The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Isaac sat on a wooden bench aside a gravel road, under the eaves of an old birch tree. It was a sunny afternoon, and he was reading an small, paperback book. The air was warm and gentle against his skin, and he had a pleasant view of the snow-capped mountains that towered over the eastern and western edges of the Valley. He was smiling to himself. Everything was as it ought to be, as it would be, as it was.

After a while, Isaac was joined by another person, who descended from the air casually. Neither Isaac nor this individual's appearance are especially important for the time being, but she was a woman with long and fluffy silver-white hair, clad in a orange dress and red cardigan. Unlike Isaac, she was frowning mildly. Isaac looked up as she approached, greeting her with a warm expression.

"Hello, Nora," he said pleasantly.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you're trying to make it more difficult for me to find you on purpose," she spoke in a somewhat accusatory tone, taking in her surroundings. "Isn't this grove where they've been holding the winter festival recently? I was surprised I could even get in at this time of year. I thought there'd be a barrier, or something."

"Most people probably assume the same thing," Isaac said, breathing in the fresh air deeply. "It's quite pleasant, isn't it? I'm always excited whenever I find a new spot off the beaten path." He inclined his head off to the left. "There's another good one about a quarter mile east-- A little pond with some daffodils in bloom. But there's nothing but grass to sit on there, and I wanted to rest my back for the time being."

Nora peered at him. "I don't understand you. If you're just going to stare at a book, why not just do it in your own garden?"

"Well, that would get a little repetitive after a while," Isaac replied. "Variety is the spice of life."

"So just change it when you get bored," she countered. "It's not like it's difficult."

At this, Isaac simply chuckled to himself.

"Or you could just keep some way to contact you on your person," she offered, her frown deepening at his response. "Then I wouldn't have to fly around looking for you in the first place."

"I told you, you needn't go to such trouble," Isaac told her. "Just check my apartment in the City. If I'm not about, it's hardly the end of the world."

"If I did that, we'd probably only see you about once or twice a year," Nora said. "Ram would get depressed."

"I'm sure it wouldn't be that much of an affair," he replied dismissively.

She narrowed her eyes. "It really wouldn't kill you to be a little more self-conscious, you know that?"

Once again, Isaac chuckled. He turned a page in his book, his gaze wandering back downwards.

Though Isaac and Nora would probably have described one another as friends, this was not strictly accurate. While it was true that they spent a great deal of time in one another's company - having been part of the same clique for almost as long as either of them could remember - and had at this stage conversed so many times that there was probably not a subject within the realm of human conception they had not at least touched on together, they had despite this never established any sort of intimate connection, and had practically zero understanding of one another's inner lives. It was a dynamic almost anyone would be familiar with; a peripheral relationship, formed at the edge of a friend group.

Perhaps 'colleagues' would be the better word for it, even though the activities they did together were purely recreational. On a technical level, their knowledge of one another was extremely advanced, yet at the same time they didn't really have anything in common or even know one another at all. Neither would be all that bothered if the other vanished from their life altogether.

In fact, the only times they spoke one-on-one at all were these little meetings, themselves a product of their incompatible personalities. Nora was an organizer by nature; conscientious almost to the point of neuroticism, always worried about people's needs and the integrity of whatever activity or project the group was presently devoted to. Isaac, meanwhile, had a carefree and independent-minded nature that made him slow to commit, and even worse at keeping those commitments.

And so, inevitably, it ended up like this. Nora found Isaac frustrating and unreliable, while Isaac found her tiring and overbearing. They'd been doing more and more group activities lately, so for Nora, this was getting to the point that she might have started to kinda hate him a bit. Isaac was starting to get a little tired of her too, but did his best to make an effort, since she was a Primary and they always had more on their minds.

"So, what are you reading this time?" Nora asked.

