Codex Fragment: The Shepherd’s Twig
“The subjects are the sheep, the ruler their shepherd—
hey ho, he leads them with a twig, not a blade.
And still they follow, not by command,
but by the soft weight of remembered trust.
Hey ho, such is the rhythm of rule:
not strength, but the illusion of safety
held gently in the crook of a stick.”
—From the Hollow Verses of the Wandering Court, recited in jest and truth alike across the Borderlands
***
The Court Beyond Maps
The scent of lemon balm and smoke faded. The rib-throne crumbled to dust beneath him.
And suddenly, Arin was elsewhere.
A vast white chamber unfolded around him—not white like snow or ash, but like the absence of decision, a white of unmade choices. The floor reflected no shadow. There were no walls, but the silence pressed in like architecture.
Theryx was gone.
No birds. No whispering bones. No cloak humming at his chest.
Only a throne of bone—and he upon it.
On his lap rested a sword. Not his. Not yet.
It pulsed with a slow, living gleam. Forged not from metal, but from something purer—the consequence of choice. Its edge shimmered with future blood.
Before him knelt a figure. Or… figures.
Their face shifted like a flickering candle in wind—now a woman, now a child, now a man, now old, now young, now no face at all. Their form trembled, not in fear, but in the pressure of meaning.
All around Arin, the court appeared.
He did not remember them arriving.
Rows upon rows—Kings whose armor bore the scratches of centuries. Queens whose eyes had wept for entire nations. Presidents still burning with the ghosts of wars. Cult leaders veiled in riddles. Generals with medals sewn onto their skin. Scholars, teachers, assassins, prophets.
A full pantheon of power.
They spoke as one. A voice like the crash of a wave made from scrolls and fire.
“Paragon. Of Dusk. Of the Path. Of the Perfection Reincarnate.
We offer you the crown of judgment.”
The sword in his lap grew heavier.
The kneeling figure raised their head. Their eyes were everyone’s. Innocent. Guilty. Lost. Hopeful.
And the court spoke again:
“What would you do?”
“If the one before you is guilty only by blood—”
“—by association to shadow—”
“—would you cleanse the line?”
“Would you behead not just one—”
“—but the three generations born of it—”
“—to protect the realm?”
The silence after was unbearable.
But they did not relent.
“Or would you show mercy?”
“Would you risk the world for one?”
“Would you choose humanity—that selfish tick of consciousness—”
“And doom us all to preserve your own soul?”
The figure at his feet bowed deeper. Their breath trembled.
The sword pulsed.
The weight of decision thickened the air like molten lead.
And then, the voices rose—thunder, decree, revelation:
“What would you do?”
“O Paragon of the Dusk.”
“O Final Voice of Balance.”
“O He Who Carries the Crown of Consciousness in His Brows.”
“Who Bears the Chain of Responsibility at His Neck.”
“Who Holds the Power of Command in His Grasp.”
“WHAT. WOULD. YOU. DO?”
The chamber burned with expectation. The figure before him was breathing his breath, their chest rising with his own. They were him. Not-him. All-that-might-be.
Time itself leaned in.
The sword whispered.
Choose.
And just as Arin opened his mouth to speak—
SHADOWS BREACHED THE WHITE.
They seeped in like spilled ink—slow, deliberate, hungry. Figures in black robes, faces hidden beneath porcelain half-masks. Their presence uninvited. Their intent undeniable.
They circled.
And standing between them and the throne was—
Theryx.
Floating upside down, cross-legged, twirling a lollipop and making the most obscene faces.
He grinned maniacally, tongue out, one eye glowing purple and the other missing entirely.
“WELL, WELL, WELL,” he sang. “Look who’s finally having a proper existential moment! Took you long enough!”
The shadows hesitated.
Theryx licked his lollipop, then tossed it over his shoulder where it exploded in a puff of logic-defying confetti.
“Back off, boys,” he said with a laugh that bent space. “He hasn’t answered the question yet. And we don’t interrupt stories halfway through.”
He pointed two fingers at his eyes, then at the masked intruders.
“And besides,” he grinned wider, “I’ve been waiting to try out my interpretive death-dance. Hope you brought snacks.”
The shadows took a cautious step back.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
And the court, silent, eternal, watched still.
Waiting.
Waiting for Arin’s answer.
***
Theryx’s grin faltered mid-gibberish.
His floating lollipop dropped.
