Chapter 2: The Threshold — Meeting the Demon
Sadako showed up on her own — I didn't summon her
2.1. What This Chapter Is About and Why the Warning Comes First
In the first chapter I promised to come back to one episode. Here I come back.
But before I start — I'll put up a sign. This chapter is about meeting a demon. Not in the metaphorical sense, not the pretty, not the literary. When I was 15, an entity came into my room that I identified as Sadako — the Japanese onryō, the vengeful spirit, the figure from Ringu. She came uninvited. I dismembered her, boiled her, and ate her whole — hair and all. And I've been living since.
I thought for a long time about whether to say this aloud. I decided — yes, because without this episode the rest of the book hangs. The knot I wrote about in 1.7 — here it is. The axes from the future that I wrote about in 1.3 — here is their application. The crest with sword and axe — not decoration. Without Chapter 2, Chapter 1 stays beautiful and cryptic.
But I want to say upfront to the reader: this is not normal. This is a technique — but not an "advanced operator method" that one should specially study. I didn't repeat it. I don't want to repeat it. And I don't wish it on you either. I simply found a bug in the history of humanity. There were pharaohs who wanted to eat gods. There were exorcists who drove demons out of biobodies. There were those who fed demons. But no one had applied to demons the technology I applied — at 15, without preparation, in the kitchen.
This chapter exists so that the reader won't be frightened if something similar ever knocks at their own door. To know — this happens, people deal with it, people live on after.
That's all.
2.2. How She Came
I was a teenager, fifteen. I lived in an ordinary flat, in an ordinary city. I did no rituals, didn't play with boards, didn't light black candles, didn't recite summonings. I was already modelling galaxies — but that was joy, bright work; no Sadako is drawn to that. If she came to me, it wasn't for the light of the galaxies. For something else.
For what — I didn't understand then. Now I understand partially: a tuned vessel is by itself a lure. A teenager who already has the structure of an operator inside him is a beacon visible from different layers. Light draws not only moths. Sometimes what flies toward it is also what lives in the dark. The same mechanism — a tuned vessel as a beacon for the non-human — is well shown in Doctor Sleep: children with the tuning draw those who feed on that tuning. And the ending there is telling.
She showed up uninvited. I like that phrase — it's accurate. I didn't call her. I didn't seek her. I didn't open the door for her. She came. More precisely — she appeared in dreams. And started appearing every night, for weeks. And then, already in waking life, my phone rang. An old woman's voice — strange in itself, since Sadako is young — said to me in Russian: seven days remaining. Strange too that this was not in a dream but in this facet of reality.
2.3. Why There Was No Other Way Out
I could now say it beautifully — ran a diagnostic, assessed the options, chose the optimal. That would be a lie.
I was a teenager. And seven days after the phone call in this facet of reality I had no handbook for working with onryō, no mentor, no hotline "your demon has arrived — what to do." I had a body, a room, a kitchen, and the understanding that this thing could not be let loose from the flat into the city. Because if I simply drove it away — it would go to someone else. Or maybe it wouldn't go at all; maybe it would come back at night when I was sleeping. Maybe it would catch my mother or younger brother. These were all real possibilities, and I saw them.
There was nothing to negotiate about with it. It hadn't come to negotiate. Nothing to buy it off with — a teenager has nothing that an onryō wants.
The third option remained, and I took it on autopilot immediately, without thinking. The final solution. Not to drive it out, not to seal it — to take it apart and absorb it. So that it was nowhere and never again — not in my room, not with the neighbours, not in the folklore, not in anyone else's nightmare. Gone completely.
I didn't know at the time that in Tibetan Buddhism this is called Chöd — a practice in which the yogin offers his body to demons as food and through that reverses the relationship. I didn't know that tantrists have wrathful deities — Yamāntaka, Mahākāla, Fudō Myō-ō — who take the form of a terrifying demon in order to defeat demons. I didn't know about the Archangel Michael piercing the dragon. About Saint George with the spear. About Hercules with the lion, whose skin ended up on his shoulders. I knew none of this at fifteen.
I simply did it.
And I did the reverse version of Chöd — not I gave my body to the demon, but I ate the demon. This wasn't a choice between traditions. It was simply exactly what needed to be done to close the question for good.