"Oh, nothing particularly remarkable. It's a short story collection I come back to every so often." Isaac brushed his hand over the parchment almost affectionately, his eyes thoughtful. "The one I'm reading right now is about a soldier who is injured when a building collapses around him, and ends up trapped beneath rubble and his own armed rifle. He becomes so afraid about the prospect of his death, the uncertainty of the fact that it could come at any moment, that he tries all sorts of methods to fire it himself and get it over with." He smiled more widely to himself. "But when he finally succeeds, he realizes it was never armed to begin with."

Nora frowned. "That sounds even more depressing than the one from last week."

"Not at all," Isaac said, shaking his head. "It's quite thrilling, actually. There's a lot of details explored in the prose in terms of how the experience unravels him psychologically, ultimately even subverting his sense of space and time. There's a reason I come back to this book so often."

"Sometimes I wonder if you're actually doing something more fun whenever I'm looking for you, and you just switch this stuff in whenever you see me coming as part of some weird bit," Nora speculated, half as a joke. "Or maybe just to seem smart."

"Oh, certainly not!" Isaac insisted. "For one thing, I don't believe there's such a thing as a smart person. So I wouldn't waste my time trying to come across that way."

"I..." Nora opened her mouth for a moment, then stopped and closed it again, clicking her tongue as she attempted to process this statement. "...never mind," she eventually settled on saying. "Anyway, I don't understand what you'd get out of reading about someone being afraid of death. I mean, you don't even remember what it's like."

"Well, that's what makes it so fascinating to me, Nora," he explained, looking up at her again for a moment. "Fiction is about exploring perspectives you don't possess, about seeing through the eyes of the 'other' and challenging oneself to internalize their thoughts and feelings." His eyes were pulled quickly back down. "In that regard, I find stories about death to be some of the most compelling imaginable. What must it be like, to be faced with that sort of finality? That density of meaning?"

Nora closed her eyes, rubbing the corners with exasperation.

"Oh, pardon me," Isaac added, after a moment. "I hope my enthusiasm didn't come across as thoughtless."

"It's fine. I just wish you could keep it reeled in a bit, sometimes." She let out a sigh. "Look, I'm here because the others were planning to meet up to try and make some progress on the sculpting project over at Bao's place for a bit, then to do our weekly session in the Prism early. Ely and Ram wanted somebody to let you know, since they're probably gonna be making the final choice about the design this afternoon."

"Mm, I understand. That's very considerate of them. And you." He gave her a more deliberate smile.

"Right. So... do you wanna come, then?" she asked.

Isaac thought about this for a moment, his eyes wandering towards the slopes in the distance, the birch trees glistening in the sunlight. "...yes," he said. "I think I will."

"Okay then," Nora said, slightly relieved. "You want to finish your chapter first, or...?"

"No, go on ahead without me," he told her, shaking his head. "I'll be along in an hour or two. Let the others know there's no need to wait up."

She hesitated, peering at him. "You're sure? I mean, we're already kinda late, just from the time I spent looking for you. And I mean, uh..." She glanced around. "You're not really, well, doing anything..."

"It's alright," Isaac said. "I don't mind if I miss a few of the big decisions, and I had something I wanted to get done today after I finished reading." He gave a reassuring smile. "Again, I'm sure it won't be more than a couple hours."

Nora shrugged, then nodded. She was a little puzzled by why he was being so vague, but this was well within her tolerance level in terms of Isaac's eccentricity, so for a moment she accepted it without further thought. She levitated back into the air--

'A couple hours.' 'An hour or two.'.

--then stopped sharply, as a suspicion blossomed in her mind. She dropped back to the ground, squinting apprehensively at him.

"Isaac," she spoke firmly. "You're not going back to the Manse again, are you?"

Isaac didn't look up from his book, but for just a moment, the muscles in his arms and shoulders stiffened slightly. He turned the page again, offering no response.

"For god's sake," Nora hissed. "Isaac, you can't keep doing this. You're breaking the rules."

