As I walk the path of these ever-twisting halls—here, where everything is recorded—I cannot help but wonder…
How does this even exist?
I pick a book. Dust off the cover. Then...
The Lost City of Thera.
A familiar name. Yet, in this library, familiarity is a lie…
Long ago, before the Great Fracture, before the world bled into the wretched thing it is now, one city stood above all others. Thera.
But now—
It is recorded in the Halls of Time as nothing more than a pile of dust. Their greed got the better of them.
They prospered through magic. But they did not merely study it—they breathed it, bent it, built their world around it. Entire islands hovered in the sky, bound by unseen forces, defying nature with immaculate precision.
Perfection. That was their goal. But perfection is a cruel lie.
...
They wanted more.
They eventually came to know of the gods. Immortal entities that exist in higher dimensions.
Well…
Immortal would be a lie. They could be killed. Though their immense power usually prevented that. What it did not prevent—
Was the boredom of existence.
After an infinitely long time of being—some became curious.
What happens when I die? They had no other way of knowing than to try.
One—
An old one. Allucard was his name. He made the sacrifice. His existence had become nothing more than a painful slumber—He had lived too long. So—He did it. He concentrated all his power into drops. Then—With his now mortal body, He clawed his own heart out.
No one knows what happened to his soul.
But the drops of his power… Eventually found their way to the mortal realm. They would later be known as—
The Essence of a Dead God.
This discovery shook Thera. Shook the whole known world to its core.
Bigger than them existed.
Infinitely bigger.
At first, they feared the power. The mere existence of the essence unsettled them, its potential too great, too unknown. But curiosity is a force stronger than fear. Caution gave way to ambition, and so they decided to harness it. A grave mistake.
They began small. A mouse. A harmless creature. One drop of essence. For a time, it seemed unchanged. It twitched its whiskers. Scuttled about. Then—a mage reached out. Just a single touch.
His hand sank into it.
Not pierced, not burned—consumed. Flesh, bone, soul. He did not even have time to scream. The mouse began to change. It grew, its body twisting into a grotesque amalgamation of two living things. It could now think.
It was too powerful. It did not stop at one life—it absorbed everything. Every mage, every researcher, every living thing in the tower was swallowed into its writhing mass. In the face of such horror, only one remained standing—the Master of All Mages. He alone had the power to stop it, but he was not enough. His body lay broken, his consciousness slipping away. With no other choice, he turned to the very force that had created this abomination. He absorbed the essence of dead gods.
Power surged through him. His shattered bones fused, his soul was violently dragged back into his body. He had become something beyond mortal. And with that power, he struck the creature down. The Flesh Amalgam was no more—or so he thought. Its remnants, scattered and writhing, would later reform. A thing with only one thought, one purpose… consume. A moon of flesh.
But victory came at a price. The mage had taken in something unstable, something that no mortal was meant to wield. And so, he began to lose himself. His mind twisted, his perception of reality distorted. He was no longer a man. He was a god. Or so he believed. He turned his magic inward, reshaping his flesh in pursuit of perfection, remaking himself into something beyond human. Others followed, drawn to his power, worshiping his every word. They fueled his delusion, and in time, they became more than followers.
They became The Artists.
The city fell into the hands of the mage. In his eyes, any human untouched by his power was nothing more than a parasite—an impurity to be cleansed.
And so, the Great Purge began.
The Artistes waged war against the remaining humans of Thera. The warriors who stood against them were strong—some of the finest of their age—but they were not enough. One by one, they fell, their steel and spells useless against the grotesque forms of the Artistes. The war was brutal, and though the cult emerged victorious, their triumph was not without loss.
But their battle did not go unnoticed.
The use of a god's power echoed through reality, an offense that could not be ignored. From beyond the veil, something stirred—one of Allucard's servants.
The mage did not stand a chance.
It descended upon him without warning, a force beyond comprehension. He was mutilated. Gutted. His soul was torn from his body. But this was no act of retribution, no righteous punishment to reclaim the stolen power. No, this was something far worse.
A message.
A warning to all who would dare follow in his footsteps.
THE ESSENCE OF A DEAD GOD CANNOT BE USED BY MORTALS.
…
On the final page of the dusty volume, a single sentence is etched into the aged parchment:
"The past holds secrets only to the foolish."
…