I read them.
God help me,
I read them.
The first few lines were harmless, it was me complaining about the weather, talking about a fence's betrayal. Then it got strange. Words that weren't mine. Sentences twisting halfway through, turning into things I didn't understand. Whole paragraphs written in spirals instead of lines.
At the very end, an entry dated to the day of my death.
I can hear the whispers again.. so soft, patient, right behind my ear:
"Write it down, Marcus. We will remember for you."
I think I made a mistake.
I think the book is writing me now.
Entry 31 – 12th Day of Thaw Moon.
The journal in the chamber was right. Everything it said would happen has happened. I stole from the merchant it said I would steal from. I got caught by the same guard it said would catch me. I escaped through the route it described. Every single detail, exact and perfect.
I have tomorrow's entry memorized:
"13th Day of Thaw Moon - Will rob the goldsmith on Weavers Street. Will find a sapphire ring in the back vault. Will fence it to Old Tam for sixty gold crowns. Will use the money to pay off debts. Will feel nothing."
I don't want to do it. I want to prove the journal wrong, prove that I have a choice, that my future isn't already written in some impossible book beneath a temple in a chamber that shouldn't exist.
But I know I'm going to do it anyway. Because the journal knows me better than I know myself. It knows that I'm weak, that I'm desperate, that I've got nothing else.
It knows I'm a thief.
And thieves take what they can get.
Even if what they're stealing is their own future.
Entry 45 – 26th Day of Thaw Moon
Can't stop going back to the chamber. Can't stop reading ahead.
The journal doesn't stop where my life should. There are entries for next year. The next five. The next twenty.
I know how I die now. I know when, where, how. I know the name of the guard who catches me... Varek. The same one who almost caught me three winters ago near the docks.
I know the date of my execution, the last words I'll speak standing on the gallows: "It was always going to be this way."
I could change them. I could stay silent. Spit instead. Laugh. But I know I won't. The moment I stand on those gallows, the words will fall from my lips like they were always waiting.
The journal says I'll keep stealing. Says I'll get better at it, more successful. Says I'll pull off the biggest heist in Eldoria's history... the Crown Jewels from the Royal Palace, the ones everyone says are impossible to steal. Says I'll hold them in my hands for seventeen minutes before the guards come. Says I'll be legendary for exactly three days before they hang me.
Says I won't even try to run.
I could stop. I could change everything, do something different, be someone else. But the journal knows I won't. It's already written. It's already done.
And reading that, I felt something in me go quiet. Not fear. Not anger. Just... inevitability.
Maybe that's worse.
Entry 67 – 18th Day of Storm Moon.
Started planning the Royal Palace job. Can't help myself.
The journal describes every detail... guard rotations, weak points in the walls, the exact combination to the vault, even the shape of the window I'll crawl through. I could burn the book, but I know it would survive. Or I'd find another copy waiting in its place.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm writing the journal or if the journal is writing me. If maybe I found it in the chamber because I was always going to find it. If maybe everything—Ma's death, my thieving, this whole miserable life—was just leading me to that door, to that pedestal, to the moment I opened a book and read my own doom.
The monks of the Spiral Path say time is a circle not a line... they believe in eternal recurrence. They say we live the same lives over and over, making the same choices, same mistakes, trapped in patterns we can't escape.
If that's true I haven't learnt a damn thing.
Maybe I've opened that door a thousand times before. Maybe I've read this journal in a thousand different lifetimes, and every time I tell myself I'll do things differently, and every time I don't.
Maybe I'm not a man anymore.
Maybe I'm a pattern, Marcus the repetition, Marcus the eternal return.
Marcus the thief who always takes the bait.
Entry 89 – 3rd Day of Harvest Moon.
The heist is tomorrow night.
I have the plans memorized. I know exactly what to do, exactly how it will go.
The journal says I'll succeed. It says I'll touch the impossible.
Says I'll hold the Crown Jewels in my hands for exactly seventeen minutes before the guards surround me.
Says I won't fight. Says I'll just stand there, holding those impossible gems.
It says I'll feel nothing.
I went back to the chamber one last time tonight. The journal on the pedestal has new entries now. There are fresh pages that go beyond my death date. At first I thought they were blank.. how could there be entries after I die?
But then I looked closer.
They're not blank. They're just written in a hand I don't recognize. Someone else's hand. Someone else's entries. Another thief, another life, another fool who opened the door and read their future and couldn't stop themselves from living it out exactly as written.
The chamber isn't just recording my life. It's recording all of them. Every thief who ever found their way down here, every desperate soul who thought they could steal their own destiny. We're all in that journal, all of us written one after another, our lives bleeding together into one endless story of taking and being taken, stealing and being stolen from.
The spiral symbols on the walls aren't decorations. They're warnings. They're showing us what we are: patterns repeating, circles closing, thieves stealing from themselves across time.
I think I see faces in the carvings now.
Maybe they're mine.
Entry 90 – 4th Day of Harvest Moon (final entry in Marcus's hand).
It's done.
I have the Crown Jewels. They're beautiful—more beautiful than anything I've ever seen.
They glow with an inner light, same pale blue as the symbols in the chamber, as the mushrooms in the ruins, as the Floating Market that appeared last month in the skies over Zephyros.
The guards are coming.
I can hear their boots echoing on the marble floors. I should run. The journal says I won't run.
But maybe I could. Maybe I could prove it wrong.
No. I can't. Because even as I write, I feel the words pulling me forward. My thoughts form sentences I haven't chosen. My hand is moving on its own.
I'm not writing this journal.
The journal is writing me.
It always has been. Since the moment I found it—no, since before that. Since I was born. Since before I was born, maybe. Since the first thief in the first age who first opened that door and read their doom and walked toward it anyway because that's what thieves do.
We take. That's what we do. Even when what we take is the trap that kills us.
The guards are here.
Their captain's name is Varek.
The journal told me it would be.
The journal tells me everything.
It was always going to end this way.
Entry 91 – 5th Day of Harvest Moon (different handwriting)
Found this journal in Marcus's cell after they took him to the gallows. The guards gave it to me as a curiosity, said I might want to read about the famous thief before they stretched his neck. I'm something of a collector of last words and final testaments. Morbid hobby, I know, but it pays well. People like reading about the condemned.
This journal though... it's strange. The pages are filled with madness — dates, names, predictions. The entries after Marcus's last one are blank, but when I hold the pages up to the light, I can almost see words forming. Like they're being written in invisible ink, or like they're waiting for the right person to read them.
I should burn it.
But I won't.
There's something almost... inviting about it. The texture of the leather. The way the pages seem to breathe when I touch them.
Wait.
There's something new on the next page. Letters forming—slowly, glowing. My name.
How does it know my name?
Entry 92 - 6th Day of the Harvest Moon
The ink moves as I read. Sentences keep forming themselves like veins spreading through my skin. The next page is already filling. It's about me. About tomorrow. About every decision I haven't made yet.
I can't stop reading.
I think I hear whispering behind me.
Entry 1 – 7th Day of Harvest Moon (third handwriting)
Started keeping this journal today. Don't know why exactly.. just felt compelled to write things down.
End of Tale #3 — "The Thief's Journal"