"Domains and their rules come and go," he replied, seeming unbothered. "The Manse is an eternal fixture of our world. It's beyond the authority of the assembly."

"What will happen if you get kicked out of the Crossroads? The others won't be able to do things with you without going to one of the weird fringe domains." Her brow knotted in frustration. "Ram relies on you, you know. He'd be devastated."

"I'm being very careful," Isaac reassured her, still looking down at the book. "I'm only using the entrance in my own domain. Unless you feel like telling the council yourself, nothing will come of it."

"Maybe not for a while! But people will notice sooner or later, especially if you keep having conspicuous absences of up to about 2 and a half hours." She clicked her tongue sharply. "Today that was just me, but what happens when it's some random we're hanging out with for a group project? Or the Waywatch does a check on you?"

"I'm sure the Waywatch has better things to be doing with themselves," Isaac said. "Nearly half of humanity dwells here now, and there's still only a dozen of them. I'm hardly the most social type, but even I know far bigger taboo-breachers than myself."

"You're not taking this seriously, Isaac," Nora went on, leveling her gaze. "I know you have a history with that place, but you need to be considerate of people other than yourself. If everybody has to pick between you and everything in the Crossroads, you could end up breaking up the whole group."

"It's ephemeral," he replied, aloof. "Again, places come and go. We might spend a while apart, but in the end, we have all the time in the world."

Nora stared at him for a few moments in abject frustration, almost at a loss for words. Then she shook her head slightly, turning away. "Whatever. I'm going."

"Alright," Isaac said, his tone as friendly as ever. "See you in a couple hours, then."

"At least try to be more subtle about what you're doing the next time this thing comes up," she said, as she rapidly accelerated into the air.

"I'll make sure to do so," he replied, despite her already being out of earshot.

After Nora left, Isaac continued reading for another couple of minutes, finishing the final few paragraphs of the short story. He then gently closed the book and let it rest on his lap for a few moments, closing his eyes and letting himself fully absorb the calming atmosphere of the countryside. The birdsong, the gentle breeze, the sweet aroma of pollen and the sour, earthy scent of the soil. He tried, for a few moments, to forget everything to the greatest degree possible - his book, his pressing engagement with his friends, even himself, imagining himself as a drifting leaf.

When he felt fully satisfied he'd preserved the moment in his mind, he stood, collapsed the book into a cube of raw matter which he placed in his pocket, then took flight himself. He shot sharply forwards and upwards, quickly meeting the once-towering mountain peaks at eye level, then leaving them behind altogether. Beyond them, both above and below, was nothing but empty blue sky. This lasted a couple more miles, and then even that was left behind as he pierced the boundaries of the illusory heavens.

Now he was in an orange-tinted void, close to the color of sunset but starker and more uniform, stretching into the infinite, save for below him where it darkened into blackness. He glanced back the way he'd come for a moment. He saw the Valley - a 100 kilometer wide plain of flatland surrounded by mountain ranges and bodies of water which gave the impression of oceans at the periphery - within its semi-transparent, cloudy blue sphere. And in the void beyond it, he could just about make out the strange geometric shapes of the City, floating naked over the abyss.

Even though he'd downplayed the issue, Nora was probably right. He'd been getting more and more brazen about his trips lately. It was only a matter of time before the powers-that-be acted, and locked him out of this place forever.

The idea did not please him. It was a good domain as hegemonic ones went, better even than the last one, in his somewhat-controversial opinion. It facilitated many comforts and distractions without trying to establish some overbearing framework around people's lives, which was easily his preference. Yet, ultimately, he had spoken the truth.

It was ephemeral.

Isaac focused his intent for a moment. He departed the Crossroads, traveling to his own domain. Though the orange void remained, the landmarks of the Valley and City disappeared, replaced by only a tiny floating platform with enough room for a couple meters of grass and a small wooden shed - his own domain. Not much, but all that he could spare when the Crossroads required he loan 75% of his matter for citizenship. He descended and stepped into the interior, which contained a couple sets of shelves with more cubes of matter.

