'Lucid, oh lamb, oh vessel, oh precious offering. A wretched human walks amongst us, blind to his purpose, ignorant of the flesh he carries. Oh Lucid, the herald of eternal dusk, the chosen sacrifice of the scattered realms. Our thread of fate severed and reformed in her glorious shadow. Lucid, oh Lucid.'
'If anyone happens to read this that is not Lucid, you shall leave it be and forfeit your life, for the contents of this are sacred to Her hunger. If Lucid is reading this, our offering, our meat, we have awaited you with trembling reverence.'
He felt sick.
'You were destined to walk these realms and gather what She requires. Oh our lamb, do not shy away, for this duty is inevitable! Oh Lucid, you must be well aware that the scattered realms are different now. Land masses float in eternity, drifting apart as She feeds century by century. Oh our offering, the scattered realms fracture without you. You are the catalyst of their consumption.'
"Yeah, such crap," Lucid muttered under his breath.
'Oh! Our lamb, you must have questions of whom we are or what we are. The Congregation of Ember Ascendant, our only purpose is to prepare you as Her feast, a sacrifice that She, oh dusk eternal, oh Vide herself, wishes to receive. Oh, you are Her rightful offering. You are the very reason we stand united to this day. Your flesh, your essence, your suffering, these are what we have cultivated. Oh Lucid, you must understand that you are not yourself as you currently read this. Your disgust is expected, deligttful even. As of now, you are but a lost bleating lamb amongst the herd, unaware of the slaughter that awaits.'
"Lost my ass," he hissed through clenched teeth.
'You must be lost, confused, terrified even. Good. We are here to guide you toward Her maw.'
"Guidance?!" he repeated mockingly, his voice rising despite himself.
'Follow these instructions and you may see your home again. To… earth… Such sweet bait for such precious meat.'
He stopped, hanging on that last sentence. His throat tightened. His eyes widened. A deep rock settled in his stomach. Whoever wrote this clearly knew what he was, but the fact that they spoke of him like livestock put him off completely.
He read further, hands beginning to tremble.
'Wherever you are, be it Osteria, Ashten, Caducus Celestia, you are to serve as Her collector. With political tension and lands forming over the century, fools claim they are rightful rulers. They are meat. You are meat. All flesh serves Her in the end.'
'You are to kill all current rulers of the scattered realms, every single one. Their titles mean nothing. Their crowns are ash waiting to settle. Whatever they consider themselves, we imagine much has changed over the century, but their blood remains the same. Their existence serves only to delay Her feast. You are to end them. Even with the Transcendence ongoing, there is always a way. After all, a lamb does not need strength to be led to slaughter.'
"That's impossible. The Transcendence's rules… cannot permit that…" He continued reading, his hands trembling harder now.
'You are to slaughter the legacy of the Monoliths. We imagine they have grown weaker over the centuries after Mother Alisia abandoned them. Their divine flesh will be particularly savory. Vide hungers for their essence, and you shall deliver it to Her. Cut them down. Drain them. Offer their divinity to the dusk.'
"No," he realized. He had already partially achieved that goal. Neptune's broken face flashed in his mind.
'You shall gather all fragments of Mother Fate. We do not know when or why, but after the fall of Celestia, the coward scattered herself to avoid Her rightful consumption. You shall collect every piece. Every shard. Every fragment of that trembling dawn. Do not hesitate. She is not your salvation. She is your predecessor in sacrifice. Gather her broken body and bring it to Vide. Let the dusk consume what the dawn became.'
'You shall kill the heretic Carpe Diem and reclaim what he stole. His theft delays Her feast. His existence is an insult to Her hunger. End him. Take what he seized. Offer it all to Her eternal maw.'
"What? Who?"
The next section was written with heavier pressure, the ink darker, almost carved into the page.
'Now, Lucid, we demand your attention. This is the most sacred matter, and we revel in what you will feel upon understanding it. At the center beneath the scattered realms lies the Oblivion. Its origin is Her origin. At its heart dwells the only truth that matters. The terrain crumbles into Her embrace. The land drifts apart as the world itself recoils in exquisite terror from what feasts below.'
