Zeo opened his eyes before the sun had risen.
The sky was still light, but he knew something had changed. Not outside. Inside the web he had been building—hundreds of tiny nodes scattered across every corner of the village. Every symbol, every bloodline, every residue of chaos he had planted as a "sensor."
And one of them… responded back.
One node, on the eastern edge of the village, lit up on its own. It wasn't time yet.
Zeo knew who did it.
Rivan.
Not just because the location was right. But because the symbol that appeared on the node was an inverted version of his own.
Not a rejection. But a challenge.
At the same time, Rivan stood in front of the flat rock where he had planted the first mark—a spell mark from the Book of Broken Mirrors that was now part of him.
He knew Zeo felt the response.
And he knew that now everything he did would be watched, measured, and perhaps… welcomed.
So he sent a message—not with words, but with shapes.
He drew a symbol in the air: an incomplete circle, surrounded by broken lines. It was no ordinary spell. It was a new structure—a code that only someone who understood the logic of chaos could read.
And as the symbol disappeared into thin air, the wind stopped.
Zeo watched it from afar, from atop a hill, and smiled.
"You finally understand, Rivan."
Then, on the ground near Rivan's house, a reply symbol appeared. It didn't explode. It didn't light up. Just one sentence, formed from a damp trail in the grass:
"If you can hold back the cracking of the world… prove it."
Not a direct challenge. But an invitation to go deeper.
And for the first time, Zeo felt less alone in this "conversation."
Not because he was afraid.
But because… finally there was someone sane enough to go crazy with him.
Zeo's magic network spread like underground nerves. Invisible, but alive—flowing from one point to another: the old well, the burned tree, the boulder behind the village hall.
Each node was an eye. Each line was a stream of consciousness.
And that night, one by one, the nodes began to break.
Not burned. Not destroyed. But transformed—slowly, systematically.
The closed spiral of Zeo's symbol opened slightly. Just enough to confuse its meaning. The result? The web began to lie to him.
He thought a villager was sleeping. But it turned out he had been dead since the afternoon.
He felt the northern tree was still intact. Even though it had fallen because of the rebound magic.
He thought the land to the east was sterile. But that night, the blood of wild boars spread out in a neutralizing spell.
"Rivan," Zeo whispered. "Good."
Meanwhile, Rivan sat in the middle of a small forest. Around him, five stones formed a circle—each engraved with a "reverse" version of the Zeo symbol.
He did not attack directly.
He twisted.
Zeo's spiral symbol, if opened a little, would not lose its meaning. But it would become a dead end. A path that, if taken… would lead the user of his magic to get lost in his own web.
Zeo began to feel the effects. Parts of his body stiffened. His eyes throbbed. In his dreams, he began to talk to himself—but in a language he didn't understand.
But Zeo didn't panic.
He replied.
The next morning, outside Rivan's house, five footprints appeared. They were irregular. They didn't make sense—they were different lengths, they ran in conflicting directions.
When Rivan hit the ground, he realized: Zeo wasn't just trying to break into his magic room.
Zeo was trying to destroy the structure of his mind.
And on the westernmost stone, there were these words written:
"Symbols cannot be reversed. But the brain can."
This duel wasn't about who was stronger.
It was about who could drive the other mad the fastest.