Isaac took the cube that had formerly been his book and placed it with the others, along with a few others in his pocket. He then reverted to his default state, his body shifting slightly and his clothes rearranging themselves into a casual, dark brown suit and a pair of loafers. All feelings of hunger, thirst, fatigue and bloatedness that had been slowly building up within him vanished at once. The excess matter became another, smaller cube, which he also set down.

He smiled contentedly to himself. Everything was as it ought to be, as it would be, as it was.

He stepped back outside, and looked towards it.

The world was governed by certain rules, and first among these - at least in terms of day-to-day relevance - was the finiteness of matter. Though energy was unlimited and domains themselves could be created freely, they had no substance without matter to give them cohesive form, and only a certain quantity of matter existed across all domains. Dominion over matter was distributed between all of humanity. Primaries, sometimes called Statics, each controlled roughly 177,777 tons of matter, while Secondaries, sometimes called Proteans, each controlled roughly 44,444. (While there was contention as to the specifics, scholars generally agreed the reason for this disparity was to offset the more unpleasant mental condition that Primaries were forced to endure in perpetuity. Privately, Isaac viewed this as an extremely unfair trade for them, and was glad not to be counted among their number.)

As humanity consisted of 1.8 million individuals divided equally between the two groups, that meant that the total volume of matter in existence amounted to approximately 200 billion tons-- An elegance that served as proof of the law's divine nature. Nothing within the true world, the one tangible to mankind, existed apart from this. Even people's very bodies were constructed from their allotment of matter. It was an absolute rule.

Almost absolute. Because there was one exception.

Present in every domain, from the moment of their creation and without exception, was a structure that defied - or perhaps existed beyond - the mundane rules of reality. Though a tangible entity that one could physically touch, it existed under no one's dominion and was utterly immutable; unable to be altered or damaged in any way whatsoever. Nor could it be expunged from a domain, despite the efforts of many in modern times. It was always at the center of any which were newly-created, and if one placed matter far away from it, it would always move to sit one kilometer away from the nearest piece, traveling at a speed proportional to the distance.

The best workaround people had found, which had been used for time immemorial, was to leave a trail of small pieces of matter between the building and where one ultimately planned to construct the domain proper, putting it well out of sight and mind. Yet it could never be completely removed. It was always there; an unanswered question from the birth of the universe, a truth that could never be forgotten, only temporarily denied.

Isaac had never denied it. It was there, towering ominously on its own little island not five meters away from the door of his shed.

The Manse.

The Manse, despite the name, did not look like a manse, at least not from the outside. Rather, it was an immensely utilitarian-looking structure, to the point that it came across as almost alien-- A flat-roofed octagon of grey stone, windowless and about three stories tall, perhaps 15 meters wide. At a further 5 meters, it was encircled by a black fence, creating a circular garden filled exclusively, and densely, with white lilies. There was only one gap in the fence, and one entrance directly in front of it: An unbroken path of red sandstone leading through an overhang to a simple steel door, engraved with an incomplete circle, stopped at what would be 11 on a traditional clock.

The exterior of the Manse was not what made it interesting, though of course there had been, and was still, a great deal of discussion surrounding it. The structure, garden, and symbol had all been subject to innumerable interpretations. The most common ascribed religious connotations; because the Manse required no matter and could be duplicated infinitely, it was often interpreted as the house of God, or even the body of God itself. Isaac could vaguely remember a time when interest in the Manse had been in greater vogue, and the incomplete loop on its door was the most common religious symbol, used by numerous cults and sects. It was often even said that the exterior physically resembled a temple, although Isaac considered this to be a stretch.

Others had more scientific, or at least aesthetically scientific, interpretations. One of the worlds visible in the Reflection was manifested and braced by a great tower, and some metaphysical scholars speculated this to be an imperfect interpretation of the role the Manse played in their own reality, since its presence was universal. But as the idea of the Manse as something foundational to the cosmos had become unpopular, so too had the theory.