His body rotated upright—something he hadn't done in centuries unless an opera was involved.
“Wait a tick…” he muttered. “That tone…”
Arin had risen.
Slowly. Silently.
His hand did not touch the sword.
The sword waited for him. But he did not lift it.
Instead, he stepped down from the throne. Past the kneeling, shifting figure. Past the expectations of kings and the judgment of queens. Past Theryx, who had stopped mid-laugh, brows drawn in awe, as if seeing something ancient bloom.
The court leaned forward.
And Arin spoke.
His voice was not loud.
But it carried.
Through space. Through the masks of shadows. Through time.
“What is power,” he asked, “or the vestige of it, without humanity?”
His eyes were clear. His words deliberate.
“Is not mercy the only sane answer in the face of such engineered depravity?
To kill—only because I can—is that not the road of the tyrant?”
The court shifted. Murmurs. Doubt.
He kept going.
“The weight of the crown is not a license to rule with impulse. It is a summons to clarity. A call to objectivity amid the screaming of interest-tainted judgment.”
“But—” he turned, meeting the eyes of the shadows themselves— “To rule only for the sake of ruling... to reduce mercy to weakness... to use power as a cudgel, for peace borne from fear of rebellion... what peace is that? That is not harmony. It is submission dressed in regalia.”
He faced the court once more.
“My path... is rebellion to that.”
“I will not cast the burden of possible rebellion on the heads of children unborn, or the innocent bound by blood. If danger comes, it will be mine to meet.”
The sword on the throne glowed white-hot, untouched.
“If I cannot take that responsibility—if I cannot carry the weight of the guilty and protect even those who might become threats—then I am no Paragon.”
He stepped forward.
Past the kneeling figure.
He raised his hand—not to strike, but to lift.
The kneeling figure rose with him, shaking.
And Arin said, simply:
“I would be a pretender otherwise.
One afraid of shadows.
I am not.”
Silence.
Crushing, crystalline silence.
Then—
The sword cracked.
Not broken. Evolved.
The weapon burst into radiant motes—no longer a sword, but a constellation. Pieces of choice, scattered across Arin’s aura. A crown formed not upon his brow, but around it—light and motion, orbiting thought and will.
The court knelt.
One by one.
No forced loyalty. No ceremony.
Just reverence.
Even the shadows hesitated.
Even they—born of command, of codes and execution—paused.
Because power had not spoken.
Wisdom had.
And that terrified them more.
Then—
Theryx slowly took off his hat (which he hadn't been wearing).
“...well,” he whispered, somewhere between moved and mildly horrified, “that escalated into poetry.”
He gave Arin a long look.
“You’ve gone and become unruly, haven’t you?” he said, grinning again, softer this time. “Told the system to stuff it with a lullaby and walked into the fire with your heart on your sleeve.”
Then, to the shadows, he leaned forward, tongue out once again:
“Bet you didn't plan for that, did you, creepletons?”
The shadows began to dissolve—not destroyed, not cast out—but unbound. Their masks cracked. They didn’t vanish... they bowed.
Something ancient had shifted.
A new law had been written, not in code, but in choice.
Arin stood at the center of it, head unbowed.
Paragon, not by might.
But by mercy.
***
Arin’s eyes shot open.
The weight of memory clung to his skin like dew. He sat up sharply, breath quickened, and looked down at his hands.
A stick.
He was holding a crooked, splintered stick.
Not a blade of legend. Not a symbol of power. Just… bark and stubbornness.
The ground beneath him was bone. The sky above him shimmered like a dream unspoken. Around him, the graveyard pulsed with quiet magic—but it was different now. Quieter. Waiting.
And then—
“HA!”
Theryx exploded with laughter, sprawling backwards in the air, kicking like a child who’d just witnessed a pie hit a nobleman.
“Oh stars, I can’t! You were majestic, you were glowing! And now—” he wheezed, pointing. “A stick, Arin! A STICK!”
Arin ran a thumb along the grain of it. Smiled faintly. “Still got some weight to it.”
Theryx wiped a tear from his cheek. “What’s next? Ruling a kingdom with a soup ladle?”
But Arin didn’t answer right away.
He stood, the stick still in hand, and stared into the swirling mist just beyond the graveyard’s rim.
Something had changed.
Theryx noticed it too—his laughter faded, brow knitting.
The air had grown... watchful.