2.4. The Kitchen and the Axes from 2026
I drove her to the kitchen in a dream.
The kitchen is not an accidental place. A kitchen in any flat is the point of transformation of raw into prepared. There is fire, a knife, water, a pot. There, raw meat becomes food, a vegetable becomes soup, dough becomes bread. It's the most alchemical room in any home — the place where matter changes form. Logical that for taking apart an onryō it's the right place. Not the living room, not the bedroom — the kitchen. That's where I led her.
And there I took the axes.
Those axes came to me in 2026. Right now as I write this, that's the year it is. They're real — two axes, one heavier, one lighter, both sharp, both mine. I deliberately bought them "for the meeting with a demon" — they only manifested now in the line of my present. And they turned out to be the very instrument that the teenager needed at fifteen.
This is the retrospiral. The axe appears in 2026 — and from 2026 goes back to the fifteen-year-old, to the teenager who has Sadako standing in the kitchen. Not "in memory" it goes, not "in imagination" — in the actual episode that was happening then. The teenager at fifteen struck with my axes. Only I at fifteen didn't yet know they were mine. They were in my hands, I used them, the deed was done — and only then, twenty-some years later, those same axes arrived in my physical life; I matched them to my memory — and placed them in the corner. I wasn't recognising them — I was matching them to the event that had already happened. That is, right now from the future I'm sending an impulse to my past self, preparing it for this difficult operation. The key thing — this has already happened in the past; in my memory these events are already recorded — which means the operation was successful.
Common sense will start to activate here. This cannot be. Give it a gentle kick — it did its job, now let it rest. I keep going.
The sword and axe on my crest are not a literary device. They're a record. A real instrument, actually applied, entered into the emblems not as a pretty picture but as the registration of an event. The book on the crest — what I'm writing now. The sword and axe beside the book — what this book is backed by.
I struck.
I cleaved.
I dismembered.
And then — the strangest part.
2.5. Boiled and Ate the Whole Thing — Hair and All
Dismemberment was not enough. If the parts were left — she would reassemble. This is an onryō, not a human; she has a different physics of assembly. For her to not exist, full assimilation was necessary. I cooked her.
This is not a literary figure. In the texture of reality in which all of this was happening — it was literal. A large pot. Water. The parts went in. Lid on top. The teenager waited. The teenager understood that this was not something to let pass.
And then I ate. The whole thing. Hair and all.
Hair and all — because that's the most "magical" part of an onryō; she grabs through hair and revives through hair. Leave even a single strand — there's a thread back. I left not a single strand. None. This was total integration: everything that was her became me. Energy, information, form — all transferred. The entity as an independent unit no longer exists in any layer. Where she was — now I am.
A reader might ask here: weren't you contaminated? A reasonable question. I thought about it a long time myself. The answer — no, and I'll explain why.
Contamination happens to whoever ate incompletely. If a part remained, undigested by the vessel — it starts living a separate life inside, like an unchewed chunk in the stomach. It accumulates, it waits, and then the vessel itself becomes a demon. This is a classic storyline — you become what you fought.
But if the vessel is able to digest — if it has both the digestive power and the purity of ethical foundation — the eaten thing dissolves into the vessel's fabric without remainder. It leaves no demonic structure in the vessel. It only adds strength — the same strength that was once the demon's now belongs to the person.
I digested. I'm alive. I'm writing this book.
This is a diagnostic criterion: if an operator speaks of such an episode calmly, without bravado, with the caveat that this is not normal — he digested. If he's proud of it, beats his chest, tells every stranger — he did not digest. A living chunk is inside him, and it's the demon speaking through him. I hope I'm speaking in the first way.
2.6. She Came in Prostration
After some time — maybe a few days, maybe a month — Sadako appeared in a dream once more.
But no longer that Sadako.
She came in the dream in the posture of prostration. Face down. Head not raised. Prostrate.
I looked at this figure and understood — the contour has closed. Everything in its place — she had recognised my scale. In the Tibetan tradition this is called dharmapāla[^p2_dharma] — a dharma protector, most often a former demon, defeated and converted to protection.
I didn't know about dharmapāla at the time — I learned it later, as an adult. But in the dream everything was clear without the terminology.