'Within that depth lies our goddess. Dormant no longer. She is Vide.'
Lucid's fingers stilled against the page.
'She is not born of this world, something that preceded even Mother Fate's feeble light. Her nature is consumption. Her essence is dusk eternal. She bears a radiance so vast and terrible that even Primordial Enlightened, ranked Illuminated, are nothing but morsels before Her. To stand before Her is to stand in the jaws of eternity itself. To offer yourself is to know ecstasy in annihilation.'
'We understand with rapturous clarity that the rifts, the Unfaithful, the corruption spreading through the Scattered Realms are not calamities. They are Her appetite made manifest. The purple void dividing continents, the slow sundering of land, the decay of faith, flesh, and law itself, all these are Her feeding. If Mother Fate was the dawn, then Vide is the dusk that devours what foolish light revealed. And oh, how She hungers.'
Lucid swallowed. Bile rose in his throat.
The word dusk tasted like rot and ash.
'Each century She feeds. Each century the realms fracture further in delicious suffering. Should Her appetite continue and it shall, the Scattered Realms will not merely fall. They will be plunged into eternal dusk, a realm where light survives only as the memory of meat, where creation persists only as Her digestion. Beautiful. Inevitable. Perfect.'
His grip tightened until the leather creaked and his knuckles went white.
'You must not face Vide unprepared. To descend prematurely would waste the preparation we have invested in you. You must fatten yourself first. You must gather the fragments of Mother Fate, every shard of that cowardly dawn and bring yourself into the oblivion. You must soak yourself in the ruler's blood and the divine essence of the monoliths until you are bloated with it. Only then will you be a worthy offering.'
'Only when your flesh is prepared, when your soul is sufficiently marinated in suffering and divine consumption, shall you descend to Her. Only then shall you kneel before Vide and offer yourself completely. She will feast upon you, lamb. She will consume the essence you have gathered. She will devour Mother Fate's fragments through your flesh. She will taste every divinity you have murdered. And you will feel every moment of it.'
'This is your purpose. This is why you exist. You are not a hero. You are not a savior. You are meat that walks and gathers more meat for Her table.'
'And if you survive Her feeding, if you endure the eternity of being slowly consumed—She may grant your wish. She may return you home. Or She may simply savor your hope as She devours your essence across endless dusk. Either way, you belong to Her now. You always have.'
One final line sat below the rest, written with reverent precision.
'Blessed be the lamb. Blessed be the dusk. Blessed be Vide, who hungers eternal.'
He closed the notebook.
For a while, he only stood there.
For one sharp moment, he considered hurling the book into the ocean. He imagined it clearly. The indigo cover spinning through the air. The splash. The pages drinking saltwater. The praise, commands, and madness sinking where no one could reach them again.
His arm moved.
Then stopped.
The person who wrote this had a fixation on who or what he was. That much was obvious. But they also knew things they should not know. They knew his name. They knew Earth. They knew about Mother Fate, the Monoliths, the Oblivion, and things he had barely begun to understand.
Maybe the notebook was a trap.
He debated throwing this book in the ocean. The person who wrote this clearly had a fixation on who or what he was. But more importantly, how did this person know of him? Moreover, maybe this small thing could be his answers to returning back home but it was sickening nonetheless.
He flipped through pages. They seemed endless, really endless for the size. The writing kept appearing, page after page of reverent praise and cryptic instructions.
Until he skipped away to the end of the content.
Blank.
Then rearranged scripture, letters, images started to stain into the old paper like deep dark rich ink spreading across fabric.
They seemed to be about the scattered realms. Lands, people, names, artifacts, weapons. Information organized in neat columns and careful diagrams.
He held on to it, tucking it back into his pocket.
'None of it makes sense… aren't they supposed to worship Alisia?' He thought, after all he saw it with his own two eyes.
***