From beyond the haze, shadows emerged—dozens, silent and deliberate. Robed in logic, eyes humming with coded purpose. They wore the scent of the System, the stillness of compliance. They had tracked anomalies through time, cracked worlds to hunt dissenters.
And now they stared at Arin.
At him.
The Paragon of the Dusk.
But before they could move—before protocol or analysis could launch—a sound shattered the tension.
Theryx. Laughing again.
Not gently this time.
But maniacally.
“Oh, you’re here!” he called, spinning midair. “Let me guess: Cross-dimensional retrieval team? Judgment enforcers? Anti-stick strike force?”
He began contorting his face into obscene shapes—one eye crossed, tongue flailing, cheeks puffed like a deranged pufferfish.
He flapped his arms. “Coo-coo! Welcome to Theryx’s Sanctuary of Unreason! Behold! The twiggèd one! Kneel, ye bureaucratic buffoons!”
The shadows didn’t move.
Theryx waggled his fingers. “Well? No dramatic monologue? No ‘You’ve violated the temporal prime something-or-other’? Just looming?”
He turned to Arin, still cackling. “I think we broke their dialogue tree.”
Arin tightened his grip on the stick. It was ridiculous. Utterly so.
And yet...
The dream was still in his bones. The sword, the court, the kneeling question of justice.
He took a step forward. The shadows tensed.
"Big words," Arin said softly, echoing himself.
"Now let the action speak."
And beside him, Theryx grinned wider, eyes wild.
“Oooh, that’s the spirit. Let’s break the algorithm.”
***
The stick in Arin’s hand felt weightless, yet it hummed with ancient familiarity. Its bark, smooth as river-stone and warm as breath, pulsed with something that wasn't quite magic—but something older, something true.
Thunder rolled across the sky like a forgotten drumbeat. No lightning followed. Only the distant, jagged silence of a world holding its breath.
Before him, the shadows had crossed the threshold—pale imitations of their former terror. Stripped of the System’s full grasp, they flickered like old candlelight. But even so, they advanced, propelled by broken memories and half-born rage.
Theryx watched from his bone-made seat, his chin in one palm, the other hand lazily twirling a spoon.
“Go go go, Para-gon-gone-gone shadow,” he sang softly to himself. “Leave us alone, be bones, go home…”
The stick moved without Arin’s thought. It found the unseen joints in the shadows’ forms, tapping where the marrow of memory still clung. Where the bones had once held shape, it now brought release.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Each strike brought not pain, but unraveling—threads of fury and torment severed gently, reverently. The shadows froze, mid-lunge, as if they’d remembered something long forgotten. Arin saw it then—the pain that had birthed them, the suffering twisted into obedience. Not evil. Just misused.
He plunged the stick into the heart of one phantom, not with violence, but with intent.
Their eyes widened—many eyes, fractured and layered—and from their shredded forms came whispered gratitude.
They dissolved, not like vanquished foes, but like prayers answered.
As each disappeared, Arin inhaled their pain and exhaled a soft word from deep within:
“Om.”
The vibration rolled from his lips like the turning of a wheel. A sound without beginning or end.
It resonated through the bones.
Through the mist.
Through the souls once trapped in shadow.
And through the world beyond.
Each spirit released began to shimmer, then faded like dew in the morning, returning to the great cycle—Samsara welcomed them home, no longer prisoners of a broken system.
When the last shadow fell, Arin sank to one knee, sweat on his brow, stick grounded before him like a banner.
He bowed his head and whispered a prayer—not of victory, but of forgiveness. For them. For himself.
Theryx, who had grown uncharacteristically quiet, sniffed once and gave a slow, solemn clap.
“Alright,” he muttered. “That was… yeah, that was something.”
He blinked hard.
Then shook his head.
“Right. I’ll give you five minutes to be mysterious and wise, and then I’m making breakfast out of nostalgia and nonsense.”
He shuffled off toward a glowing crack in the air that smelled faintly of pickles.
Arin remained kneeling.
The stick—his strange companion—lay across his lap like a bridge between two worlds. The one of death. And the one of purpose.
And far, far above, the System screamed silently into the void— unable to process the impossible:
Subject: Arin
Reclassification Error
Title: Paragon of the Dusk – Confirmed
Threat Level: UNDEFINED
New Variable Introduced: Compassion (Uncoded Trait)
Response: Unable to calculate.
***