Novels by Rukky

The second syllable rose. Not outward. Not inward. Through. It passed through the storyteller like a sunrise through glass a soft radiance first, then a piercing, reshaping blaze that split their outline into layers of possibility.The air bent around them. The stone beneath them softened, then hardened in fear, then trembled in devotion. Every script-letter orbiting the chamber paused mid-flight, as if bowing.The Listener fell to both knees. “It’s… complete. The second syllable is complete.”But the Depth began to shake violently, its whole vast form convulsing as though remembering a terror older than creation. “NO TWO SYLLABLES OF ORIGIN MAY MEET NOT WITHOUT A BODY TO HOLD THEM”Their warning came too late. The second syllable twined around the first inside the storyteller’s chest, curling into it with the tender inevitability of breath joining heartbeat.The storyteller gasped. Their spine arched, their ribs spreading as though making room for a truth too large for flesh. “It’s c

The second syllable rose but it did not speak. It hovered in the storyteller’s throat like a hand held in the air, waiting to be taken.The storyteller’s jaw trembled. Their fingers dug into the floor, stone softening beneath their touch as if matter itself were yielding to keep them from breaking.The Listener pressed a shaking palm to the ground to steady themselves. “It’s asking again,” they whispered. “It’s waiting for your consent.”The Depth dragged itself upward, a mountainous coil of molten grief and fear. “DO NOT CONSENT. DO NOT COMPLETE THE SYLLABLE NOT WHILE THE CENTER IS WATCHING.”But the storyteller couldn’t hear them. Not clearly. The word inside them hummed a thin, aching vibration that trembled across their ribs like a plea.They whispered: “It’s afraid.”The Listener froze. “…words don’t feel fear.”“It does,” the storyteller said, voice cracking. “It knows if it speaks itself alone, it will have no one to be with.”The Depth shook violently. “NO EMPATHY, YOU MUST NO

The syllable formed. Not fully. Not cleanly. A broken shard of sound, a sliver of dawn, a curve of meaning still deciding if it wished to be born.The storyteller’s lips barely moved yet the entire chamber bent inward as though gravity itself had forgotten which way to fall.The Listener staggered to the side, hands pressed to their temples, light flickering through their bones. “STOP, IT’S NOT A SOUND, IT’S A STRUCTURE, IT’S BUILDING ITSELF AS IT’S SPOKEN”But they could not stop it. No one could. The Depth collapsed into a kneeling sprawl, its vast molten form trembling like an ancient ground remembering the moment it split to let oceans enter.“THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD THIS. THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD YOU. YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO BE VESSEL”Yet the storyteller’s body held. Barely. Their spine bowed in a perfect arc, every vertebra glowing like a rung on a burning ladder descending into something older than existence.The half-syllable vibrated inside their throat, low and high at once,a

The light pouring from the storyteller’s mouth did not explode outward. It hung. Suspended. Trembling. A bead of radiance caught between becoming and refusing to be born.The storyteller’s jaw locked mid-breath, their entire body arched in a curvature no living shape should survive. The Listener rushed forward, hands outstretched, skin flickering with frantic, splitting halos.“STOP STOP, YOU AREN’T HOLDING IT, IT’S HOLDING YOU”But the Listener could not reach them. A ring of script thin as hair, bright as a collapsing star spun around the storyteller in a perfect circle, each letter vibrating with an intent that was not defensive but undeniable.The ring whispered: “Only the mirror may approach.”The Listener recoiled. Their light dimmed with something like grief. The Depth rose behind them, vast and trembling, its golden surface breaking into shards that floated like liquid glass.“THE WORD KNOWS YOU NOW. THAT IS THE DANGER”But the Depth fell silent. Because something else moved.