Isaac cared little about any of this, though he did find it amusing how similar spiritualists and ostensible rationalists were when it came to the true mysteries of the universe. Always and forever, humans were beings that decided what they needed to be true first, then worked backwards from there.

The Manse had its own set of rules distinct from the rest of the reality, which Isaac reasoned existed to prevent 'cheating'. The first were the qualifications to enter the Manse in the first place. One could only do so with the matter comprising one's default body; any beyond that would be simply stopped at the threshold by an invisible barrier, refusing to pass no matter how much force was applied. Likewise matter could not be taken from the Manse, or even from the exterior garden, though this side of the equation was enforced slightly differently - rather than refusing to leave, it would simply disappear into nothingness as if it had never existed.

The Manse could also only be entered by one person at a time. Once someone had stepped beyond the threshold, anyone else who tried to follow them would be stopped by the same invisible force that stopped foreign matter. This would persist until the first person either passed through the door completely, or else returned back the way they came. People sometimes used this to prevent entry, but of course it was never an issue for Isaac, as he only ever entered from within his own domain.

Taking an apprehensive - almost excited - breath, he hopped the small gap between his little platform and the island of the Manse. He walked down the red path, stepping underneath the threshold. He took hold of the handle, opened the door, and stepped through, closing it behind him.

And he let out a long, long sigh.

He was home.

The other special rules of the Manse, and the ones by which Nora had caught Isaac red-handed, were the ways in which it operated apart from conventional space and time. Once inside the Manse, even if one entered right after another person, one was always alone. Most people believed that the door acted as a sort of portal, and every interior was, despite having the same uniform appearance, actually an altogether new physical space that was generated on the spot.

The evidence appeared to support this. The 'fresh' state of the Manse was always the same except for a handful of strict variables, and if - for example - one entered, threw something on the floor, then left and returned right away, it would be as if the object had never been moved. Further, the shape of the interior clearly did not match the exterior whatsoever, and if measured shouldn't even have been able to fit, which further indicated the entire outer structure was little more than a glorified doorway.

More importantly than this, time did not pass in the outside world while one was in Manse. No matter how long one remained inside - whether it was for a second or for a thousand years - in the exterior domain, one would always emerge at a random time within 24 hours but no less than 1 since the time of entry.

Time could flow differently between domains at the discretion of their creators, but under normal circumstances this deviance was 'anchored' to a factor of 10 from the baseline, which most popular domains used because it made them the most accessible. Isaac had made time in his domain flow as quickly as possible, which meant that he would be gone from the Crossroads for a maximum of 2.4 hours. From their perspective.

But from his...

Well, it was going to be quite some time before he'd be heading to Bao's house, to say the least.

All of Isaac's friends knew he loved the Manse, the mysteries within it. He talked about it often, to the point it would be a faux pas had they not known each other for a ridiculous amount of time. Several running jokes were devoted to his obsession (often specifically his book, which he'd written, again, when the topic was more respectable) which he happily laughed along with.

But the truth was, none of them had any fucking idea.

Isaac didn't just love the Manse, he was infatuated with it, fascinated by its every aspect in a manner that likely surpassed every other person in the world. His devotion to it was greater than to any human, even his closest loved ones. He valued those relationships, of course; he'd shared more of himself with Ramin then he'd ever believed possible when they first met, and he imagined that in time he might even become a companion of sorts in his great quest. But ultimately, the days he spent outside of the Manse were nothing but fleeting reveries, vacations of a sort from what he considered his real life, spent overwhelmingly in happy solitude within these walls.

Isaac thought of himself as born simply to be here; for all he knew, perhaps he had been. The Manse alone was his true soulmate. His feelings for it verged even on the sexual; he considered sometimes that he would like to make love to it, were there a way for him to comfortably do so.

