01
Order descends into chaos.
Light fades into darkness.
No structure is eternal.
Every symmetrical organisationcontains its own programmed decay in the asymmetry of the probabilistic nanospasms that make it up.
The order of creation feeds on the illusion that a system in equilibrium produces a sustainable balance of energy, but equilibrium is maintained at the price of constant production of waste—chaotic trash that is pushed out to the margins of the cosmic order but threatens to invade and destroy it at any moment.
"Wake."
Lightning tore through the night as a gypsy stirred in her tent.
Outside, the world unraveled—winds howling, land trembling.
Horses fled their stables, maddened, their cries vanishing in the storm's roar.
The gypsy felt the pull, a rhythm beyond the senses, woven into the rain's unbroken chant. Her heart pounded in response, a force unseen but known.
She rose.
The voice, heavy with, surged through her. Dazed, she moved, stumbling across the scattered tomes.
Her hand sought the lamp, and with a flicker, the dim tent breathed with light, shadows flickering like spirits, watching. Her hand hovered above the tarot spread, fingers trembling, as another bolt split the sky, the ground groaning beneath the heavens' weight.
The cards fell.
The Empress. The Hanged Man. The Star.
She closed her eyes. The words etched into her mind, began to form on her hands,
In a tongue not of men, but of dreams, whispers.
Her rang clearer, deeper—
Gypsy writes them down on a book, its pages yellowed and brittle. Hastily, she scribbled the prophecy in the seed phase.
"E⡞⠳⣄⣀⣠⠞⢷ ֹ۪ tʜèrai.-Iskōn mnartdOthret nā'dew" "Enok tʜèrai.-Iskōn mnartdOthret nā'dew" "Enok tʜèrai.-I. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.ret nā'dew"
Gypsy stood up from her knees, ran to the entrance of the tent, and threw herself into the storm.
She couldn't see anything; the downpour was so intense that the raindrops hit her face like bullets. Even though she tried to shield herself with the edge of her long purple cloak, the wind tossed her frail body around effortlessly.
Lightning flashed, revealing the edge of the abyss—a hollow where even the storm dared not touch, horses running wildly.
A little further ahead, she approaches the eye of the storm.
She was desperately looking for the real owner of those words, her muse.
Reached to the eye of the storm;
Gazed into the eye of the storm, and the void gaze back.
Asked, "Who?"
I descended to the midst of the underworld, and I shone down upon the darkness. It is I who poured forth the water. It is I who am hidden within radiant waters. I am the one who gradually put forth the All by my Thought. It is I who am laden with the Voice. I dwell in the ineffable and unknowable ones. I am perception and knowledge, uttering a Voice by means of thought. I cry out in everyone, and they recognize it since a seed indwells them.
The gypsy said her final words into the void,
"Mother."
the prophecy sealed.
Decades were passed. & It began with a kiss.
The gypsy pressed the book into the sailor's hands, eyes shining wet. "Take it," she whispered, as the storm rolled in. He didn't ask why. He just held her once more before the waves pulled him away.
——— At sea, the storm shattered his compass.
Desperate, cold, he traded the book in a quiet port—a cracked voice, a cracked deal—for a new bearing. ————— The merchant, curious but tired, tucked it under his counter. By dusk, a boy with quick fingers and quicker feet snatched it—gone before anyone shouted. He ran, heart hammering, through splintered doors, through alleys soaked in rain, past a woman brushing black hair from her eyes.
The boy, breathless, hid in a ruined tower. There, a soldier found him and the book, taking it without a word. That night, bullets flew, and the soldier, dying, pressed the book into a nurse's bloodied hands. "Keep it safe," he rasped. —— The nurse, haunted, carried it across a border. Years later, in a dusty café, she left it on a table after a final cigarette. A writer, lonely and drunk, picked it up, flipping through pages he couldn't read. He stuffed it in his bag, forgot it for years.
Wars rose, empires crumbled. The book crossed oceans in suitcases, hidden in crates of grain, wedged between engine parts. A priest blessed it once; a thief cursed it; a widow cried over it, though she couldn't say why. ———- Salt, sweat, falling stars. The book saw it all—whispers in the night, hands trembling with hope or greed. It waited.
Until one day, packed among hundreds of forgotten books, it was loaded onto Caroline.
The crate sealed. The ship set sail.