Fiction

EnZi Part One Odesa Chapter 21 The DoubleEdged Sword

by Stanislav Dema
02/04/26
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Mood: Unheilig - Der Himmel über mir 

(Version 2017)

Evening descended on Snake Island softly, as if someone had covered the world with a heavy wool blanket. Outside, beyond the thick walls of the keeper's house, the sea rumbled dully and rhythmically, crashing against the ancient rock. This sound was like the breathing of a sleeping leviathan. But here, in the study, reigned a cozy silence smelling of ink and coffee.

Vasilis Khazaridi sat at a massive oak table. He clicked the switch, and his favorite lamp under a green lampshade flared up softly, outlining a circle of warm light amidst the semi-darkness. This was his time. The time when the stern lighthouse keeper, the former warrior, turned into a writer.

Before him lay a thick notebook in a leather binding—the labor of the last two years, his collection of "Sea Tales and Forgotten Legends." Vasilis dipped his pen into the inkwell and bent over a new page. Today he was translating an old Arab parable he had heard many years ago in the port of Jaffa from a one-eyed felucca skipper and had recorded in his notebook.

The story was about djinns, storms, pirates, and betrayal, but Vasilis suddenly stumbled over one word.

The pen froze in the air, casting a long shadow.

“...and then in the hands of the hero flashed Zulfiqar, the sword that knows no miss...”

— Zulfiqar, — Vasilis muttered, tasting the word. It sounded sharp and whistling, like air being sliced by a blade.

He put down the pen and leaned back in his chair, looking at the green lampshade. His memory, trained by years of work with maps and navigation, obligingly threw up an image.

Zulfiqar. The legendary sword of the Prophet Ali.

But what was special about it? Vasilis squinted, summoning the picture from the past.

It was not just a blade. It had a bifurcated edge. Two points emerging from one hilt, like a snake's tongue.

— The Divider Sword, — he said quietly.

Why exactly this shape? After all, in battle, it is inconvenient. Why would a smith forge a blade that splits in two?

Vasilis knew that in ancient legends there are no accidental details.

Zulfiqar did not just hew flesh. Its very name—Dhu al-Faqar—meant "Possessor of Vertebrae" or "The Grooved One." But sages interpreted it differently. It was a sword that divided.

It drew a boundary. Between truth and lies. Between light and darkness. Between life and death.

In this bifurcated sting lay a deep philosophy. One strike—but two edges. Like a reminder that any action in this world has a dual nature. You cannot simply strike without creating consequences. You cannot cut off a part without affecting the whole.

Vasilis rubbed the bridge of his nose. The image of the bifurcated sword hooked him more strongly than he expected. In this symbol—the division of the single into two streams—he imagined something very familiar. Something that connected ancient Arab myths with what they had discussed yesterday with Ester.

Division...

After all, our whole world is built on division. We plow the earth with a plow. We cut stone with a diamond disk. We split the atom. We are used to thinking that to understand a thing or use it, one must cut it, open it, divide it into parts.

This is the way of the Sword. The Way of Iron.

But there was another way...

He reached for the shelf where an old Bible, read to holes, stood. His fingers found the right place on their own, as if the book had a memory and opened where the owner most often sought answers.

The Epistle to the Hebrews.

“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Vasilis leaned back in the chair, looking at the dancing shadows in the corner of the room.

— A double-edged sword, — he whispered. — The Zulfiqar of the spiritual world.

Suddenly everything fell into place.

He was a Greek. Greek was the language of his ancestors, the language in which the apostles wrote. And when he read "Word," in his head sounded not the flat, everyday concept of "conversation," but the great and formidable—Logos.

“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.”

What is Logos?

It is not just a set of sounds flying out of a mouth. Ancient philosophers knew: Logos is Meaning. It is the Plan. It is the Prime Cause, the Reason that structures chaos.

If translated into the language of engineers, which Ester disliked so much—it is Code. The informational basis of the Universe. Pure, absolute Truth that holds atoms together in the right configuration.

Vasilis took a pencil and began to sketch in the margins of the notebook.