As soon as he was inside, he stripped fully naked; the temperature was always ideal within the Manse and no one would see him, so clothing was meaningless. He sprinted over to a desk at the foyer and jotted down some notes that had been on his mind while he was in the outside.

Then, he set forward.

The inside of the Manse was, in contrast to the exterior, quite pleasant. Though parts of the structure evoked a lodge or barn of sorts - it had only a single story, with a tall and arched wooden roof - the overwhelming atmosphere was that of a modestly comfortable country house. There were six rooms in total, or seven if you counted the foyer. Setting aside the central hall which it fed directly into and largely served as a mere liminal hub, Isaac divided these into three groups: The two boring rooms, the two somewhat-interesting rooms, and the one room which actually mattered.

The two boring rooms were the bathroom and the lounge, which were both perfectly suitable for what they were. The lounge was equipped with three comfortable chairs and a sofa which cumulatively fulfilled most every taste in seating, plus a tall and perpetually-burning fireplace and small dining area for one. Meanwhile, the bathroom was equipped with a very large tub and a wide variety of soaps and other hygiene products. Both of these were excellent places to sit and read, which was the primary thing one did while in the Manse.

The two somewhat-interesting rooms, meanwhile, were the kitchen and bedroom, and what made them notable was that some of their contents were variables. The kitchen was the lesser of the two; the variable was the pantry, which restocked itself with random ingredients whenever its quantity was depleted beneath 50% of their normal volume and the doors were completely closed. This meant the Manse never ran out of food or dining within it became wholly dull, but it would only ever generate country house-appropriate ingredients, meaning it rarely truly surprised the visitor. Plus you had to prepare the food yourself, which Isaac considered a little annoying.

The bedroom was the real highlight. Aside from the king-sized bed and a walk-in closet with an assortment of basic outfits in the visitor's size, it also contained a shelf that refilled with new books on every venture. Though Isaac had eventually realized these were always taken from the Reflection rather than the real world, he also discovered- though his friends thought he was only imagining this - that the Manse almost appeared to tailor the selection to his state of mind upon entry. He'd find uplifting books when he was depressed, thoughtful books when he was feeling introspective, even erotic books on the rare occasions that he was filled with sexual enthusiasm.

Isaac was fascinated by this possibility. That the Manse might somehow be able to read his mind. To see him, as a person, to forge a connection...

But again: All of this was peripheral. At the end of the day, one did not go to the Manse seeking comfort. It could never match the sort of stuff available in the Crossroads, and didn't even try.

No. What drew people to the Manse - what drew Isaac, and he was sure many of the other devoted, despite the prohibition - was the final room, located at the far side of the building.

The library. This was where he went, as soon as he arrived, strolling with the casual confidence of a hunter returning to his usual grounds.

As soon as one entered, it was obvious that the library was different from the rest of the Manse. For one thing, it was far larger; likely the size of the entire rest of the building put together, easily 20 meters from one end to the other. It was also the only room with windows, a line of which were located at the back. They emitted only a strange, unearthly blue light, the space beyond them seeming foggy and indistinct.

The library was packed tight with rows of shelves, each exactly six feet tall, so nothing was out of reach even for people with slight builds. These shelves, in turn, contained nothing but slim, black books, each unlabelled and precisely 100 pages long.

These were the treasure of the Manse, and the reason, so far as anyone could determine, for why it existed. Its mystery.

Or rather, mysteries. Because each of the books, or at least the overwhelming majority of them, contained the same thing: A murder mystery.

The details varied, but the underlying structure was always the same. 22 characters arrived at an isolated location, and there were a few scenes to establish their relationships and the conflicts between them. Then, they'd start to get killed one by one. The books would go into specific detail about the circumstances of their death, have the characters offer speculation for a page or two, then move on to the next murder.

