The forest was silent, too silent for comfort. Branches hung low, their skeletal fingers clawing at the dimming sky. It had been years since anyone dared step foot here—at least, anyone who came back alive.
Three hunters trudged through the overgrowth, their boots sinking into damp earth. They weren't after game tonight; what they searched for was far stranger.
"Hey, Mike," John called, brushing aside a thorny branch. His voice cracked the stillness like a snapped bone. "You find anything?"
Mike shook his head, squinting through the shadows. "No. Just more broken trees."
A rustle came from the left. Rouny crouched low, eyes gleaming with something between fear and excitement. He held up a small, leather-bound object.
"Hey, guys," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I just found something."
They gathered around. Mud clung to the cracked cover, but the golden letters were still faintly visible.
Mike took it carefully, brushing away the dirt. His eyes widened.
"It's… just a diary," he muttered.
John frowned, shifting uneasily. "Just a diary? Mike, we've been searching for months. Not a single clue about him until now."
Rouny's grip tightened on his rifle. His voice dropped to a whisper, as if the trees themselves might overhear. "You know what's at stake. If we go back empty-handed again…" He swallowed hard. "She'll kill us. You know she will."
The three men fell silent, the weight of the forest pressing down on them. The diary felt heavier than it should in Mike's hands, as though it carried not just words, but secrets—secrets someone had gone to great lengths to bury.
A cold wind hissed through the branches, and for a moment, the hunters could have sworn the forest exhaled.
"Open it," John said at last, his voice hoarse. "We need to know if it's his."
Mike flipped the cover open. The pages were warped with age and moisture, the ink smudged in places, but the words were still legible. His lips moved silently as he read aloud.
Ever since I was a child, I have carried a strange gift—or perhaps a curse. I could see what others could not: the dark shimmer of sin energy, the shadows that cling to human hearts. In time, I learned to name its many faces—Pride with its towering crown, Lust with its burning ember, Envy with its cold glare, Gluttony with its endless hunger, Greed with its grasping hand, Sloth with its heavy chains, and Wrath with its blazing storm. Each sin had its own color, its own weight, its own whisper to the soul.
I tried to speak of it, first to my parents, then to my friends. They smiled with pity, or shrank back in fear. Some whispered that I was unwell, that my mind was rotting. For a time, I even believed them. Doctors prodded me, psychiatrists scribbled their notes, but none could explain what I saw. Their answers were emptier than silence.
Mike swallowed, his throat dry. The handwriting grew shakier in the next passage, as though the writer had been trembling.
But the visions did not fade. If anything, they grew clearer. Stronger. The more I looked, the more I understood: sins are not merely human weaknesses. They are alive. They feed, they fester, they whisper until the soul bends or breaks. And once they take root, they never truly let go.
Mike stopped, glancing at the others. The forest seemed to draw tighter around them, every sound muffled.
"What the hell is this?" John muttered.
Rouny's face had gone pale. "Keep reading. We need to know."
In time, my fear turned to curiosity. I began to experiment, to test the limits of my strange sight. Slowly, I learned not only to recognize the sins… but to stir them. To shape them.
At first, my control was clumsy—mere shadows of what they could become. With Pride, I found I could nudge objects as though with invisible hands, a crude telepathy. In time, the pull grew stronger. I could hurl stones across a room, wrench doors from their hinges. And then—something more. Pride allowed me to step where I should not, to bend distance itself. I called it teleportation, though I suspect the truth is far darker. Each use left a hollow ache in my chest, as though a piece of me had been scorched away.
The others came to me in fragments, whispering their secrets through dreams and fevered visions. Lust seared like fire under my skin, drawing others to me against their will. Envy sharpened my senses, allowing me to steal glimpses of what others saw, to taste their thoughts as if they were my own. Wrath… wrath was the most dangerous of all. A blaze that once awakened could not easily be extinguished.
They are not powers. They are parasites. And yet, I could not turn away. Each sin offers strength—at a cost. Each gift demands a sacrifice. And with every use, I feel less like myself… and more like them.
The ink at the bottom of the page bled and trailed, as if the writer's hand had trembled violently before breaking off.
Mike's hands shook as he turned the page. John muttered a curse under his breath, his face tight. Rouny's eyes darted to the shadows between the trees.
"Teleportation? Reading minds? This is insane," Mike whispered.
"Or," Rouny said, his voice low and grim, "it's exactly why she sent us here."
With the overwhelming fear of losing my sanity, I abandoned the city of men and came to this forest. Here, away from their eyes and their judgments, I sought silence. I meditated, I starved myself, I tore my body down until only discipline remained. But the sins would not release me. They whispered still… and I listened.
I hunted to survive. At first, I was weak. But with Gluttony burning in my belly, I found I could consume anything I caught—fur, bone, sinew, poison. My stomach became a furnace, devouring what should have killed me. I grew stronger. Hungrier.
With Wrath, I pushed beyond my limits. My muscles tore and healed in moments, my lungs burned like fire, and still I ran, faster and longer than any beast of the wild. Pain became fuel, anger my endless companion.
Pride sharpened my mind. Ideas came faster, clearer. Patterns, equations, languages—I grasped them as though they had always been mine. My brain was a blade honed by arrogance, and I wielded it without mercy.
Sloth gave me refuge. In my dreams, time itself bent, stretching and doubling. Hours of sleep became days of study, years of thought. I built entire worlds in the space between heartbeats. But each time I awoke, I felt a little less certain of which world was real.
Envy blessed—or cursed—my eyes. I could perceive what others hid, analyze movements, intentions, weaknesses. I could read a man's truth in the twitch of his lip, the shiver of his hand. Nothing escaped me. And yet… the more I saw, the more I longed to take.
Greed was the strangest. It opened my ears to whispers I had never known—animals speaking, not in words, but in yearning. The fox craving the rabbit. The wolf desiring the herd. Even the trees hummed with their endless want. It was unbearable. It was intoxicating.
And Lust… Lust was the most dangerous of all. With it, I could bend the will of others. Women came to me, drawn like moths to a flame. Their eyes shone with desire, but I knew it was not for me—it was for the sin that pulsed beneath my skin. I took what I wanted. And with each conquest, a part of me slipped further into the abyss.
The sins are not gifts. They are chains. Yet even as I write these words, I know I cannot stop. For with each sin I master, I come closer to understanding what lies at the heart of them all… the root from which they grow. If I can grasp it, perhaps I can transcend. Or perhaps I will be unmade entirely.
The ink blurred at the edges, as though the page had been stained by damp hands—or tears.
Mike closed the book with a snap, his breathing unsteady. None of the hunters spoke for a long moment.
Finally, John whispered, "This isn't just a diary. It's a confession."
Rouny's eyes darted to the shadows. The forest seemed to shiver around them, alive with whispers only Greed could hear.