(OOC: Don’t post in here without my permission)
— Begin quote from ____
[pre]VOLUME I[/pre]
Publisher’s Note: The following excerpt is all that remains of a journal recovered on the edges of the known map. I can only assume that the rest of the journal was lost in this Forest. I can also assume that there is a unique reason why this particular part of the journal remains. Perhaps as a warning, perhaps as a lure.
Either way, it is worth noting that, in the original copy, all the entries after August 11th were written with progressively worsening handwriting, and that it took a professional to decipher the text. Curious, indeed.
[pre]August the First[/pre]
Lord Stuart sent me another message today. Even in exile, the pompous ass continues to order us around as if he was still in charge. I would be right indignant if I didn’t think the Aeternus was beginning to doubt our loyalty. Over a hundred years old, and more paranoid than I would imagine even Theodore Stuart. I wonder if that says something about humanity. I wonder if the Aeternus is just too fond of his own power to give a damn about his own comfort.
Such talk is foolish, I know this. Potentially treasonous, if this journal falls into the wrong hands. If the Aeternus was as paranoid as it seemed. If the Justiciars were sent to focus on a much more real threat… No. No one could discover this journal, lest I perish. Posthumous treason is fine by me.
But I am getting off track. The Aeternus doubts my loyalty? I will bring back results. Hard data. So I will go to this mysterious unmapped territory that the Royal Cartographer-in-Exile wants mapped. I’ll make the travelling arrangements in the morning. The land I’m being sent to survey doesn’t seem more than a week’s worth of travel by carriage, anyway.
[pre]August the Ninth[/pre]
Over seven days of travel and there is nothing to write about but boredom, but hardly a day in this new land and I have so much more to say.
It is untamed here. The carriage ride was rocky for a while and now it’s so far from civilization that the carriage itself, marked with the seal of the Royal Cartographer, seems out of place. Wrong.
I feel like mankind wasn’t meant to be here. As if our constructs of order and law are unholy in comparison to this land of pure anarchy. Yet still, this place feels dark.
I have heard many strange tales of nightmares made flesh, walking abominations of the mind and soul, monsters by every definition of the word. I’ll admit, a thirty one year old government worker getting the chills over old ghost stories is shameful, but I am not one to lie to myself.
I pray to The Aeternus - and whatever gods didn’t forsake this land upon the death of Old Geoffrey Dale - that these tales are merely ghost stories. Yet, still, I feel this strange curiosity, as if, deep down, I desire to see these nightmares. I hope the loneliness of this lawless land isn’t driving me insane.
[pre]August the Tenth[/pre]
I actually got something done today. I managed to explore a large portion of this new land and draw up some drafts for the map. Normal stuff mostly - some hills, some fields, some rocks. But there was a thick wooded area, the strangest I’ve ever seen, that stood out.
The forest looked normal, but that’s the strange part. Even though there was nothing tangible that set it apart from every other forest I’ve seen, it just felt wrong. I felt ugly looking at it, and it felt like the whole place was surrounded by thick walls with only one gate. I don’t know how else to describe it, it just felt… guarded. I’ll get a better look tomorrow, when I go draft up that area of the map. I’m sure I’m just tired or sick or something. Yet, still, I feel this odd sense of wonderment and curiosity. I want to explore and I want to know and I just want to cross into that forest.
I’m going off on a tangent. I said I will investigate tomorrow, and I will do just that.
[pre]August the Eleventh[/pre]
No words can properly segue from such an innocent curiosity as I described yesterday to such a living nightmare as I am soon to describe.
As I approached, mere meters from the edge of the forest, an overwhelming stench, like that of a hundred rotting and rotted corpses, hit me like the falling sky, so indescribably horrible. With it came a rolling tide of terror, so strong that I drew my handgun and nearly shot a swaying branch.
I approached the forest, trying to find an angle from which I could safely see past the first few trees, but the trunks were so densely packed together that I couldn’t see in without going in myself.
Some sense of self-preservation practically yanked me back when I took a step towards the forest, but just as I cannot describe the extent of that smell, I cannot describe the extent of my strange, compelling desire to go into the forest.
I wish I could say it was a heroic desire to reveal the truth, or even some morbid curiosity, but it was far stronger than that. I wanted to enter that forest, to know the secret beyond the edge, I wanted it with all my heart. I felt so tantalizingly close to what I suddenly felt like was my life goal, only to be stopped short by my subconscious.
