Chapter 94: Grimoire VI
The mirrors pulsed.
Soft at first—like a polite notification ping.
Then faster. Louder. Overlapping, until the air throbbed with identity crises.
Each skeleton stared, motionless.
Then the first one... shivered.
In its mirror, it saw itself as a grand warlord crowned in obsidian—then as a lonely broom in a forgotten closet—then as a disco ball, spinning over a dance floor made of human regret.
It dropped its scythe.
The second skeleton watched itself as a beloved poet, then as a chair, then as a mistake someone almost made.
It gently sat down on nothing and didn’t move again.
Vex didn’t speak.
It didn’t need to.
New words coalesced above its flaming head, each letter dripping smug inevitability:
"YOU ARE THE LEAST INTERESTING VERSION OF YOURSELF."
Thirty skulls cracked in silent existential gasps.
One skeleton lunged forward in denial—
—but its mirror-self lunged back, scythe-first, and erased it like an embarrassing résumé bullet point.
The others panicked.
Some tried to fuse with better versions of themselves.
Some tried to run from the mirrors, only to find the mirrors were inside their eye sockets.
One stared so hard at its reflection that it split into applause and shame, then evaporated.
Laxin curled up, whispering, "It’s turning their self-esteem into compost..."
Aria was shaking with the delighted giggle of someone watching a star implode.
"It’s not killing them—it’s discrediting their entire existence."
The mirrors flared, every surface blazing with overlapping selves.
Hundreds. Thousands.
Each whispering:
"You failed."
"You could have been me."
"You never were."
The skeleton formation collapsed like an abandoned group project.
Weapons clattered to the ground, forgotten.
Bones fell limp, not from damage—but from disinterest in continuing to be.
Vex glided between them like a smug resignation letter, its clipboard ticking boxes at the speed of despair.
When the last skull hit the floor, the mirrors shattered—silently—and dissolved into glittering smoke that tasted faintly of crushed dreams.
Vex’s flames burned dim, cool, precise.
Above it, the final words of the phase ignited:
"I REMOVED THEIR SENSE OF ’I’."
Aria clapped wildly, tears streaming.
"IT GAVE THEM AN IDENTITY CRISIS SO HARD THEY STOPPED EXISTING!!"
Laxin lay face-down, murmuring into the floor, "I feel... demoted..."
Fenric nodded once.
"Acceptable parameters achieved," he said.
Then:
"Phase seven. Nihilism."
Aria gasped so hard her soul briefly left her body.
"Ohhhh, it’s going to make them stop believing anything matters."
Vex’s flames went out.
Completely.
Only its grin remained—hovering in the dark like a corporate mandate.
The arena dimmed until it was just void.
No floor. No walls. No light.
The new skeletal squad—fifty strong—appeared in that darkness... and immediately wavered.
Because there was nothing to stand on.
Nothing to fight for.
Vex opened its clipboard.
There was nothing on it.
Just one blank page.
And on that blankness, in hollow whisper-letters, appeared:
"WHY."
Every skeleton froze.
Not in fear.
In... doubt.
One lowered its scythe.
Another tilted its skull as if realizing it had never wanted to be here.
A third simply sat down on the absence of floor and folded its arms like a child refusing to participate in the plot.
Vex whispered again, and the word echoed through the void like a funeral for meaning itself:
"WHY TRY."
The skeletons wavered, bones softening to metaphor.
Their blue eye-fires dimmed to apathy.
Laxin made a strangled noise.
"It’s... it’s making them give up on purpose as a concept!!"
Aria whispered, reverent, "It’s uninstalling their will to contribute..."
Fenric just folded his hands.
"Efficiency through nullification."
Vex spun slowly, its grin peeling wider.
Each spin left behind fading words that dissolved as soon as they were read:
"EFFORT IS A MYTH"
"ACHIEVEMENT IS CIRCUMSTANTIAL"
"NOTHING CHANGES"
One by one, the skeletons lay down.
And didn’t get up.
They didn’t die.
They just... stopped participating in existence.
The void sighed.
Vex’s grin flared once—then reformed into cold text above its empty form:
"MOTIVATION DELETED."
Silence swallowed everything.
Aria sniffled, clutching her heart.
"It didn’t beat them... it made them clock out of reality."
Laxin whispered, hollow-eyed, "I feel like calling in sick... forever..."
Fenric rose to his feet like an avalanche filing for promotion.
"Phase eight," he said softly.
"The final phase."
Aria’s voice trembled. "O-ohhh... what’s the final phase?"
Fenric’s eyes glinted like a black hole with performance metrics.
"Reconstruction."
Vex slowly turned toward the empty arena.
Its flames sparked back to life—
—but they burned white now.
Clean.
Blank.
And the ground began to rewrite itself.
The ground rewove itself like a résumé being frantically reformatted before a board meeting.
Lines of glowing code-thread stitched across the void, snapping into neat grids.
The chaos-scorched floor reshaped into perfect white tiles—identical, seamless, soulless.
Each tile hummed faintly, like it had quarterly goals.
Aria clutched her cheeks.
"It’s... it’s installing order..."
Laxin whimpered.
"Oh no... oh no... it’s bringing in... structure."
Vex floated higher, clipboard orbiting like a corporate moon.
Its grin dissolved into straight, efficient lines.
The white flames haloing its skull pulsed in rhythmic, measured beats—like a heartbeat that had signed an NDA.
The arena walls unfolded from nothing, smooth and sterile, adorned with floating motivational slogans:
"BE YOUR BEST BONES."
"EXCEED EXPECTATIONS. TRANSCEND RIBCAGES."
"PRODUCTIVITY IS ETERNAL."