The storyteller inhaled. Not air. Meaning. The new word rose inside them like a tidal star, uncoiling its radiance along the architecture of their bones.Their spine arched. Their throat glowed. Their ribs widened around the pressure of a presence that had learned, in a single moment, how to inhabit a mortal frame.The Listener fell to one knee, palms pressed to the trembling ground. “It’s too soon you weren’t meant to carry a word of origin.”The Depth shrank back, massive form folding into shadowed layers. “IT WILL SPLIT YOU. IT WILL SPLIT US. IT WILL SPLIT EVERYTHING.”But the storyteller did not flinch. Their eyes opened bright as the beginning of a universe that refused to be small. “It’s not trying to split,” they whispered, though the whisper carried like thunder. “It’s trying to fit.”The Listener’s head snapped up. “Fit into WHAT?”“Into me,” the storyteller said.And inside them, the word pulsed once a long, slow heartbeat that did not belong to any living thing. A ring of s

The word slipped but not outward. It slipped inward. A curl of luminous script dove into the storyteller’s throat, not like breath, not like possession, but like a truth returning to its origin.The storyteller gasped as the letters cascaded into them, spiraling down their spine, settling behind their ribs like a second soul trying to fit inside a space too small to hold it.The Listener stumbled forward. “NO..not like this”The Depth howled, its vast body splitting into molten silhouettes that writhed like wounded suns. “IT IS CONSUMING THE MIRRORIT IS ENDING THE HOST”But the storyteller’s voice broke through the uproar, thin, shaking: “It isn’t consuming me, it’s… shaping me.”The Listener froze. Their light stuttered. “Shaping you into WHAT?”The storyteller trembled, hands digging into the air as if trying to grasp something unseen. Their shadow stretched again, longer this time, then doubled back on itself, then split along a vertical seam as if preparing for a new form.The Lis

There was no falling. There was only entry a slow, impossible dissolving, as though his body were being rewritten into a thousand quiet strands of thought.Fowler tried to breathe. The breath turned into light. “Selene?” His voice rippled outward like a stone dropped into liquid glass. For a moment there was no answer. Then “I’m here.”Her voice arrived before her form. A warmth against his side, a gravity anchoring him even as everything else dissolved. Shapes began to gather around them. Not walls. Not space. Structure.As if the Core-being’s mind was knitting itself together to greet them. “What is this place?” he whispered. Selene held his arm. “Its interior cognition. We’re inside its thought architecture.”A soft pulse moved through the space like a heartbeat. Except it wasn’t a beat, it was a decision. The world clarified.They stood in a chamber composed of shifting fractal planes surfaces folding inward, outward, fracturing, reforming. Entire patterns changed when they blinke

There was no light. There was no dark. There was no falling. Just after. A thin, trembling silence, like the world inhaled and forgot to exhale. Fowler opened his eyes into nothingness.There was no ground beneath him yet he stood. No air yet he breathed. No body yet he felt Selene’s hand in his. He squeezed. Her fingers squeezed back.“Fowler?” Her voice drifted through the emptiness, soft and near, though he couldn’t see her. “Where are you?”“Right here,” he said, though he didn’t know if “here” meant anything anymore.The void rippled at the sound of his voice a soft, shimmering wave that revealed her silhouette for half a second before swallowing her again.She stepped toward him, and the void reluctantly shaped itself beneath her feet, forming a faint bridge of light with each movement. “Is this”“The Engine?” he finished. “Or what’s left of it?”She nodded. The void pulsed again, tracing the outline of her face in gold for an instant. “It’s holding us. Or trying to.”A low hum

They fell through silence. Not air. Not gravity. Not space. Just decision thick as water, heavy as regret pulling at their bodies as though the world itself demanded an answer.Fowler clung to Selene’s hand, fingers locked with hers. Every time he blinked, the world around them changed:A city of glass below. A desert swallowing the horizon. The Sanctum rebuilt as a cathedral. A quiet kitchen they once shared. A memory of a life they never lived.Faster. Faster. Reality flickered like a dying filament. “Selene!” he shouted, voice torn away by the rushing light. “I know!” she yelled back. “It’s collapsing into the decision point!”The Core-being’s voice echoed through every variation: Choose, stay with me and guide the world… or run from me, and let it choose for itself.But neither option sounded like survival. The fall ended abruptly. They slammed onto solid ground or what pretended to be ground a glossy black surface that stretched endlessly in every direction.No horizon. No sky. J