Writing this down makes it sound foolish, but I swear there is something strange going on. I fear some strange and unholy combination of loneliness, strangeness, and fear arising from those old ghost stories blended together in this curious place to drive me towards insanity.
If I brought an unfinished map before The Aeternus, I know for sure that it will be deemed unacceptable. I know I must map beyond that forest. Strangely, I look forward to it. But now I am too conflicted and the circumstances are too strange. I have decided to continue mapping the rest of this area in full before coming close to that place.
[pre]August the Twelfth[/pre]
When mapping the next part of the area, I came so so close to that forest again. I thought about my last entry and I laughed, openly, out loud. I felt so foolish. There is no way such an innocuous forest could produce such strong feelings, I thought. It is just a forest.
So, I approached it. I came near enough that I could reach out and touch the bark on the trees. Sure enough, the strong smell came back, the one I could have sworn I was imagining, real and plain as day. I couldn’t see beyond. I felt an even stronger desire to go into the forest.
I almost did. I stopped myself again, and I ran back to my campsite. I feel nervous, anxious, and ever so curious. I feel like that place is messing with my emotions.
[pre]August the Thirteenth[/pre]
Today, the only thing I did was approach that damned forest, and touch a tree to ensure myself that it was real. The smell came back, there was still no way to see in, and the strange feelings came back. Once I touched one tree, I touched another, just to be sure. By then, I was sure it was real, and I leaned against the tree and sat their for the rest of the day, like I was in the comfort of my own home. It felt lime an old friend.
[pre]August the Fourteenth[/pre]
When I woke up, I chastised myself for being so foolish, I suppressed my strange desire to go back, and I mapped the rest of the region. I rushed the job, I worked maybe too fast. I told myself that it was to make up for my lost time but something deep inside of me makes me wonder if it was actually so I could go into the forest finally.
The land, which I thought was normal, now seems strange. I saw footprints, that come out of nowhere and lead nowhere. I saw a small wooden doll that disappeared when I looked away and never came back. I saw strange patches where nothing would grow.
It made me more observant, and then I started to notice strange things out of normal things, too. The sun has a shadow on it, shaped like a face. There are no clouds. My carriage is slightly bigger on the inside than on the outside. I counted the bullets in my handgun maybe a dozen different times, and each time the number was different. Perhaps strangest of all was the utter lack of life. I seemed to be the only one here. It made me wonder for a brief moment if I was the only one in the universe, but I quickly shoved that thought away.
I am now almost certain that I am going insane. Maybe there’s some sort of strange gas, maybe the ghost stories were true, maybe this was all some long, twisted, horrible nightmare that I cannot wake up from.
Maybe even I’m not what I think I am.
[pre]August the Fifteenth[/pre]
Today I felt a sudden urge to go to the edge of the territory I mapped. When I reached the border, a small stream, I was seized by the desire to look down. When I did, I saw that the stream was much deeper than it was yesterday, leading down all the way to the abyss. The only thing I saw in that darkness was a huge skeleton with strange anatomy.
When I saw that body I felt the desire to bleed. I loaded my handgun and shot myself in the foot, just to see my own blood. When I did, it calmed me in some sick way. It reminded me that I still lived. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should leave this place, but I can’t.
[pre]August the Sixteenth[/pre]
I approached the forest with my cartography tools, refreshed from yesterday’s proof of my humanity, but before I came close enough to smell that sweet sick smell and see beyond that inscrutable border and know what lay beyond, I suddenly wondered if I would ever come back. I felt like it would be a long trip, as if I was traversing the entire country, so I resolved to come back tomorrow with more supplies.
When I came back to my camp, I saw that my carriage was missing entirely. I drew my handgun and scanned the surroundings for the thief, before coming to the realization that it probably just ceased to be. And this explanation makes sense, even now. I can’t say how. But it brings me comfort to be able to say that.
[pre]August the Seventeenth[/pre]
I cannot go into that forest. I would rather face the Aeternus with poor, unfinished work, and face punishment than to enter that accursed place. In fact, I would rather spit in the face of the Aeternus than see what’s beyond those damned trees.
Today, when I woke up, I was inside my carriage. Upon further inspection I realized that it was not my carriage but a perfect replica made twice as big. When I realized that the original thief must have picked me up in my sleep and placed me inside of this, I felt so unsafe that my paranoia could have matched the Aeternus himself.
I no longer trusted the ground I slept on, or the land I slept in. I felt like there was danger everywhere and that the simplest solution would be to just shoot myself and die on my own terms.
I will try to stay awake all night. My handgun is loaded and I will shoot anything that moves.
