing down at the corrupted entry at the bottom. He spoke without thinking:

"And the one named 7|-|3_6L--[3RR0R_#?!]...????!?????"

"5!L3N(3!"

The surrounding space felt as though struck by an invisible sledgehammer.

The temperature plummeted in a fraction of a second. A thin crust of rime across the stones froze into razor-sharp spikes of ice. A suffocating psychic pressure bore down from Lucidas, grinding against Sevran's bones until he had to grit his teeth to keep from collapsing. The singular eye on the porcelain mask dilated to its limit, hairline black veins spreading across the polished white surface.

For the first time, the archdemon's voice lacked its mocking detachment, replaced by raw fury mingled with primal dread:

"Y0U_4R3_F0RB!DD3N_FR0M speaking that name! Speak it, and this entire continent will be contaminated instantly - and both you and I along with it! I have read your thoughts, and I will warn you only once: He does not belong to our Demon Realm. Never attempt to summon him, nor even harbor that name in your mind. His deranged zealots are tearing through reality trying to drag him in, but those vermin have never once succeeded."

A suffocating silence lingered for a few heartbeats before the pressure dissipated. Lucidas adjusted the lapels of his black coat, regaining his usual aloof demeanor:

"Now then, I have something to ask you."

"?."

"You utilized the Tales of the Transmitted Strange to search for an answer, didn't you? Why did it fail?"

Sevran remained silent.

Tales of the Transmitted Strange - a singular tome drifting across the fractures of reality. When a traveler gathered enough trials and agony along the road, the book converted those experiences into a manifestation of a wish. Yet it never granted what you initially demanded; it merely charted the path toward true peace within the soul.

Like a starving man who wished for a bucket full of fish, the book would merely toss a snapped fishing rod at his feet. Yet by some inexplicable design, that broken rod would always hook the cleanest fish from the foulest bog without need of bait. And in the final breath of his life, that weathered, broken rod would be the lone artifact that allowed his soul to close its eyes in quiet peace.

Meeting Lucidas's probing eye, Sevran's cracked lips parted in a faint, cold smile:

"No... It succeeded. Completely."

Lucidas could not comprehend. He sent a psychic probe sweeping through Sevran's surface consciousness, yet all the archdemon recovered was a hazy memory: a round candy wrapped in crumpled, faded gray paper, utterly worthless, barely distinguishable from rubbish.

Only a scrap of candy.

Lucidas concluded that Sevran had simply gone mad after ten thousand dreams. Even though the demon had never handled that esoteric book himself, by every baseline law of reality, an artifact of conceptual intent could never forge a physical object across the boundary of a dream. He clicked his tongue, casting the matter aside:

"Have it your way. If we adhere to your old designs, our next move is simple: dominate the minds of the Vark-Aethel nobility, bait them into an enclosure to harvest enough lives to summon Vabel; then let Vabel devour the dragon to force a temporary evolution into an archdemon, and finally butcher all three continents... correct?"

Sevran offered no reply.

He knew the cost all too well. To summon Vabel, the sacrifice required magical entities - meaning he would have to hunt and enslave magically gifted races like the Elfine and the Ensowl. Marching troops across oceans to storm their homelands had been suicidal during the opening stages of his previous dream lives.

Yet this time was different.

Sevran touched his chest. Beneath the coarse fabric lay the gray-wrapped candy, intact, carrying the faint, lingering warmth of Kau'i. He had no wish to kill any longer... In that final dream, he had at last discovered what must be done.

"No... This time will be different."

Hard upon his words, the snap of dry twigs drifted from the gentle slope leading into the pine wood.

Rustle... Crack...

A lean, wiry youth darted through the night mist with practiced haste. It was Lugn. And directly behind him, emerging from the gloom of ancient pines, marched a disciplined detachment of exactly fifty men.

The moment the first mortal silhouette broke through the fog, Lucidas's tall form rippled like water and dissolved into nothingness. Through psionic misdirection, the archdemon erased his presence from the perception of mere mortals.

Only Sevran, bound by the provisional anchor of the contract, could still sense the colossal eye watching impassively from the shadow of the stone.

They wore patchwork cuirasses of boiled sheepskin and wolf pelt, crude crossbows fashioned from scrap iron and tempered animal bone slung over their shoulders, and quivers of darts tipped with black Rhe-Vhur poison strapped to their hips. Under the murky starlight of Stratum III, fifty pairs of eyes gleamed with resolute, cold discipline - not a single trace of the frantic tremor common to desperate peasant mobs.

Lugn strode forward, dropping to one knee before Sevran:

"Chief! Everyone is assembled!"

The men behind snapped to attention, their gazes fixed upon him with unvarnished reverence:

"Chief, are you unharmed? We await your next command!"

"Chief, the corpses of the cultists have been turned in to the Church! The bounty is secured, enough coin to supply the base for three full months!"

...

Sevran took in the fifty soot-stained faces before him.

These fifty men... Two years ago, having won over the one-eyed blacksmith Boran, he had mastered the local dialect and devised a financial scheme to clear the old smith's debts, while Boran forged every weapon to his specifications.

He had visited each household in turn, beginning with families Boran vouched for, providing food rations and promises, targeting men who still had kin to protect. He deliberately avoided unmoored loners; men with nothing to lose were too volatile, too difficult to govern.

He bound them not through blind devotion, but through their obligations to their families. Men with something to shield were always the most stubborn fighters and the most tight-lipped confidants.

Man by man, the squalor of Vark-South had been quietly transformed into a covert bastion. He drilled them in squad tactics, finger-tapped ciphers, and how to vanish across snowy ground without leaving a trace.

And tonight, their first true sortie had been executed to perfection.

The target was the coven of blood cultists honoring the half-crowned demon in the woods. Sevran had known their coordinates since his very first life. He could not permit them to draw breath; had their ritual completed, an unchained horror would have ravaged the outskirts. More importantly, the parchment containing the demonic summoner's ledger was the single keystone required to alter fate.

If he commanded the demonic rites, his hand would hold every card. Furthermore, slaughtering heretics to harvest Church bounties was a transaction no pragmatist could refuse.

The ambush had been absolute silence. Darts tipped with lethal poison hissed from the dark, burying into armor seams, nape joints, and armpits before a single cultist could begin an incantation. His fifty men had sanitized the site in under five minutes. He spared only the high priest, broke the man under relentless agony to extract the copy of the Ars Daemonica, and snapped his neck without a heartbeat of hesitation.

With the parchment in hand, he had kept only Lugn behind as a perimeter watch against counter-ambush while the others departed to collect the bounty. From there, history had unfolded precisely as recorded...

Reality had resumed.

Yet the player seated before it was irrevocably changed.

Sevran rose to his feet. Disturbed by the sudden movement, the calico cat Dancote uncurled from his lap, clambered up the coarse wool of his coat with tiny claws, and settled lazily across his shoulder, rubbing his chin against his jaw.

Lucidas lingered in the shadows, his blank porcelain mask impassively tracking every motion of the mortal before him.

Sevran looked across Lugn and the assembly, and gave the command:

Far safer bides the wold than treacherous net,
'Tis best alone than mourn lost comrades yet;
This mortal realm was never wrought our stead:
Grant man a foot, he treadeth on thy head.

- "Lo, heavy hangeth the firmament", by The Sable Hue