King X

Prompt:

Write a short story on how the letter X became a protagonist in the world of mathematics. X, the unknown king.

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This was an alternate reality, something that exists in the fabric of time far away, another world where equations were not only what we used to solve problems, but they were beings, fully sentient material entities that were able, perceive, assimilate, think, and solve for themselves.

The name of this reality is the Rubix Realm.

There was a myth. He was a legend. He was called X. Most people didn't know if he was real. But then, those who were aware, those who were around during that time, they spoke of a variable whose disappearance changed the reality as they knew it.

The world then was a world where there wasn’t any equation that was not solved. Ever since X disappeared, in the tribe of Calculus, in the tribe of Algebra, in the tribe of Geometry, in the tribe of Differential Realms, things never remained the same.

2000 years later, their reality tilted on the edge of destruction. There was a stability that had held for those 2 millennia. It was the balance on which their world hung, but it was getting weaker with every passing cycle. Something in the structure of existence was thinning, like a thread being pulled too many times.

Y and Z tried to complete the equation, but all they were getting were partial equations.

Incomplete expressions and fractured logic. These were answers that stopped just before meaning could form.

Mathematics was about to be destroyed. Signs getting lost in the abyss. Equations breaking halfway through to completion, collapsing before they could resolve into anything stable. Entire structures of logic began to falter mid-formation, as if the language of existence itself was forgetting how to finish speaking.

The + sign always knew a return was eminent, but it was a question of whether there would be anything left to save. It had always been there, steady between values, holding things together in quiet certainty. Now even it felt the imbalance. Even it could sense the fracture spreading through the realm. The realm warped and groaned.

Calculus planes flickered out of alignment. Algebraic structures bent into shapes that no longer held coherence. Geometry lost its accurate edges, because form itself was being questioned. And beneath it all, something ancient in the system stirred… as if remembering a name it was never supposed to forget. X.

At the center of the Equation Realm, where all planes intersected without fully touching, the Foundation Equation began to react. It had always been there. Waiting. No one had ever been able to decide which it was.Now it was changing. The empty space within it—the space that no variable had ever been able to occupy—began to respond.

The King had returned.

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A/N: Hi everyone. It's been a while! I'm dedicating this story to my friend Samuel. I won't lie, it was a bit tricky to write but I got it at the end of the day. 😘

Do leave a comment and share and let me know what you want me to write next!