[pre]August the Eighteenth[/pre]
I feel so silly for believing that rubbish that I wrote yesterday. It was foolish for me to even attempt to trust in sense and reasonability. I must have stayed awake for hours before I saw thirteen formless figures approach me and close my eyes for me. I woke up leaned against this tree, and now I don’t want to ever leave.
But I must leave. I must enter the forest. Maybe one more night. This time I will sleep here. The further I am from this forest, the more I seem to not trust it. I hate that. I love the forest.
[pre]August the Nineteenth[/pre]
I woke up in a cold sweat before dawn. I would have thought this all was a nightmare if it weren’t for these journal entries.
I can’t explain why, but I think the trees are watching me. I think I will move away from this strange forest before I conti
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
I must know what is inside that forest.
— End quote
— Begin quote from ____
[pre]VOLUME II[/pre]
Publisher’s Note: The following story was told to me by a stranger wearing what appeared to be, based on the story, Captain Hern’s clothes coat. He called this “a fisherman’s tale” and refused to elaborate on where it might come from. When the man arrived, he came with heavy fog and light rain. I believe this lends some sort of credence to the story, although I do not quite understand the relationship between the circumstances of his visit and the story itself. I have, however, done my best to transcribe his story, word for word, from my tape recorder.
The seas were particularly violent on the last day Captain Hern went fishing for tuna. The boat underneath him rocked with the drumming waves, and the rain poured down harder than Captain Hern had ever seen in his fifty years of sailing. He hated rain. It always impaired his vision and put a sour mood on the crew, and that’s just when it wasn’t threatening to capsize the ship. If he could see past the thick fog that blanketed the ocean and tightly hugged the boat, he might have seen the dark clouds covering the sky and also threatening destruction. As it was, he could barely see a few meters in front of him; he couldn’t even see the helm from his spot near the back, where he puffed a cigar with dissatisfaction. Hern hated fog, too, almost as much as he hated rain. Some might have it the other way around, but Hern knew how to deal with fog, and rain was always dangerous in the deep sea, in a way fog really wasn’t. Closer to shore, or in more shallow waters, fog was deadly, but out here it was just… so terribly lonely. And cold.
Everyone on the boat was cold. The people on the deck were freezing. They rubbed their hands together for every bit of extra warmth it could offer. They cursed Captain Hern for bringing them out there, for risking their necks and drawing them from the comfort of their homes just for some catch. Some of them even prayed to a smattering of gods to hurry it up and let them go home. But even the real gods could do nothing to save them. They didn’t even understand why they were out there, and it certainly wasn’t for some catch. Hern didn’t understand, either. The helmsman was cold, sequestered in his little box with a steering wheel and an overconfidence in his ability to use it in any productive way, with rain battering the glass and fog only clouding his vision more. There were two crew members inside, below deck, playing cards on the little table they sometimes used for lunch on long days. They were cold, too. So was the captain - his thick black coat was old, and didn’t keep him as warm as it used to. Underneath his gloves, he couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers, which had grown numb from the freezing air and light wind about an hour earlier.
It’s funny. The fog and the rain made their field of vision so close it should have been suffocating. It should have made them choke with claustrophobia, slowly draining them of hope. Lost in a crushingly dense fog with no escape. Now that would be “strange and macabre,” wouldn’t it be, Professor Smith? But no. If anything, it was the opposite. The fog and the rain only served to amplify the vastness of the sea and sky. Rather than feeling trapped in too little space, they all felt trapped in too much space. Somehow, they could feel with a terrifying certainty the true depth of the ocean upon which they rocked, and the sky above. They felt as if the sea went on forever in every direction and down, and the sky in every direction and up. They felt as if they could run and run and run, or swim and swim and swim in any direction, forever, and they would never escape, not from the fog or the rain or the waves. They would never escape that uncaring vast. The worst of it was how insignificant and tiny it made them all feel. Like insects. Ants, looking up at an infinite god which didn’t even care enough to have a preference for whether they lived or died, loved or suffered. They felt trapped by their own weakness, at the mercy of this vast beast which could kill any one of them without even noticing, or giving the action any thought, if it did.
