Codex Wars: Judgment of the Forsaken

"These damn things just won't end..." — muttered Beatriz, leaning against the wall, breathless. Blood still dripped down her side, but her eyes held the fierce fire of someone who refused to give in.

"Don't speak. Don't move. You'll reopen the wound," — said Mei Lin, never taking her eyes off the injury.

Sweat dripped from her brow, darkening the loose strands of hair clinging to her face. One hand pressed firmly against Beatriz's abdomen; the other rested on an open bamboo scroll atop a makeshift wooden board.

The design forming there was a stylized, broken Yin-Yang — its two halves circling around a central void, with lines pulsing in soft hues of blue and gold. It was Mei Lin's Codex.

Unlike ordinary healers who merely accelerated cell regeneration — wearing them down in the process — her Codex did more:

It induced the creation of new cells, balancing their growth and allowing the body to heal with greater precision and fewer aftereffects. An elegant process — almost divine… but demanding.

Even so, there were limits.

Mei Lin wasn't an Archon. She couldn't regrow a lost limb, nor could she stop massive bleeding in mere seconds.

And deep wounds like Beatriz's drained Vis like sand through a torn hourglass.

Ezra watched in silence, seated just a few feet away. He wasn't injured — at least, not physically.

The weight he carried was different.

It was the burden of watching everyone bleed, fight, fall… while he just stood by.

They had been there for hours already.

Dorian, though exhausted, had repositioned himself to manage the flow and allow the most wounded to rest in shifts — two at a time. Now it was Beatriz and Edward's turn.

Silence. Only the sound of labored breathing and distant metal scraping echoed around them.

Then, Edward, lying nearby with his shoulder bandaged, murmured:

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Ezra."

Ezra looked away.

"It's not your fault," Edward continued, voice low but steady. "Some things are just... beyond our control."

Ezra didn't answer.

He slowly clenched his fists, his fingers throbbing with pent-up tension. As if he wanted to say that wasn't enough. That watching without being able to act was a kind of wound that didn't bleed — but rotted from within.

But he said nothing.

He stayed quiet.

Still.

Empty inside.

Too whole on the outside.

Or at least, that's how it looked.

No one could be blamed for thinking that. After all, Ezra had always been the type who felt too much, demanded too much of himself. Sensitive, some would say. Fragile, others might whisper.

And now... the only one among them who couldn't fight. The one who had led them here — and the only one unable to protect anyone.

Yes, they might think he was frozen in place. But Edward was wrong. Or rather... late. That guilt had already been felt. Burned. Buried.

Ezra wasn't frozen. He was calculating.

While the others fought, he forced his mind to work, digging inside his own thoughts like a man clawing at the earth, desperate to unearth an escape with his bare hands.

'We've been here for hours, and this place doesn't change. And the enemies... they just don't stop.'

He looked around.

The room — or arena, or prison, or whatever it was — seemed to breathe through its walls. The architecture twisted into familiar shapes, but all wrong. Columns bent unnaturally, steps rose and descended at once. Like a broken memory of something real. As if the place were trying to imitate something… but forgot the details along the way.

The mannequins kept emerging from cracks and shadows. Their broken forms were visible even when silence reigned. Always there. Always watching.

'It doesn't make sense for the Law to try to eliminate us. The Gate was supposed to be a passage — not a death trap. The dangers were on the way… not inside. That's what the legends said.'

Ezra frowned. 'But… what if the legends were wrong? Or worse — incomplete?'

The smell of burnt iron and splintered wood filled the air. In the background, a rhythmic scraping against stone blended with the group's labored breathing.

Ezra kept his eyes on the floor — but his mind was searching.

Desperately.

The texture of the ceiling… repeated the same pattern every meter.

The mannequins' sounds… same interval between appearances?

"There's no way… I've checked a dozen times…" — he murmured, nearly entranced, rising slowly. "But there has to be a pattern… some rule I missed."

He began to walk.

Reliving each step in his mind:

Kael detecting the Vis flow.

The touch on the object atop the altar.

The displacement.

"But what rules…?" The answer was there. Slipping through the edges of his mind, like a memory choked by smoke.

Ezra kept walking.

He passed Edward without noticing.

Passed the dark stones that marked the front line.

And kept going — straight into the heart of the chaos.

"Is this how I die?" Edward murmured, confused. "Ezra…?"

Nothing.

Ezra didn't respond.