There were generally three ways in which they would end. The overwhelmingly most common was that all the characters would simply die, and the book would come to a stop with no clear answer. The second most common was that a culprit would be revealed and the murders would stop, though it was rare that all the outstanding questions would be fully resolved. Finally, the third most common was that the characters would simply escape, creating a happier ending but, again, offering no clear answers.

Put that way, the books sound almost normal, but in truth they were anything but; even Isaac couldn't enjoy them if he tried to read them in the way he would normal fiction. They were dry as a bone, with the setting and characters never defined at all beyond their most utilitarian attributes. The dialogue consisted of nothing but the ideas communicated being written in the most literal way possible. 'I believe you are the culprit.' 'I am not the culprit.' 'You entered room A through a secret passage. That is why I saw you.' 'It is a lie that you saw me.'

Beyond lacking behavioral or even physical descriptors, the characters lacked even names.They were all referred to simply by the 22 major arcana of a tarot deck; The Fool, The Hierophant, and so on and so forth. In isolation, this rendered the mysteries functionally unsolvable; they didn't offer enough information to definitively determine anything, and the total lack of flavor meant it was impossible to go off one's gut.

But there were a lot of them. The library contained hundreds of thousands, and every time one entered the Manse, the selection was different. Most people believed that they were generated wholesale every time one entered based on unknown parameters, but Isaac was one of the few people who had visited frequently enough to have discovered one of the Manse's secrets: They weren't. He'd only ever confirmed it happening twice, but he'd run into repeats.What the Manse presented a visitor was in fact an incomplete sample of a much, much larger archive.

If humanity had ever known, the specific purpose of the Manse and its library were long lost. Yet in the center of the room, the shelves parted, and a small desk sat lit by a special lamp. On it were a small pile of seven blank forms, and at the head of the desk, an engraving. It read:

'Present your answer.'

The forms themselves were structured like exam sheets, presenting a series of boxes. There were a total of 24. The first 22 were labelled according to the characters. The 23rd was labelled BACKGROUND. Finally, the 24th was labelled ANSWER.

Isaac had only heard about this part through rumor, as he'd not yet dared himself. But supposedly, if you filled out the entire form and returned to the main hall, you'd find a staircase that hadn't been there before. This would lead to a hole in the ceiling that you could enter so long as you were still holding the form.

And after this... You'd be evicted from the Manse, never able to return again. Unable to pass the threshold, even alone.

The conclusions one could draw from this were obvious. Evidently, the books in the library all pointed, through whatever complex or esoteric means, to a single truth. You were expected to read them until you'd figured it out, put down all the details, and then submit your answer. That was why the Manse existed: As an environment to do this comfortably and without distractions.

And... You only got one chance. If you failed - misunderstood - it would reject and exile you. As had happened to every single person who had tried thus far.

But what if you succeeded?

This was the reason access to the Manse was restricted. According to primeval legend, whoever discovered the truth would obtain a great power. One that would upset the status quo in the world. By this point, the majority had tried and failed, and they didn't like the idea of someone else potentially getting that power-- Assuming it existed. Mankind's role was to act as eternal observers of the Reflections, nothing more. That, nowadays, was the party line.

Sore losers, Isaac thought to himself, with a smirk. Nothing more.

After arriving in the library, he spent a while gathering his thoughts, staring aimlessly into the blue light. It was a surprisingly difficult thing, to let his conscious mind sink back into its proper place. To slip free from the chains of convention it was forced to don in the outside world.

Hours passed. When he finally felt settled, he set to work. He went to the corner of the library with office supplies and gathered pens, parchment, and scissors. It didn't matter if you destroyed the books, and often it felt helpful for him to do so. Isaac was the type of person who liked to have something tangible laid out in front of him that he could arrange in accord with the ideas in his head, especially once he began to enter the trance, as he thought of it.

He set it all down on a wooden table, then pulled up a chair. He grabbed one of the books.

He began. He read. He let his body move, when it needed to. He didn't eat or drink, simply reverting it to the default state when his physical needs grew deeper.

To him, this was living. His purpose. His singular purpose.