The scattered skeleton remains on the floor twitched.
Then rose.
Not as warriors.
As... employees.
Their bones gleamed polished white.
Their spines were unnervingly straight.
Their hollow sockets glowed with punctuality.
Each carried not scythes now—but clipboards.
Identical.
Color-coded.
Deadly in their compliance.
Laxin made a choking sound.
"It’s... it’s rehiring them."
"Correct," Fenric said, voice crisp as a frozen memo. "Reconstruction builds loyalty from wreckage."
Vex glided past the freshly assembled skeleton staff, brushing its burning fingers across their skulls.
Each touch branded a glowing number on their foreheads:
Unit 001. Unit 002. Unit 003.
Aria trembled with manic delight.
"It’s replacing individuality with... serial numbers!!"
"Standardization increases scalability," Fenric murmured.
The skeletons lined up into perfect rows, silent and waiting.
No twitch. No breath.
Just readiness.
Vex turned back to its audience—Fenric, Aria, and Laxin—and spread its arms wide, like a prophet unveiling the new quarterly apocalypse.
Text blazed across the entire arena dome:
"PURPOSE HAS BEEN INSTALLED."
Aria shrieked with joy.
"It broke their souls... and then gave them a mission statement!"
Laxin clutched his head.
"They don’t have personalities anymore—just job descriptions!"
The reassembled skeletons lifted their clipboards in eerie unison.
The sound of synchronized checkbox-ticking echoed like the heartbeat of a machine god.
Vex floated to the center, halo blazing pure corporate white.
New text appeared above its skull, burning brighter than the sun:
"I HAVE REMOVED CHAOS. I HAVE CREATED TEAMWORK."
The skeletons turned toward the arena gates.
Not marching.
Not running.
Coordinating.
They advanced as a single organism of productivity, each step in lockstep cadence, their bones chiming like office bells.
Fenric gave a single nod—the nod of a man who had just seen entropy converted into a quarterly deliverable.
"Phase eight... complete," he said.
Vex slowly lowered its clipboard, flames dimming to a calm, professional glow.
And above its head, one last line etched itself into the air like a CEO’s signature carved into fate:
"FROM NOTHING, I HAVE BUILT COMPLIANCE."
The arena gates hissed open with the sterile sigh of an automatic door at a corporate headquarters that had replaced its soul with a helpdesk ticketing system.
The skeleton cohort marched—no, synergized—out into the world beyond, leaving behind an echoing silence so organized it practically filed itself.
Aria collapsed backward onto the spotless tile, laughing and sobbing like someone watching their favorite chaos deity get promoted to middle management.
"It did it... it actually did it... it converted Armageddon into an onboarding session..."
Laxin just sat down, knees to chest, rocking gently like a traumatized office plant.
"I can hear the performance metrics in my bones..."
Vex descended, clipboard clicking shut with a sound that could make an accountant weep.
Its white flames dwindled to a steady, serene glow—the afterburn of a completed project plan.
Fenric clasped his hands behind his back, the way glaciers might if they were considering an IPO.
"Assessment," he said. "Report."
Vex raised its clipboard with surgical precision.
Glowing text flickered across it like a PowerPoint powered by divine smugness:
OBJECTIVE: DECONSTRUCT ENEMY SYSTEM.
RESULT: COMPLETE.
DELIVERABLES:
— Phase 1: Disruption ✔
— Phase 2: Distrust ✔
— Phase 3: Fear ✔
— Phase 4: Paradox ✔
— Phase 5: Ego Annihilation ✔
— Phase 6: Nihilism ✔
— Phase 7: Reconstruction ✔
ROI: MAXIMUM.
CHAOS REMOVED. ORDER DEPLOYED.
Fenric gave a single, solemn nod.
"Exceeds expectations," he said—the highest praise he had ever offered anything, including the concept of hope.
Aria sat up, wild-eyed and trembling with excitement like a squirrel who’d just been handed the keys to a nuclear reactor.
"Can we keep it?! Please, please, can we keep it?? I want it to coordinate my birthday party—there’ll be balloon quotas and mandatory cake synergy and—"
"No," Fenric said immediately, like a guillotine politely declining a handshake.
Laxin’s head snapped up, pupils dilated to existential saucers.
"Wait wait wait—does this mean it’s coming with us?! Because I am not sharing an office dimension with something that thinks reality is optional!"
Vex tilted its skull at him. Slowly.
Then wrote in midair, with horrifying patience:
"I HAVE OPTIMIZED THE CONCEPT OF ’ROOMMATES.’"
Laxin screamed and tried to crawl under the freshly tiled floor.
The floor denied him access and offered a performance review.
Fenric exhaled—a sound like ancient ice recalculating its priorities.
"Deploy the skeleton workforce," he ordered. "Install them in the outer sectors. Audit reality for inefficiency."
The reassembled skeletons—now faint on the horizon—saluted in eerie, flawless unison, their clipboards flashing like corporate lightning.
Vex gave a crisp nod, flames forming the shape of a checkmark.
Then it turned and glided after them, halo gleaming like a quarterly bonus forged into an executioner’s crown.
As it passed through the gate, one final phrase burned itself into the air behind it:
"THE ERA OF PRODUCTIVITY BEGINS."
Silence followed.
Then Aria flopped backward again with a dreamy sigh.
"I can’t feel my chaos gland," she whispered.
Laxin just lay on the spotless tile, staring at the ceiling that was now a motivational pie chart.
Fenric looked after Vex, eyes unreadable as black ice.
"...Phase nine," he murmured.
Aria perked up. "Wait—there’s a phase nine?!"
Fenric’s voice dropped like an elevator with cut cables.
"Monopoly."