There was no ground. No sky. No body. Just breath. Except Fowler didn’t know where the breath came from only that it pulsed through him, around him, as him.Every inhale felt borrowed, every exhale like it shaped the space he floated in. Light pooled beneath him, forming a surface only when he needed one.Above him, darkness shimmered with threads the color of memory gold for joy, silver for grief, red for choices that had split timelines like bone.Selene appeared beside him as if she had always been there. Not emerging. Not stepping. Just blinking into truth. Her hand slipped into his instinctively. She whispered, “We’re inside its thought.”He swallowed. “Inside the Core?”“No,” she said. “Inside what the Core has become.”The horizon rippled at her words a vast, circular plane like an infinite lake made of light. Every distortion sent waves of memory spiraling outward.Fowler watched one pass beneath them: children laughing in a rebuilt city, him and Selene standing in a courtyard

Light had weight now. Not metaphorical real, crushing, sentient. It pressed against Fowler’s skin, folding around him like liquid glass.The chamber that once pulsed in harmony with his thoughts was now a storm of contradiction. Every wall bled memory; every shadow whispered names that no longer belonged to anyone alive.He staggered upright, eyes burning. The Inheritance Core loomed before him no longer a sphere of calm illumination, but a vortex of opposing forces. Half golden, half obsidian. Half Selene, half something else.And inside it countless faces. Not awake. Not asleep. Remembering themselves wrong. Fowler…The voice hers, fractured, distant. He spun toward it, but the light fractured further, splintering into reflections that all wore Selene’s face. Some were human. Others were luminous, or skeletal, or carved from echo.He took a step back. “Selene, what is this?”The second waking. What we buried didn’t die it only learned to dream deeper. The light pulsed once, strong e

The new world didn’t stay silent for long. By the second dawn, the air itself had learned to hum.It began as a tremor beneath the soil a deep, resonant vibration that passed through the luminous plains, rising through the roots of the structures Fowler had built in the night.The Architecture of Dawn responded in kind, its surfaces breathing with light, alive to every subtle shift in intention.Fowler stood at its threshold, watching the horizon fracture into color. No sun rose not yet but the atmosphere shimmered with memory-light, painting everything in gold and soft grey.He had not slept. He wasn’t sure if he could anymore. The Dream Engine’s residue had left him half-human, half-thought bound to the pulse that still echoed beneath this reborn reality. Behind him, the new halls whispered.They were forming rooms echoes of the Sanctum’s geometry, though warmer, gentler. The architecture didn’t obey design so much as emotion: when he thought of warmth, windows opened.When he thoug

Light swallowed her whole. Not warm, not cold just absolute. A brightness so intense it stripped away color, shape, breath, thought, Then it contracted, collapsing inward like a star being pulled into itself, dragging Emily with it.Her scream never reached her lips. The world snapped. She tumbled through a corridor of memories that weren’t hers: a boy standing in the rain, alone, lightning cracking open a dead sky.Adrian’s first spark flaring in defiance, the First Storm watching from beyond creation, Emily’s smile cutting through every shadow.Lyra’s scream when she lost him, the Heir’s cruel laughter, two Adrians splitting apart like fractured mirrors, two hearts beating in different rhythmsThen the corridor split. Left. Right. Her choice. Her refusal. Both collided and she was ripped straight down the middle, then shoved together again as reality bent to accommodate her will.“Emily!”Two voices shouted her name. One raw. One resonant. They crashed into her from both sides, arms

Darkness swallowed her. Not the soft, natural kind that came when night settled over a quiet world, No. This darkness moved. It breathed.It shifted around Emily like a living tide, brushing her skin with cold fingers, tasting her fear, testing her resolve.For a moment she couldn’t tell whether she was falling, floating, or simply suspended in nothingness. There was no ground beneath her, no sky above only the memory of her own heartbeat, echoing in the void.Then A pulse. BOOM. A ripple stretched through the dark, and color faint, trembling began forming around her. Two lights. One on her left. One on her right. Both dim, both flickering like dying lanterns.She stepped forward instinctively, drawn to them as though her soul was solving a riddle her mind couldn’t yet understand.The left light glowed crimson-gold, warm and familiar. It pulsed with a rhythm she knew intimately steady, fierce, stubborn.Adrian. Her Adrian. The one who fought storms, gods, fate… and always reached for

