The next week they went over the different religions that had affected the Atheian culture the most. From the very beginning, to the aforementioned deities, which were more or less personifications of things that the Atheians of then could not understand, i.e., the God of Thunder and so forth.

Then to the God Who Hung, a matter they had thoroughly gone through once but now looked at it from a theological perspective instead of a historical one. The Herd of the God Who Hung seemed like a religion that valued sacrifice and martyrdom above all else. For there seemed to be a time when the priests of this religion would walk around with a noose around their necks, ready for the moment when someone would wish to be rid of them; to soon hang from a tree or from wherever, as a martyr that had died like their god had.

And somehow, this religion born out of war and resistance had become one that now awaited the day of reckoning as the day their god would return to them, to give them salvation from this earthly realm as well as judge those who do not believe. They also nowadays preach peace, justice, and compassion.

And then, at last, there was the Church of the Lord From Above, which was a bit different. They saw that the Atheians had already received their reckoning, their judgment, and their salvation. Their reckoning had been when the Sharan fought their war against the Atheians, crushing them and pulverizing their civilization of towers and advancement into mere rubble and a long-forgotten memory by the earth above. Then, they were judged below the earth to live in the shadows for the rest of their meager existence. But there, of course, was salvation, one that you could only reach in death, at the stairway where their god would wait for them and accept them back to the domain of light and goodness. But only in death.

This religion preached many of the same things as did the Herd of the God Who Hung; just add on top of that this concept of guilt they had. For in their eyes, all Atheian, those who had lived thousands of years ago when they still lived on the fields, the forests, the coasts, and steppes of the world, and the Atheains that now lived beneath the ground, were still guilty of the crimes that had brought them here, and they still needed to pray for forgiveness for their original sin.

Much of it was information that Kanrel had by now gathered; even still, he took notes on everything and connected the new information with the old.

But today was another day, with something that he wanted to learn much more about than the religions of the Atheians... The shadows and what they, and who, if anyone, had ever entered them and survived, like he and A’Daur’Kra had even if the two of them had entered them just for a brief moment.

Again, the auditorium was filled with eager Atheains awaited for Gar, who first explained what they would start learning about this week, to begin reading.

Gar cleared his throat and said, "This journal was written one hundred and two years after the founding of the City of Last Light. Back then, an expedition sponsored by the Universal Truth was sent past the veil. This is a journal that was later collected by another expedition that was sent after the first one."

He then began to read:

“We were told to keep a journal with us at all times so that we may document the things we see as well as the things we feel so deep within the darkness that surrounds us. I am nervous as I stare at the fog from its outskirts. My wife and my son cried when they said their goodbyes to me, and I cannot lie and say that I did not cry with them. They wanted to come to see me as I took the first step into that awaiting darkness, but I denied them. I didn’t want that moment to be the last one they saw me alive, or at all.

I took this first step, knowing all too well that I would not return. I have no hope, but among my comrades, I must pretend that I do, lest there be chaos among them, lest they give up, and even the last speck of hope between us might disperse into the darkness...

The enforced crystal lamps seem more effective than at first thought in repelling the thick fog of shadows. At all times, it is like we are walking in a sphere that follows us. We were advised to keep two lights on at all times, for even a moment without the light might cause the death of us all.

The best we can do is to go as far as we can, and for me to write down the things that I see...

It is silken, yet it looks heavy... It moves against our light, not afraid of it like the shadows further away from these eastern lands. And what we’ve found along the way has surprised me and the others, for I am sure that all of us have imagined what there’d be past the veil.

One imagines a world of wonders, but instead, we are given a continuation of the caves that we live in. At times, we have to travel past stalagmite forests and even dead lakes with this murky, unmoving water that offers no reflection upon its surface; it is, as if, the shadow that comes in contact with the light goes beneath the surface to hide away from the light.

And when we must make a major decision, to turn to the left or the right, we were advised to leave a mark of some sort so that those who might come after us in a few weeks could find where we made our way.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I write this at the end of the first day; we’ve lost the concept of time by now, but exhaustion strikes us all, and we must make camp and spend the night surrounded by the very things that could kill us if those crystals give way and all light leaves our world.