Didn't look back.

Edward turned just in time to see Ezra in the distance.

He took one more step —

And vanished.

Gone into the floor.

"EZRA! FUCK!"

Edward jumped to his feet, ignoring the bandages across his body and the fact that, because Beatriz had taken the worst of the wounds, he had received nothing more than the most basic medical care.

He drew his pistols. Heart racing. Mind blank.

He sprinted toward the frontlines, breaching the safe zone.

Beatriz and Mei Lin jolted at the shout. They looked toward the spot — Ezra was no longer there. And Edward was running like a madman.

Kael emerged from the rubble, twisting past a mannequin with a smooth spin. "What happened?"

Perfect — total formation breakdown, a cornered group, and a surge of action that demands clarity, tension, and a visually cohesive progression.

"Ezra… he lost it! Charged straight into the middle of the mannequins!" — Edward shouted, his voice laced with shock and desperation.

Dorian appeared in a blink, the air warping around him. He was carrying Nyra over his shoulders, his face twisted in pain.

Blood was pouring from her shoulder, forming a red trail down her torso. Her hood, once shielding her face, was now drenched in crimson — no longer hiding the severity of the injury.

"He did WHAT?" — Dorian couldn't believe it. His expression flickered between rage and disbelief.

And then —

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ALL DOING!?"

Bastian's voice thundered above the clash of blades, metal shards, and mechanical snarls.

He and Rurik were at their limit — bodies covered in cuts, clothes torn, blood mixed with sweat. But still standing.

They were locked in brutal combat, not just against the surge of smaller mannequins, but also against a towering one — a monstrous puppetmaster-like figure, its arms long like cranes and a cracked porcelain head fixed at its center.

Bastian's metal gauntlets sparked with every punch, generating shockwaves that cracked the ground beneath his feet.

"DID YOU FORGET WHAT I SAID ABOUT QUICK ROTATIONS!?"

He spun, landing a heavy cross to the creature's chest — creating a brief opening to breathe. But at the mention of Ezra's name, he glanced away for a fraction of a second.

Fatal mistake.

The giant mannequin seized the moment.

It lunged with a hollow roar, raising its arm like a deformed sledgehammer, ready to smash down.

"SHIT — LOOK OUT!" Dorian shouted.

He flashed behind Bastian in a shimmer of warped light.

In his hands — a book inscribed with living runes.

With a sharp motion, he tore the center page — and blood immediately spilled from his mouth.

<"Distortion!"> he cried.

The air around the towering mannequin bent, warping like heated glass.

The creature quivered — its abdomen buckling with a brittle groan, cracking from the inside out.

It exploded into jagged shards.

Dorian staggered. Coughing blood.

"You were going to DIE, damn it! Focus!"

The dust from the blast spread out — and with it, chaos.

Lena, sharp-eyed, moved toward the weakening center line.

But it was too late. The formation was falling back. The flanks faltered.

"Why the hell are you retreating!?" Lena demanded.

But no one answered.

No one had the time.

Rurik, the last to hold the line, stepped forward.

He drew a deep breath.

Fell to his knees, slamming his massive axe into the ground.

<"Codex."> he murmured.

The earth trembled beneath him.

A slate-gray stone tablet appeared from nowhere, hovering before his chest. Runes carved into it lit up one by one — like embers stirred awake.

<"THUS STATES THE LAW : SO LONG AS THE VIS BURNS. NONE SHALL PASS.">

His words thundered.

The tablet blazed — and fused into the axe, which began to hum with energy. The Vis around Rurik spiraled into dense, golden currents, whirling like a contained storm.

A wall of energy rose before him — a towering shield of interwoven runes and solid light.

The mannequins slammed into it and were violently thrown back.

✦ ✦ ✦

While the others fought for every breath of survival,

Ezra walked.

Slow steps, almost sleepwalking. His mind was the only place where the chaos seemed quiet.

'Maybe... it's because we touched the switch?'

"Of course it's the switch, Ezra," he answered himself — with that second voice, the colder one, the one that didn't waste time on guilt. "But there must be something else."

The ground beneath him changed texture. From cracked marble to smooth, almost slick stone.

He didn't see the transition. Didn't hear it. It simply… changed.

The darkness around him was alive.

There were no walls. No ceiling.

And yet… he could see.

Not with his eyes — but with a kind of stretched-out awareness, as if space itself were not a place, but an idea.