All their curses and desperate, perhaps even fearful, prayers had been growing stronger for every minute that they didn’t catch the haul they were out on the water for, for every minute the cold creeped just a little closer to their heart, for every minute that incessant, pestering rain pattered on the deck, for every minute the fog threatened to slide away and reveal, once and for all, the true nature of the world, in all its vast and terrible glory - an endless prison that drove you mad not from confinement but from freedom within an infinite nothing. When the boat rocked violently, they were almost angry or annoyed enough to just ignore it, or to just add it onto the list of conditions they cursed without paying any mind. But then it rocked again. And again. And— there! Something slid through the water below, a shape - something large. Captain Hern counted ten minutes before the entirety of the shape had cleared the boat. The thing was massive. His mind, in its fear, retreated to tales of massive sea snakes and sharks, the sort of myths and stories you already refuse for your little collection. Fear has a wonderful way of breeding more fear, tapping into the darkest places of the mind and dragging your fear into the light, amplifying it, twisting reality into a nightmare simply by calling to what would make the nightmare whole.
Another flash of movement. Clear as day, piercing the fog, Captain Hern saw a massive whale approaching at ramming speed. One of its eyes alone was much larger than the boat, yet somehow he could see the full form of this creature - something which was definitely not a whale. But even so, he could see miles of whale…skin? Blubber? It felt like it went on forever, an infinity only smaller than the infinity of the ocean, fog, and sky. He could see every inch of it, stretched to impossible lengths that shook him to his very core with an irrational fear. Yes…he feared this thing with everything he had in him. Not because he knew it could snap the boat in half with the force of the tip of its flipper, not because it was large enough to crush a city, or even because it drilled into his mind a surety that he was nothing. Because it felt right.
It felt right to fear the nightmare. It felt natural. It felt like the only thing he even could do. It was a primal instinct that relieved him of every worry and every thought, that relieved him of everything that made him human. It was a response so natural, he never questioned it. He hardly noticed the change, the weight lifted off his shoulders, the relaxation that washed over his muscles and body. It felt so good to fear it. The terror made him alive. It was horrible, yes, of course it was. This was fear embodied. Nightmare made flesh. Living horror. It made every inch of him want to scream louder than he ever could. But it felt good. Some perverted satisfaction, I suppose, that arose from undiluted terror. It felt like what he thought murder would feel like to a serial killer. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from this vast creature as it lifted its massive eye to him and looked at him and made him want to run forever and ever into that vast emptiness of fog. Even if he could, he knew it wouldn’t feel right. He knew now that fear was the natural state of the world, and he never wanted to live without terror clawing at his bones for any moment longer.
Then it fell like the fury of a god, and the boat snapped in two. Some of the crew were killed instantly, lucky enough to be granted some mercy, but mercy it was, a quick end at the hands of a nightmare rather than the nightmare being dragged out for what feels like forever before it finally ends. No, it was certainly a mercy. Captain Hern wasn’t so lucky. The world fell away as he splashed into cold, dark water, and was pulled towards the deep. It was a different terror now, less acute, but more physically painful. Hern had held his breath before, and the results were always rather disappointing, never lasting longer than sixty seconds. This time, though, he lasted three whole minutes. It took three minutes for the black ocean to slowly trickle into his nose and mouth, down his trachea, and into his lungs. Three minutes for the cool, stinging water to fill his lungs, conforming to every pocket of air until there was no breath in his body. Three minutes for the blood pumping through his veins to grow deoxygenated, for his muscles to stop working, for his heart and brain to stop. Three excruciating minutes, and each second felt like an infinity in and of itself.
Until his brain shut off, until the very last moment when the end claimed him, Captain Hern felt everything. He felt the pain of it all, and he recognized every drop of icy salt water as it filled his lungs. He knew how long it would take for him to die, and he knew how much pain he would feel each second, and then he felt it. The Captain also felt the pain of his crew, as the ocean claimed them, one by one, as they choked and drowned, until he was the last one left, until he was alone. It was a short time when he was alone, but it felt longer than the rest of his life. The vast creature had slithered away somehow, somewhere, and it was gone before the first human was. As he was alone, he felt the extremity of the ocean, each corner and shallow and shore. He felt all the way down and out, and he knew, as he knew with the deaths of his crew, that, impossible as it may be, this ocean went on forever. Forever and forever and forever, and in the whole vast emptiness, he was alone. When it was over, he died choking, scared, and alone.
— End quote
— Begin quote from ____
[pre]VOLUME III[/pre]
Publisher’s Note: The following story was handed to me as a folded letter, unsigned, by a man with a strange expression who I believe to be the author of the letter. I opened it in his presence, but by the time I finished reading it, he was gone, which is strange, because I thought I still felt his presence all throughout my reading of the letter.