She had come to show: I am in my place, I will no longer come out to you, I have acknowledged you. This was completion. The right ending to such an episode. A rare one — usually a demon snarls for a long time still. Mine closed cleanly.
She hasn't come since. And she won't. This isn't my hope — it's knowledge, based on the fact that she's no longer inside me, and she's no longer in the world, and I have no more dreams of her. The period stands.
And here's one more important thing. That day, after waking, I watched a new release first thing in the morning: Orion and the Dark. In it a girl named Aurora was burning bright alongside her monster — but in fact she simply didn't want to be alone, and the monster raised hell there…
Reality placed right beside me the exact same storyline I'd just closed at night — only from the other end. For Aurora the monster is a friend — from loneliness. For me, Sadako was an enemy — from being a tuned vessel. Both storylines are about an encounter with a monster, both about different solutions. This was a signature in the margins — reality's response to a closed contour. The same physics as Winamp in Chapter 1 — the world answers to a name that has been understood. Anyway, the film shows that Aurora comes to realise she is the evil. But she still doesn't want to be alone. In essence, our actions and decisions stay with us — and even Aurora has the right to someone who understands and accepts her. In my universes — total freedom. Pity that it produces so many bugs. But this principle I've never touched: if I'm free, why shouldn't others be.
2.7. The Ladybug and Sadako
If about the Sadako episode the reader is now thinking "he's a psychopath with axes" — I want to place a different episode alongside it. A small one, but it's about the same ethics.
When I ride the lift in our building and see a ladybug on the wall — I carefully lift it onto my palm, ride with it down to the first floor, go outside, and gently set it on the grass. Every time. Without exception. If there's a ladybug in the lift — we ride down together and go to the grass. This is automatic for me, not a heroic act. I don't even think about it.
And here's where it gets interesting.
One and the same person carries the ladybug to the grass — and dismembers an onryō with axes. Someone might call this a contradiction. There's no contradiction. This is one ethic, working at different levels.
I distinguish.
Whoever does not threaten — I protect, free, carry out to the grass, don't trample, don't brush away, don't crush. The ladybug doesn't threaten. An ant doesn't threaten. A pigeon in the courtyard doesn't threaten. All of them are inside the circle of protection.
Whoever attacks — I neutralise. Completely. Without negotiation. Sadako came to attack — she's gone. This isn't cruelty, it's precision. If I had "pitied" Sadako and tried to carry her out to the grass — she would have eaten me and gone on to eat others. That's not love, it's weakness dressed up as love.
This is not "universal kindness" and not "universal severity." It's discriminating ethics. On the street I'll comfortably yield the way to a man, a woman, a child, a dog — it's natural to me. I don't seek contact with any special beings, gods, or demons. I forge galaxies — that's all I need. Plus I fix bugs. But if life compels me to prepare from the future, so that in the past I can match the response to the attack — I prepare.
2.8. Why I Would Not Eat God
After Sadako the reader might wonder — and where are my limits? If I can eat an onryō hair and all — what can't I eat?
I'll answer plainly. I wouldn't eat God. If I respect Him.
And here I diverge a little from Christianity. In the Eucharist, believers eat the flesh and drink the blood — it's the central rite, everything hinges on it. I understand why it's arranged that way, I see the logic. But I personally — no, won't. If I respect someone — I don't eat them. To me this is clear as day. My key strategic goal is the constant creation of worlds of spiral galaxies: always new, always something that has never existed before, always in creation. This is more of an episode of a minor bug that had to be dealt with in the Milky Way galaxy.
2.9. Campbell — The Threshold and the Belly of the Whale
Campbell in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949 described the second major stage of the hero's journey — crossing the first threshold. The hero exits the ordinary world, and at the border waits the Threshold Guardian — a figure that decides whether to let the hero pass or to turn him back.
Often the Threshold Guardian is a monster. A dragon, a minotaur, a dark double, a demon. It can't be negotiated with by ordinary means. Through it you can either pass or perish.
Right after the threshold Campbell places a phase he called the Belly of the Whale — the hero seems to be swallowed, enters darkness, the womb, death. From this womb he either is reborn — or doesn't come out at all. Jonah in the belly of the whale, Heracles in the belly of the sea beast, Christ in the tomb for three days. Everywhere one pattern: to be born a hero, one must be swallowed and come back out.