If God is Logos, then His "sword" works quite differently from a steel blade.

Steel hews flesh. Steel breaks bones. Steel is brute force changing the world from the outside.

But Logos...

Logos separates meanings.

— "To the division of soul and spirit," — he repeated aloud.

Just as a surgeon separates healthy tissue from diseased tissue with a scalpel, so the Word of God enters a person. It does not hit him over the head with a club, forcing him to submit. No. It simply exposes the truth.

It draws a line where we ourselves have confused everything.

Where does my love end and egoism begin?

Where does my "righteous struggle" end and ordinary lust for power begin?

Where does the "soul" (my emotions, fears, desires) end and the "spirit" (that spark of eternity capable of communing with the Creator) begin?

An ordinary person does not see this difference. For him, everything is merged into one lump: "I want it, therefore it is right."

But Logos comes—the Double-Edged Sword—and makes an incision. The thinnest, bloodless, but terrible in its honesty.

And suddenly you see: this is your fear. And this is your pride. And here, at the very bottom—a tiny grain of Truth.

— That is why this sword is scarier than any cannon, — thought Vasilis. — You can hide from a cannon in a bunker. There is nowhere to hide from Logos because it works inside your own soul. It passes through the armor of self-justification like light passes through glass.

And then a new, frightening guess pierced him.

If the Shamir, of which Ester spoke, is the physical embodiment of Logos, the embodiment of the Divine principle of freedom and creation, then what is En-Zi?

This mythical machine, chased by the intelligence services of all empires, for which they kill and betray...

After all, it is also not just a set of gears. It is the physical embodiment of the reverse principle.

The principle of the System of Power. The godless, diabolical power of man over man.

Vasilis's hands, obeying intuition, turned the pages back to the Old Testament. First Book of Samuel. The tragic moment when the people, tired of freedom and responsibility, came to the prophet Samuel and said: "Make us a king to judge us like all the nations."

They wanted a System.

Vasilis began to read aloud Samuel's prophecy about the "rights of the king," and with every verse, his face grew darker. The ancient text, written three thousand years ago, sounded not like a legend, but like a grim blueprint of modernity. An instruction manual for the exploitation of humanity.

“This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots...”

Vasilis stopped and clenched his fist until his knuckles turned white.

— Sons... — he said hollowly.

Here it is, the first point of the contract with the devil.

God gives a son to a father and mother as a miracle. As a unique, unrepeatable personality.

But the King—the State—looks at the child and sees only a future resource. A unit in calculations.

"Appoint them for his chariots."

Before, they were chariots. Now they are war machines, ironclads, machine guns in trenches. Now a human is a cog in a soulless mechanism.

The System says: "Your son is not yours. He belongs to me. I will put a uniform on him, erase his personality, issue him a number instead of a name, and throw him into the furnace of my ambitions."

This is not a right given by God. This is the kidnapping of a soul. Turning a human into an obedient instrument of death.

He read on:

“...and he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers...”

— Service staff, — Vasilis translated into the language of his century.

The System does not tolerate creativity. It does not need poets, artists, or mothers raising free people. It needs cogs.

A woman, created to be the guardian of Life, turns into a part of the bureaucratic machine. Into a secretary shuffling meaningless papers. Into a seamstress sewing uniforms. Into a worker at a shell factory. Her gift of creation is perverted to serve the comfort of the elite. She is made an appendage to the system.

“...And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants...”

Vasilis slapped his palm on the table.

— Expropriation.

God gave the land to man so that he would cultivate it and be free. A man who has his own vineyard, his own house, his own business—is independent. He is hard to control.

Therefore, the King takes the best. And to whom does he give it? To the people? No.

"To his servants."

To officials. To generals. To those who lick the hand of power.

Thus the class of parasites is born. Bureaucracy, officials, propagandists. Those who produce nothing—neither bread nor meaning—but eat for three, because they "guard the System." The System buys their loyalty with a stolen future taken from honest people.

“...and you shall be his servants.”

Here it is, the finale.

Samuel warned them: "You think the King will give you order? No. He will give you total dependence."

