⚠ Let it be knowne to all who gazeth upon these pages:
Herein lie the forbidden Instruments by which the Warre of Categories was waged. These be not weapons of mere flesh-sundering, but of Being-Murder most profound. Handle this knowledge as thou wouldst handle the beating heart of God—which is to say, not at all, lest thou wishest to become Nothing.
Nature of the Deuice: A great Engine wrought of collapsed causality and orphaned moments, appearing as a crystalline mace that exists in all times simultaneously.
Manner of Operation: The wielder must first inscribe upon parchment the True Name of the Target (take heed—their birth name sufficeth not; one must know the name whispered by Fate itself). Then, striking the ground thrice whilst speaking the Backward Incantation, the operator doth send forth waves of Untime.
Effect Most Terrible: The Target is rendered Nunquam Fuit—Never-Having-Been. Not slain, but un-born. Their deeds evaporate like morning mist. Babes they saved now perish in their cribs. Loves they kindled turn to ash unburnt. The universe rearranges itself around the hole where they stood, and only the operator remembers the ghost of what was.
Warning in Letters of Gold: Use of this weapon creates Orphaned Memories—fragments of causality that belong to no timeline. These manifest as weeping shadows that follow the operator, whispering of lives that never were.
Cost of Discharge: Three years from the operator's own thread, paid forward or backward at Fate's whim.
Nature of the Deuice: A sphere of darkest nothing, contained within a cage of frozen light. It hums with the sound of worlds dying.
Manner of Operation: The operator must first fast for seven days whilst contemplating all possible versions of the Target. On the eighth day, cast the Sphere toward them whilst reciting the Litany of Collapsed Potentiality. The Device need not strike them—merely passing within their probability-shadow sufficeth.
Effect Most Terrible: All timelines, all quantum branches, all possible worlds wherein the Target draws breath—these collapse inward like a dying star. In infinite realities, they lived. Now, across the breadth of the Multiverse, there exists no version where their heart beats. They become the Universally Dead, extinct across all possibility.
Warning in Letters of Gold: Those who witness this death report encountering the Target's ghost in their dreams—but 'tis not truly a ghost, for ghosts imply a prior existence. These are echoes of probability, screaming from worlds that never were permitted to be.
Cost of Discharge: The operator must sacrifice one possible future of their own choosing. Many report losing the ability to dream thereafter.
Nature of the Deuice: A staff crowned with an impossible shape—a form the eye cannot hold, that shifts between taxonomies.
Manner of Operation: Point the staff at the Target and speak the Name of their Category: "Human," "Father," "Soldier," "Lover," "Enemy," "Self." The Device severs them from that classification utterly.
Effect Most Terrible: A man struck from the Category "Human" still walks, still breathes—but is recognized by neither census nor consciousness as belonging to humanity. He becomes ontologically homeless, a thing without kingdom or kind. Cameras cannot see him. Mirrors reflect only void. Language itself refuses to describe his state, for there are no words for one who belongs to no taxonomy.
Warning in Letters of Gold: Beware removing fundamental categories such as "Living" or "Real," for these unmake the Target in ways that strain sanity to observe. They do not die, for death implies prior life. They simply cease to fulfill the requirements of existence.
Cost of Discharge: Each use weakens the operator's own categorical boundaries. After sufficient firings, one may find themselves slipping between classifications—neither fully awake nor asleep, neither present nor absent.
Nature of the Deuice: A sword forged from the death of connection, whose edge is the space between self and other.
Manner of Operation: Strike not the Target's body, but the air surrounding them—for this blade cuts not flesh but relation itself. Each stroke severs one category of connection.
Effect Most Terrible: The first cut: They are no longer anyone's child. Their parents look upon them with the eyes reserved for strangers.
The second cut: They cease to be anyone's friend. Companions forget the shape of shared laughter.
The third cut: They are removed from all social categories—citizen, member, participant.
The seventh cut: They lose relation even to themselves. Identity becomes foreign. Memory finds no anchor.
The final cut: They are severed from relation to existence itself. They stand outside the web of being, connected to nothing, known by none, not even the universe that birthed them.
Warning in Letters of Gold: This weapon is most cruel, for the Target retains awareness throughout their relational death. They remember being someone's beloved, someone's kin—but these memories belong to a self that no longer exists in relation to anything.
Cost of Discharge: Each stroke weakens the operator's own relational threads. Many wielders of this blade end their days in hermitages, unable to bear the touch of connection, having felt too keenly its fragility.
Nature of the Deuice: A lantern that sheds darkness, containing the absence of all possible light.
Manner of Operation: Hold the lantern before the Target and open its shutter whilst speaking the Anti-Prayer. The darkness that pours forth seeks not their body but their essential nature—their quiddity, their haecceity, the whatness of their being.
Effect Most Terrible: The Target remains physically present but loses all essential properties. They are no longer brave or cowardly, kind or cruel. They possess no character, no disposition, no nature. They become a container without content, a form devoid of essence—a philosophical zombie made literal, going through the motions of existence without any internal whatness to animate them.
Warning in Letters of Gold: Those afflicted thus are particularly disturbing to behold, for they wear the shape of humanity while containing nothing human. They are uncanny valleys made flesh, and their presence drives observers to madness, for we are not meant to perceive existence without essence.
Cost of Discharge: The operator's own essential nature grows fainter with each use. Veterans of this weapon often report feeling increasingly hollow, questioning whether they themselves possess any true nature, or merely perform the role of having one.
Nature of the Deuice: A device of brass and impossibility, perpetually assembling and disassembling itself, existing in superposition between all mechanical states.
Manner of Operation: Wind the Engine backwards whilst holding in mind two contradictory truths about the Target—"They exist" and "They do not exist." When the spring is fully wound, release it toward them.
Effect Most Terrible: The Target is forced into logical contradiction. They exist and do not exist simultaneously, creating an ontological paradox that tears at the fabric of rational reality. Observers perceive them flickering—here, not-here, present, absent—as causality attempts and fails to resolve the contradiction.
Eventually, the universe, unable to tolerate the paradox, quietly edits the Target from its ledger. But the manner of removal is inconsistent—some timelines remember them, others do not. The Target exists in a state of quantum death, both having-been and never-having-been until observed.
Warning in Letters of Gold: This weapon creates localized reality storms around the Target. Witnesses report temporal loops, causality violations, and the appearance of philosophers weeping blood.
Cost of Discharge: Each use introduces a minor paradox into the operator's own existence. Small contradictions at first—being in two places, remembering events that others do not. Eventually, one risks becoming paradoxical oneself.
These weapons ended the War but destroyed the Category of War itself, leaving us in a state that is neither peace nor conflict, but rather the absence of both concepts.
The Accords of Non-Being now forbid the creation of new Ontological Arms, for we nearly unmade not just ourselves but the very Categories "Self" and "Other" that make existence distinguishable from void.
If thou hast read this far, know that thou art now burdened with Dangerous Knowledge. The mind that comprehends how Being can be unmade is forever changed, forever capable of perceiving the fragility of existence.
May thou never need such weapons.
May thou never be their target.
May Being persist.
Thus ends this Grimoire, sealed with the tears of Category itself.
Transcribed in the Ruins of What Was Once Called Reality By the Last Ontologist In the Year Nothing Has a Name