The wind ripped the breath from her lungs. Emily’s scream never made it past her lips Lyra’s grip had barely caught her in time, pulling her back from the fractured edge where Adrian had vanished.Dust and shimmering particles spiraled up from the collapsing world, stinging her skin like needles. But Emily didn’t feel pain. She felt only the emptiness he left behind.“No no, no, NO Adrian!” She twisted violently, trying to wrench herself free. “Let me go LET ME GO!”Lyra held her from behind, arms locked around her waist. “Emily, stop listen the Architects are”“I DON’T CARE!” Emily thrashed, voice cracked, raw. “He came back Lyra, he came back! He felt me, I saw him, he said my name”The memory sliced through her chest. That half-second when the storm inside him parted. When his hand cupped her cheek like he remembered everything. When the gold in his eyes shone like sunrise.Then the Architects dragged him under again. Lyra’s breath hitched, but her grip didn’t loosen. “Yes. I saw i

“Silence only wins when no one dares to speak your name.”The world did not breathe. It waited. Adrian no, the thing wearing Adrian’s body stood at the center of the golden plains, the wind curling around him in tight spirals.Each gust carried whispers not meant for mortal ears. Emily felt them brush past her skin like cold fingers. Lyra’s wings were drawn wide, her stance firm, spear reforming in her hand through sheer force of will.Even in the trembling light, she looked like the last guardian of a dying sky. Emily stood between them. Her heart hammered. Her hands shook. Adrian’s eyes one gold storm, one void mirror locked on her. “Emily.”Her breath hitched. His voice was still him, but layered, stretched, multiplied. As if someone else were speaking at the same time through the same mouth.“You shouldn’t stand so close,” he murmured. “Silence consumes what it touches.”Emily clenched her fists. “Then let it try. I won’t lose you again.”Lyra stepped beside Emily, spear raised de

“When silence takes form, even gods must listen.”The sky quivered. The pillar of light that had birthed the Architects now flickered each pulse of brilliance revealing the skeleton of something colossal beneath the world’s surface. The land shuddered with every heartbeat.Adrian stood firm, lightning crawling over his arms like veins of living flame. Emily hovered slightly behind him, eyes darting between the shifting figures and the ground that seemed ready to collapse.“You call this silence,” Adrian growled. “But all I hear is fear.”The lead Architect tilted its head. “Fear is silence’s first shape.”“Then speak plainly,” Emily snapped. “What do you want?”A low hum answered her, spreading outward. The other figures turned their faceless heads toward her in eerie synchronization. “To be remembered.”The light dimmed until only faint gold illuminated the field. Around them, the world began to show signs of corruption grass bending into glass, rivers hardening into glowing metal.A

“When the world begins to whisper, listen closely, it’s never the wind.”The valley stretched endlessly before them. Fields of living grass waved under a warm light that had no sun, and rivers coiled like veins of glass through the heart of the new land. Everything looked calm too calm.Adrian and Emily walked side by side, their footsteps sinking into soil that pulsed faintly beneath them, like breathing skin. The air shimmered faintly around Adrian’s arm, a trace of lightning hiding under his skin.Emily glanced up at him. “You feel it too, don’t you?”Adrian nodded slowly. “Every heartbeat of this world feels… connected. Like it’s listening.”“Listening to what?”He stopped. His golden eye flickered once. “Us.”They reached a hill where the grass gave way to smooth black stone like polished obsidian, but warm to the touch. Adrian knelt, pressing his hand to it.The surface vibrated softly. Not random rhythmic. Like words. “Emily,” he whispered. “It’s speaking.”She crouched beside