'If it were a trap… the Gate would've killed us on entry. But it didn't. It allowed us in. There's no reason for it to attack. That would go against the Law of the Good Host.'

Ezra stopped.

Something within him — a shard of logic amid the chaos — clicked into place.

"DAMN IT, BASTIAN!" he shouted, the echo unraveling far too quickly in the empty air.

In this new world, the Laws had shifted.

Some had become erratic, others vanished entirely.

But certain rules… remained. Unchanging. Universal.

Among them, one stood out — always present in secret places tied to the Primordial Law or its fragments:

The Law of the Good Host.

It was simple, yet unyielding:

"He who receives, must offer protection.

He who enters, must not threaten."

This Law dictated that, so long as someone is received into a space — be it a house, a sealed room, a reliquary, or an arcane chamber — the host is bound not to cause harm, and must offer sanctuary.

In return, the visitor is expected to act with respect and avoid any form of aggression.

Within the domains of the Order, this rule is typically invoked only in treasure rooms, knowledge halls, or other non-combative sanctums — places where knowledge or reward is the answer.

But there's one critical caveat:

If the Visitor acts with hostility — whether by raising weapons or forcing their way through — the Host is fully within its rights to revoke that sanctuary.

And to expel the intruders however it sees fit.

In practice?

The Gate isn't attacking.

It's reacting.

"What the hell did you all do while I was unconscious?" Ezra's voice sank into the nothingness, like it had been spoken into a fog-draped sheet.

But it was only then, only when he finally stopped and broke free of his trance, that Ezra truly looked around.

Nothing.

Just that fog-veiled ground and the vast gray void — and then he noticed.

A horde of mannequins running. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. All moving in the same direction. And all… passing right by him.

Ezra's eyes widened.

"HAAA!" he screamed in panic, leaping backward. The delayed adrenaline finally hit. The revelation, the terror, the sheer absurdity of it all — he was standing in the middle of a flood of monsters… and they were simply ignoring him.

He stumbled, crouched down on the smooth ground, trying to control his breathing.

"I knew I should've brought a weapon!" he hissed through clenched teeth, voice trembling with frustration.

But the memory returned automatically.

Sharp.

Annoying.

 "You don't need one, Ezra. You're just the guide."

 "Besides… would you even know how to use it?"

Nyra's voice echoed in his head, laced with that dry, merciless tone she used whenever she wanted to wound without seeming cruel.

Ezra clenched his fists.

The anger — at her voice, at the memory, at himself — boiled for a moment.

"OF COURSE I do!" he shouted into the void, as if he could somehow convince the universe of his worth.

But the void…

Didn't answer.

Only the rhythmic sound of hurried footsteps continued, echoing from every direction.

The mannequins — that disordered mass of broken bodies, some with human features, others twisted and bestial — kept running.

Without hesitation.

Without turning.

As if he didn't exist.

Ezra took a deep breath.

His tangled thoughts spiraled in loops:

'What do I do? What do I do!? I don't have a weapon. And even if I did, normal weapons wouldn't work without Vis.

Artifacts? Who would give one to someone like me? Useless, Codex-less. And even if I had one — it would never be for combat.

Maybe one of those new hybrid weapons, arcane-tech… But who'd ever authorize me to carry something like that? Who would ever see me as… necessary?'

He sighed.

Long and heavy.

As if letting his soul flow out with the air.

And against all expectations — nothing happened.

The world didn't crush him.

No entity whispered in his ear.

No judgment fell from above.

Only… silence.

That dense, suspended silence — Except, of course, for the ceaseless marching of the mannequins.

They continued.

Marching with blind precision.

Ezra blinked. "Huh…?"

He looked more closely.

All of them were running in the same direction.

All of them moving around him.

As if he were air.

As if he were… absent.

His first reaction came automatically — the same as always: "Great. Even the monsters ignore me."

He nearly gave in to that old voice of contempt, nearly spiraled again into the usual cycle: weakness, guilt, self-loathing.

But then… something different stirred.

Reason lifted its head.

"No… they're not ignoring me. They simply don't recognize me. Because I'm not an obstacle. I'm not a threat. Because… I'm being a good Visitor."

The word resonated inside him with a new weight.

Visitor.

Not intruder.

Not combatant.

Observer.

Ezra placed a hand over his chest. "Better get back before those idiots kill themselves."

He exhaled, then stood — and began to run.

In the same direction as the mannequins.