And they agreed.

— That is what En-Zi is, — whispered Vasilis, looking into the darkness of the corner where shadows wove into bizarre patterns. — It is not just an artifact. It is the incarnate idea of Power. The idea that man is not the Image of God, but consumable material.

And the scariest thing, he thought, pacing the study, is that before, this King could at least be seen. One could look him in the eye. A tyrant could be killed with a dagger.

But now?

The world has changed. The King has been replaced by a multi-headed hydra. Bureaucracy.

It has no face. No heart that can be shot.

You come screaming about pain, and they shove a paper with a stamp at you. You demand justice, and they quote a paragraph of instruction.

"En-Zi" is the perfect bureaucracy. Absolute, cold, mathematical calculation, where mercy is considered a "system error," and human relationships—a "statistical margin of error."

Vasilis stopped by the window. The glass was cold and black, like the water in the sea.

— We try to fight this like deceived children, — he said to his reflection. — Revolutionaries shout: "Let's overthrow the tsar, kill the bad ministers, and paradise will come!"

Fools.

By killing the dragon, you become the dragon yourself.

Because you use his methods. You use violence. You use the "rights of the king"—taking sons, robbing fields, creating secret police—allegedly for the sake of a "bright future."

You strike at the physical body of the System, but its spirit—the spirit of En-Zi—immediately transmigrates into you. And the prison simply changes its sign, remaining a prison.

— You cannot defeat the System with its own weapons, — Vasilis said firmly. — You cannot destroy slavery by building a new, "fairer" dungeon.

The only way to defeat the Soul Eater is Logos.

That very Shamir. The Dividing Sword.

Why?

Because only Truth can defeat the System. But not on the barricades. But in the head.

Logos enters the consciousness of a single individual and makes an incision.

It tells the soldier: "You are not a cog. You are a son of the Living God. You have a conscience, and it is higher than the commander's order."

It tells the official: "Your power is dust. You will answer before Eternity, and there your instructions have no force."

It tells the little man: "Do not fear. Your fear is the only fuel on which their machine runs."

En-Zi holds on to our consent to be things. On the collective delusion of upbringing and propaganda.

But Logos destroys the delusion. It dissects the lie like a scalpel opens an abscess.

And when a person sees the truth, the System loses power over him. It can kill his body, but it can no longer possess his soul. The gear gains will and falls out of the mechanism. And then their whole philosophy, built on lies, begins to crumble.

Vasilis returned to the table and sat down, placing his palms on the Book.

Tomorrow will be a new day. Tomorrow he would again have to deal with bad news, with threats of war, with fears.

But now he saw the picture whole.

— Our fight against En-Zi is not just a war of intelligence services, — he said quietly, and his voice grew strong. — We are not looking for pieces of iron. And our enemy is not the Germans, not the Moxans, and not even the Nephilim in the physical sense.

In his memory floated the lines of the Apostle Paul, which had previously seemed too lofty to him, but now sounded like a combat report:

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

He understood.

En-Zi is merely a shadow. A projection. It is the physical terminal of that "darkness of this world" which has infected humanity.

The rulers of darkness are not people in offices. They are Meanings.

They are false truths that suggested to us that brother must kill brother for the sake of a flag. That wealth is more important than conscience. That strength lies in violence.

It is a spiritual virus that makes slaves out of people.

Vasilis looked at the light of the lamp. It was weak, this light, but it dispersed the darkness in the entire room.

— We are not at war with people, — said the Lighthouse Keeper. — We are at war with the lie that has enslaved them. And one can win this war in only one way: by ceasing to be part of their darkness.

He closed the Bible. The old leather binding thumped dully, like a door slamming in the devil's face.

The winner will be the one who can take in hand not a sword of steel, but the Scalpel of Meaning. The one who allows the Word of God to divide his soul and cut out the lies and fear from there.

Vasilis extinguished the lamp. The room plunged into darkness, but outside, above his head, the powerful beam of the lighthouse continued its endless run in a circle, cutting through the night mist.

A Sword of Light against an ocean of Darkness.

The eternal battle continued.