"Remember your origin, remember your purpose. Rewrite that which has been written, and read the revelation anew. Archivist."
[05/08/1997]
Another day to live. Another day wasted.
Maybe I'd die tomorrow. Maybe not.
But such was fate, wasn't it? Twisted and cruel, like a game that never ended until the battery ran out.
I was lying in my bed, looking up at the ceiling with an empty gaze. The only sound that could be heard was the sound of a French television show that I had forgotten to turn off.
I turned my head towards the coffee table, and the hot coffee that I had brewed two hours earlier had begun to lose its warmth.
Beside the coffee mug sat a familiar book — yes, there it was. The blasphemous gospel. The very book that defied what I once believed.
I still remembered the day I was walking down the empty street, when out of nowhere, a book was lying on the concrete street. Not understanding its content, I took it back home, in the hope I could decipher its language.
However, it was fated to be my biggest regret. The once-ordinary book was nothing more than a blood-sucking leech; it fed on human blood, yet it returned no benefits to its feeder.
Years of research — I felt like it was all utterly a joke. I used to believe that everything revolved around science and that time was absolute.
Yet the truth was ever-changing. Even if all knowledge were to be in my grasp, I would return empty-handed.
On top of the book was a quill, which I found of no use. They say there's a price we pay for words. This was the price the bloody bastards paid.
I got up from the bed and reached for the gospel. As my hand was about to touch it, the pages glowed dimly, waving left and right — it was hungry, dying of thirst, and it wanted blood.
"I wished that one of us could disappear."
I grabbed the book and flipped through the pages, and the notes that I had intentionally left inside of it were gone. Again. It seemed that this book fed not only on human blood but also on knowledge.
"Thirst for knowledge is self-consuming, I knew that."
I'd tried everything I could since I became the not-so-proud owner of this book. I tried to set it on fire, tear its pages apart, and bury it in the dirt.
Yet all was futile. When I woke up, it returned by my side — closer than a lover, patient like a corpse waiting to be filled again.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
Knock. Knock.
I set the gospel down on the table and went to open the door. As I opened it, I saw a familiar silhouette, and I had no doubt who it might be.
I was right when I opened the door to see a man in a long white robe that reached the floor. He stood before me with an otherworldly presence.
"So, you decided to show up today, huh?"
I said provocatively, but the man wasn't bothered in the slightest by my provocation. Instead, I looked into his eyes, his gaze landing on something inside my small apartment. The book, of course — it was the book.
"Cael Ravel, it seems that you have yet to rid yourself of the scripture. I wonder how long it has been."
He mentioned my full name in a low, deep tone. He then walked right past me, directly intruding into my apartment. But instead of resisting, I closed the door and followed closely behind him.
He was an acquaintance of a friend of mine. They said he could help me resolve my mundane problems, but it seemed his presence never changed things for the better.
The man stopped in front of the table where the gospel was resting. He outstretched his right hand to the book, but not quite touching it, as a faint glow of golden energy radiated from it — as if purifying the book.
After some time, the glow faded away, and the old man put his hand back at his side. He shook his head.
"It's been a few times I've visited you. To be truthful with you, there's nothing either of us can do. The spirit living inside this tome is beyond that of the ordinary."
I didn't quite understand what the old man was saying, but whatever it meant, I knew that even if I hid across another multiverse, the book would continue to haunt me.
The old man shrugged and looked me in the eyes.
"Mister Ravel, I pity you. Really, I do. You're bound to the soul within this gospel, but I hoped you would accept it with open arms. This is the woe of language."
The old man started pacing around the room, but his gaze never left mine. He picked up the book and placed it in my hand.
"It recognizes you as its source of nutrients. And now it's only bound to you. So shall you be."
The old man started retreating from my apartment. But then, he halted, looking over his shoulder. "May time be on your side, ending your prolonged suffering."
He turned away and left the apartment, closing the door behind him, leaving me stranded here with this anomaly in my hand.
I looked down at the book and started flipping the pages; the contents within it were still foreign to me, and I never got close to deciphering the contents.
As I flipped the pages, a strange thing happened: there were empty pages at the back of the book.
"This... it's not possible. This wasn't here before... how can it... be...?"
I grabbed a pen from the table and tried to write on it. Miraculously, the words I wrote were absorbed by the pages, leaving no trace of the pen's ink.
It intrigued me that, after years of research, something finally happened. Something... significant.
But why now?
The question lingered in my mind, but I paid no attention to it, as I was busy with the discovery.
"Think... I need a lead, this is my only chance..."
I tapped on my chin, thinking of a way that would work. Just as I was lost in thought, my eyes landed on a particular object — the quill. The same quill I found next to the Gospel when I first took it in from the auction.
"That's it! Now everything is in place."
I had never thought it would be of any use, but now... this was the only option I had.
I grabbed the quill and dipped the tip in black ink. Then, I started to write on the page, but I was dumbfounded when the ink also vanished.
What had possibly gone wrong this time?
A series of questions with no clear answers — I needed an answer, and I needed one now. I started pacing around my apartment, thinking of a rational way to make this work.
"Blood... do I really dare?"
In a moment of frustration, I decided to take drastic measures — poking my fingertip with the quill, drawing a small amount of blood on its tip.
"Damn it to hell..."
I then set the book down on the table. This was it. Either I returned with something, or I never returned at all.
I then started writing the first full sentences inside the gospel — 'Video, Scribo, Muto.'
The blood ink stayed intact on the pages, as the words glowed with a bright red.
"Hah..." I put a hand on my forehead.
I bit my lip as I threw my head back, letting out a laugh like never before. The truth was, years of isolation and self-critique — I'd been drowning in piles of research papers.
Now... I finally floated somewhere in the vast ocean. Finally belonged somewhere.
—Penning a new chapter…