The mystery of the Manse was difficult to understand, let alone solve. Many people spoke about how, once they'd read more than a few of the books, the very nature of the task itself began to appear absurd. The default assumption was that the characters and narratives were permutations from the same root, but it quickly became clear it wasn't that simple. For one thing, the cast acted inconsistently between the volumes. Sometimes the High Priestess would be forward and intentful, other times quiet and laconic. The Tower varied from openly evil and malicious to practically acting as the hero. Some characters, like The Lovers, had almost no discernible pattern to their behavior.

And then there were the anomalous texts, which one ran into more and more frequently the longer they spent in the library. Again, not all of the texts were murder mysteries. Some of them simply had the characters doing mundane tasks, or just talking, or were even outright incoherent, presenting scenarios that were total non-sequiturs. People who Isaac would have described as amateurs to the Manse often viewed these as deceptively important since they could provide insight into the characters.

Isaac agreed they were important, but not for this reason. Because he had understood long ago that the 'characters' weren't characters at all. Rather, they were roles.

A long time ago, he'd determined that there were three steps to reaching the truth, to grasping the heart of the Manse. The first step was easy, relatively speaking: You had to understand the nature of the roles and the rules, which could only be perceived through implication. In Isaac's mind, this served as a sort of filter for people who simply weren't taking the task seriously, who weren't willing to sit down and read the few thousand volumes it would take to get the gist of it.

The second step was to understand the patterns in the scenarios. Not the patterns in terms of what happened, obviously, but rather those that were unspoken, the abstractions that filled the roles and their implicit objectives. This was also the stage where you began to learn the secret language of the mystery. Fools got hung up on solving the little mechanical tricks - the closed rooms and so forth - but Isaac knew that what a closed room really represented was a truth about one of the abstractions, or at least an allusion to one. Murder was not murder. A culprit was not a culprit.

And then, finally, there was the third stage, which Isaac felt he was at the cusp of. Once one understood the abstractions, and what they represented... Once one saw the points of intersection, and the tension they bore... One began to make out the shape of something. Something that could not easily be put into words.

A truth, forgotten to humanity.

Isaac's hands were moving very swiftly now. Some amount of time had passed. The desk was covered in notes and cut-out passages, which had spilled out into the surrounding floor. He'd reached the point where the pens had run out of ink, and had begun using his own blood. This, too, was ephemeral; he could simply reset his body if he started to feel faint. It was simply matter, just like the books. His true self was a lens that needed to be focused.

There was a story about the Manse that did the rounds every so often; a ghost story of sorts. It was a variation of that classic: The last man sat alone. There was a knock on the door. One was always supposed to be utterly isolated in the Manse, and the longer one spent within it, the more one's mind seemed to be reshaped by its walls. The idea of an outsider being suddenly present, especially in conjunction with the more general eerie unknowability of the place, obviously became an idea which inspired great fear. He'd many descriptions of such a being: A creeping entity of black slime with many faces. A tall man made of burned pieces of paper. A great serpent whose face reflected one's own.

But Isaac had seen someone here, and fear was not what he felt. He witnessed her watching him sometimes, when he was deepest at work. Sometimes she would be in the doorway, other times beyond the window. Once he'd seen her strikingly close, in the shadow of the shelf. It was always only in the corner of her eyes; he knew not to look too close.

She was a woman. A maiden, dressed in a funeral gown that was stark white. Not a monster, but something beautiful beyond measure. The embodiment of truth itself.

An angel. Yes, that was one word for it. Something that would carry beyond this world of endless, banal indulgence, to a realm of knowledge and splendor unimaginable.

Isaac kept working. He read more volumes. He took more notes. He devoured and tore apart an entire shelf's worth of material in what felt like a mere moment, feeling as though he was edging closer and closer to something, all conception of his friends and the outside world vanishing from his mind. He felt hungry for something without a name. Was it time, at last? Would he see her?

And then--