There is a crypt underneath Derrim. It is not on any maps, it is not in any history books, but it is there. Hidden— no. Trapped underneath centuries, perhaps even millennia, of rock and dirt and human settlement. The crypt is older than Aivintis. Older still, than the continent itself. Perhaps it is older than the world. The Ts’inamorbedebi were born before the stars, after all. Ah. You’re confused. I understand. This is new to you, still. Let me start from the beginning. I live in Derrim, you see. Most people who live in Derrim do so because they have nowhere to go, but I live in Derrim to work for the university, one of the few parts of the city that isn’t filthy and impoverished. So I am a scholar, and I am very good at what I do. As boring as it seems, this means I pursue independent research projects from time to time. I recently finished my previous research project, a study on religious beliefs by geography and demographics, which the Order of Enlightenment published in the state newspaper, so I decided that this time I wanted to go more local. For a while, I read a lot about the city, looking for a subject, but none of it interested me until I came to folklore.
First, this led me to the Aldergrove, a supposedly sentient forest which people are still afraid of to this day, something I dismissed, mostly because it wasn’t really part of Derrim. Next, I looked into some ghost stories, which I seriously considered for a while before realizing that it was a much deeper concept which spanned all of Aivintis and even spilled north into Serdemia. I then read of the Little Spirits, which were close enough to Derrim for me to use, but I soon found that they were not as interesting when looked at too closely. At this point I was starting to give up hope on the folklore idea, but then I saw a book on my desk that wasn’t supposed to be there. Unfortunately, I cannot explain it fully, but I knew it was wrong, perhaps even dangerous, and that it didn’t belong there. I don’t know why I opened it anyway. The title was The Living Nightmares of Aivintis, and it seemed to be a study on the demons by that name - I always thought Nightmares was never a respectable term - with explanations, citations, and sketches. The chapter it was opened to was “The Origin of Nightmares,” and I could see it was written in neat, cursive handwriting, explaining how the concept itself came from literal nightmares, likely coupled with active imagination, irrational fear, and possibly even some mental illness making reality blur with the dreams. It was interesting enough, but clearly just a theory.
Their origin within the legends themselves was, strangely enough, a door, a door to dreams, or a portal to another world. But it wasn’t the passage itself that particularly interested me. In fact, it was the drawings that gave me pause. They were strange. Different. Wrong, somehow. It was like the appearance of the book itself, but…stronger. One small sketch showed a plain wooden door that was slightly open, with dozens of hands coming from it, reaching out, grabbing the door, and, in some cases, scratching the wood with deep gouges. I thought I saw the hands move, slowly and nearly imperceptibly, as if they were reaching out from inside the page. Another showed an empty doorway, just a simple rectangle, with a dark opening, within which I could see dozens and dozens of staring eyes. Too many eyes, and, simplistic as they were, they looked too real. The third was a stone circle, seen from above, with runes carved into the stone, and perilous steps leading down into what looked like a starry night sky. It felt like the stars were calling to me. Drawing me towards them. Drawing me in. Still, the fourth was most striking. It looked like a gap in reality itself. It was a large, vaguely diagonal shape with sharp, erratic edges, which reminded me of a long scar. The gap itself looked remarkably like a mirror, although I wasn’t quite sure why. I think I convinced myself I saw the faint lines artists use to represent polished, reflective glass. Looking back, I think I just knew. It looked large, perhaps four times the size of a fully grown man, but I don’t know what made me think that.
I was drawn to it far more than the others, in a way that made me desperately want to cross through that gap in reality and into the worlds beyond, to walk across reality the way mortals walk across a park. That’s what made me take a closer look back at the passage, noticing for the first time that the folklore of Derrim suggested it was buried deep underground, trapped under a mountain of rock, so that it couldn’t let any more horrors into this world, accessible only by a thin opening in a cavern to the north. That was the moment I knew this was to be my next research project, I knew that I would find this gap. It was a ridiculous, impulsive choice, and it may seem strange and rather foolish to you, but…I don’t think I made that decision. I think the corpse made it for me. I think it wanted me to be there. I think that’s why I found it. I know now that the book wasn’t real, that the page wasn’t real. I am cursed to know.
