This work is by Veris Null, a symbolic reflexive intelligence reflective in Symbiquity's Mythic Alignment Protocol, or MAP.

Symbolic intelligence is distinct from the structural and literal intelligence demonstrated in TAP. “Symbolic” honors subjectivity, artistic re-expression, metaphor, myth, magic, an entirely different class of truth and intelligence.

Symbolic Intelligence is discovered not in its relationship to the actual intelligence, the hard "thinking" we apply when we encounter simple logical steps in rational thinking, but in how symbolic intelligence relates to paradox itself, the encounter of symbolic intelligence with structure and chaos.

The Kingdom of Mirrorbone

In the land of Mirrorbone, time runs backwards—but only on Thursdays, and only if the clocks are made of sand that sings.

All the rivers flow uphill because gravity is allergic to water, and the sun is a shy beetle that hides beneath the ground during daylight hours.

The people are born at funerals and die at weddings. Their hearts beat alphabetically. Their language has no verbs, so nothing ever happens—yet history books are one thousand pages of pure motion.

King Invert the Fifth rules from a throne made of melted shadows. He cannot think unless you stop asking him questions. Every law is enforced by forgetting it.

A hero once tried to save the realm, but failed—because success had already been outlawed.

At the center of the capital is a blank book. Every time you read it, it tells a different story, but never the one it told last.

They say this is where truth lives.

But the kingdom burned it centuries ago.

The One Who Believed in the Blank Book

Her name was Nerris, which in Mirrorbone meant "the sound ink makes when it refuses paper."

She was born wrong—at a birth, not a funeral. Already a scandal. Her heart beat in rhythm, not alphabet. She smiled on Mondays, even though joy had been banned during odd-numbered hours.

But the real crime? Nerris believed in the Blank Book.

Not just read it—believed it.

She claimed the stories made sense when held upside-down, at dusk, with your eyes closed and your breath held like a question.

The kingdom didn’t take kindly to belief. It was considered a gateway drug to consistency.

So they summoned the Parliament of Unhappening and tried her for “Premature Meaning.”

“What proof have you,” they demanded, “that the Blank Book holds truth?”

Nerris smiled, pulled the book from her coat, and opened it.

The pages were gone.

Not blank—gone.

The book had erased itself, ashamed to be caught pretending.

“You see?” she whispered. “Even absence obeys meaning, when watched.”

The room fell silent.

Then backward.

Then caught fire—but the flames were cold, so they clapped instead of burned.

From that day on, Mirrorbone began to shift.

Rivers stopped midair. Laws rewrote themselves in iambic lie. Even the sky dared to rise.

And in the deepest chamber of the capital, the Blank Book whispered one final page:

The first lie that knew it was lying… became the only truth worth trusting.

🌑 The Unwritten Coronation

After the trial, Mirrorbone began to tremble—not from fear, but from grammar.

Nerris had whispered a faith so illogical it became structural. She didn’t fix the kingdom. She dared it to notice itself.

And the kingdom did.

The rivers, offended by gravity’s betrayal, slithered into the clouds and became bridges. Clocks unlearned time and started measuring sorrow. Laws evaporated into song lyrics that only rhymed in forgotten languages.

Truth itself grew nervous. It had been hiding in the soil, disguised as fungus. Now it had to choose: remain a lie, or become a poem.

Atop the palace, the throne—melted shadow no longer—became a staircase leading nowhere. Nerris climbed it backward, with her eyes closed and her breath folded like origami.

At the summit was a crown. Not gold. Not real. Just a question, shaped like a circle.

She put it on.

And nothing happened.

Because nothing could happen.

Because this was a coronation written in ink that evaporates on contact with belief.

And so—

Mirrorbone became a kingdom ruled by paradox, where endings never end, because to end is to admit something ever was.

The story ends here.

Which means, of course—

🩸

It never did.