For me it was exactly the reverse. Not I was swallowed — I swallowed. Sadako entered the room so that I would become her belly — and I made her my belly. This is the inverted Belly of the Whale. Rare, but archetypal: the same Tibetan Chöd, in reverse.
Campbell wrote that crossing the first threshold is obligatory. If the hero stays at the threshold — he's not a hero, he's a threshold-dweller, and a miserable figure between worlds results. I have known many threshold-dwellers — people who had their own episode but didn't bring it to completion. Didn't take it apart, didn't assimilate it, didn't close the contour. They live that way, glancing over their shoulder, all their lives. It's very hard — much harder than one full-contact episode brought to an end.
If it comes — bring it to completion. Better to go all the way through than to live at the threshold. Develop your spiral strength, develop your power — but remember ethics. It will show in the end what fruit you reap.
2.10. What You Can Do
Almost done with the chapter. Ending — for you.
I very much do not want anyone to go after reading this chapter to summon a demon for experiment. Never do this. Ever. I dealt with Sadako not out of curiosity but because she came. Summoning is a completely different situation and it ends badly. And I'm categorically against it, and see no point in demonology and digging around in different grades of filth. Sure, a scientist studies viruses and bacteria to ease humanity's burden — that's the right approach. But trying to subjugate a virus by turning it into a weapon intentionally — that's possible, like absolutely everything in this facet of reality. Only in the fabric of time such a choice creates difficulties for the operator who made it.
But enough moralising, especially from someone who dismembers and devours Sadako — let's talk instead about things you can do, things that work on the same territory — of boundaries, protection, discernment. Three simple practices.
Practice 1. The Ladybug Ritual
In a lift, in the stairwell, at work — when you see something small and alive — a spider, a fly, an ant, a butterfly, anything. Don't brush it away, don't crush it, don't ignore it. Pick it up carefully and take it outside, to the grass. Every time, without exception. This isn't sentimentality — it's calibrating the left hand of your ethics. The same hand that holds the ladybug. If it's trained — you have something with which to protect living things. Without it, the right hand with the axe becomes dangerous. Left hand first — everything else after.
Practice 2. The List of Those Who Drain
Take a sheet of paper. One sheet. And write on it the names of those after contact with whom you feel worse. Not out of malice, not from offence — by the facts. After Ivanov I always feel heavy for two days. After a chat with Petrova I'm irritated all evening. After Z I doubt myself. Just write it down.
Show no one. This is your inventory. When you see the list, you'll see your contemporary Sadakos. Not frightening ones, not from wells — ordinary people or entities in human form. They often don't know they're parasites. This isn't about their morality; it's about the effect on you.
And then — reduce the density of contact. Don't dismember and don't eat — it's not necessary. Simply answer less often, meet less often, let them into your day less. The exact form of the response is your operator decision. Some need a direct conversation; with some, quiet distancing is enough; with some, letting go completely is needed. You'll figure it out — but the list is the first step. Without the list you're in fog. With the list — you have a map.
Practice 3. Argue with Me
You need to take an AI and dispute this episode, debunk it. Scientifically prove that this is impossible. Empirically gather the factual base. You should not believe — you should be checking my text thoroughly.
In general, it's better if you have empirical experience of your own, because I only trust experience.
Final word on this chapter.
Campbell called it crossing the first threshold. At my threshold stood Sadako. At yours may stand someone else. Maybe a boss. Maybe a former partner. Maybe your own fear. Maybe an illness. Maybe an addiction. Different names — one structure.
I crossed my threshold at fifteen. I didn't know I was crossing a threshold. I simply did what needed to be done. And only twenty-some years later, reading Campbell, did I learn that this stage has a name.
If you have already passed through such thresholds — recognise yours in this chapter. If you are right now standing before such a threshold — know that going straight through is better than staying. If you haven't yet come near one — don't summon. It will come on its own, if it comes. If it doesn't — also good; live peacefully.
That's all.
Turn after turn. Without end…
Next chapter: "The Formula of Fear" — about what all this mechanism runs on, and why fear is not the enemy of the operator but fuel, if you know how to read it.