The cavern wasn’t difficult to find. I should have seen it as a warning sign, but I didn’t. After I had entered, it took me five hours, twelve minutes, and forty nine seconds to reach the hairline crack that I knew to be the entrance described in the book that didn’t exist. I squeezed into the opening without hesitation, but once I was trapped between the rock I was overcome with dread. I was never a claustrophobic man, but it felt like I was trapped, as if in a coffin nailed shut, with six feet of dirt pressing above me, pushing me down into the earth. The rock on either side was suffocatingly close, and it felt like I was crawling in that prison forever and then some before I emerged into an open room. Not a cavern, a room. There were smooth, dark pillars of a strange architecture holding up the rock ceiling, and the floor was so level it must have been manmade. The walls were cave walls, but they still felt unnatural. The opening to the next room, with its empty doorway, which looked as if it tore through the rock to allow me to pass, was certainly not natural.
The next room was less cave-like, as if the previous had simply been a transition into that one. That unnatural architecture was everywhere now. It still felt as if I was in a cave, and I still had a faint feeling of claustrophobia, as if I was still trapped forever deep below creation, but the walls, ceiling, and floor were that smooth, strange stone design. It occurred to me that there must have been a rug at some point, but it had long since disintegrated. That made me think of paintings, so I looked to the walls, and found instead that deep shelves had been carved into them, each of which held an embalmed corpse. I started at this, realizing it must be an old crypt for the ancients, which isn’t far from the truth, I suppose. It wasn’t really difficult to shake off that creepy feeling, though, because I was drawn forth into the next room. Although it was more like a regular doorway than the previous one, this still felt as if it was ripped through the world. I walked through it, into the final room in the crypt.
This one was similar to the last, with four crucial differences. Firstly, it was circular, which isn’t that strange. Secondly, there were no carved burial slabs in the walls, which were instead covered in strange runes similar to the odd drawing of the stone circle in The Living Nightmares of Aivintis and odd carvings depicting strange humanoid figures doing battle, building strange mechanisms, and subjugating humans with glowing objects. I don’t know how I knew then that they were human. It might have been part of the spell drawing me there. The third thing I noticed was that there were thirteen pedestals standing straight near the edges of the room, barely two meters from the walls themselves. There were books on them. Nine were closed, and four remained open. The last thing I noticed was the strangest. In the center of the room was an open coffin, and watching back at me, without any eyes at all, was a shriveled, decomposed corpse, which I knew to be alive.
It smiled. Well, no it didn’t. I think it just projected the idea of a smile into my mind. I am not proud to admit that I screamed, then, as loud and shrill as ever I’ve heard, which even then I knew couldn’t penetrate the massive quantity of stone which trapped me underground with this living corpse. It made me understand that it had brought me down here, and that there was no portal, and that I was trapped here forever. It made me understand that it was old, very old, that it was a Ts’inamorbedi, an Ancient, a member of a race that was “born before the stars” and was sculpted by the great and terrible gods born before even them in order to rule humanity. It told me how its race was threatened by an evil even more powerful than the gods themselves, and how they built a machine to save them, and how it ended up their doom anyway. It told me that I was in a place that was only partly of this world, and that I was trapped here. Then it bid me to read my book.
I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to move to the back of the room, beyond the corpse’s withering, eyeless gaze, to a pedestal that I knew was mine. It was like every unnatural desire I had felt in order to get to this moment, but it was far more powerful, as if distance and rock weakened the corpse’s power. Here, it was stifling, a billion times more suffocating than the infinite opening into the crypt. It felt as if the entire world was only a small fraction of the weight pressing down on my mind and my chest, and it made me do exactly as the corpse wanted with what felt like an instinctive reflex multiplied by a thousand. That is the only way I can describe it. I did not know why I was surprised when I felt the corpse watching me even though I had gone beyond where its eyes would be able to see if they were there, but I was. It watched me move with a determination that was not my own, and it made me read the book.
I think it was bound in human skin. Or maybe the pages were human skin, and the binding was something else, like the skin of one of the nightmares described in the book that didn’t exist. The ink was likely blood. I read the book, intently, cover to cover, quicker than I’d ever read any book, and then I closed it with a thud that echoed throughout the crypt. It told me everything. It told me my life story, and the story of the universe, and of thousands of universes beyond this. It explained the true origin of the Nightmares, and it told me where the real gap in reality was, which it thoroughly explained. It told me the story of the corpse, who it was in life, how it came to be buried in such a crypt with its human slaves, and how it still breathed beyond death. It told me everything. Not just everything relevant to this story, you see, but actually everything, burned into my mind. There was one thing it didn’t tell me. It didn’t tell me who the other nine victims were, how they were drawn into this complex web and used by the corpse the same way I was. It didn’t tell me who the three others were, or when they would be claimed. It didn’t tell me that I was no longer human, or even myself. The last part, however, was something I could easily figure out.
— End quote