I offered to take the first watch, as I had things to write down. Hoping that if I were to stay awake for long enough, then I’d be able to sleep without the fear of death soiling my dreams. I miss my family, and I wish that I hadn’t been chosen for this quest.

The others are unable to sleep, all of them bundled close to each other, perhaps hoping that the touch of one another might make it alright. But in their gazes that meet the shadows, I can see the truth; they are all as afraid as I am; they are all as unable to stare away as I am. They all wish they hadn’t come here... None of them have hope, and it has only been the first day, or so we think.

The next, assumed morning, we pack our things and continue making our way further east. I think I managed to sleep an hour, but in those moments of sleep, dreams plagued my mind. I heard whispers—words that I can now barely remember. But I was not the only one; everyone who managed to fall asleep had those same dreams—all of us remember whispers, and some can even remember the very words whispered to them. A choir of many voices from a choir of so many faces, these words that are now etched into my mind... ‘We died for nothing.’

And these words make one wonder if their origin is naught more than our subconscious, one that had become connected with the members of this expedition. Perhaps this dire situation, this hopeless darkness we were forced to enter and explore, had made us one.

On this journey, we are brothers and sisters, closer to each other than those who are connected to us with blood. I pity them, and I pity myself. The whispers are correct... We will die for nothing.

It smolders. It bubbles. We’ve lost one of the lights. The other ones we brought with us refuse to be set alight. Magic fails us. We cannot go back. We cannot turn around. We can only walk forward and hope that somewhere past this thick fog, there might be salvation for us all.

Last night I had a dream; it went something like this: In this dream, I was a strange bug, one that could fly, its wings colored in gold with patterns in black. My wings would flutter, and I’d fly toward the sun—not the one that lights our city with its blue hue, but one that was as golden as the wings that I had. I flew from flower to flower; one was red, the other was blue, some were purple, and some were even white. I was free at that moment, and I did not know that I was this bug that could flutter so freely. I did not know that I was myself, who had then become this beautiful winged creature. I had no worries, and I didn’t know that I wasn’t who I am now. I didn’t know that I was dreaming.

But in this dream, past the setting sun, I see a vision that now haunts me. A beam of darkness pierces the heavenly light; it casts a shadow on the flowers among which I flutter and dream. And in that sudden flash of darkness, a great wave of shadows falls down, blocking the golden sun, and it becomes so cold. It is so dark in this dream. And I can hear whispers, one that wakes me up from a dream... ‘Our deaths were there only to feed him... We died for nothing. His will is now eternal.’

When I woke up, I wondered if I was that magnificent creature with those golden wings, fluttering from flower to flower. I wondered if I was now dreaming and if the field had been the reality since the beginning.

We don’t have much time left. And in anticipation of our final moments, many of us have turned to the gods of the old and the new, praying for whatever salvation there might be. Holding on to that final straw of hope, one that may or may not be true...

But I have no hope, other than the memory of that dream. Perhaps soon I will wake up and again flutter among the flowers at the final dawn before eternal darkness. At least, for those final moments, I would be free.” Gar stopped reading for a while; somehow, even he could seem distraught at times, as he then read the final page of the journal: “The bodies of the expedition members were not found; only their belongings were left scattered near an entrance to a smaller subsection of the cave system. Eleven lives were lost; the second expedition was thus the final one; as of them, only one returned alive, holding on to this very journal, her mind broken, her whole body shaking for days before she committed suicide by re-entering the veil. Thus another eleven lives were lost." And when he finished at last, there was a silence so deafening, so loud that no words could be said to break it.

They left in it. In this world of fear and distraught. A tale of a man who seemed like any man, someone who had a family, simply gathering the last days of his life onto paper that was no less fragile than the lives of those that had been lost... For nothing.

Kanrel could feel this surge of emotions, filling him to the brim. Everything felt wrong at that moment. Even if it was something that had happened so long ago, it could still affect someone years later. As much as a story told a thousand years ago could make one cry and laugh today as well. This piece of history could do so as well.

When Kanrel was younger, he had read about the revolt that had caused the very existence of nameless people like him, Yirn, and Dar. A restlessness that soon turned into war. Those who died fighting against what they perceived to be the tyranny of the crown and the Priesthood. A long war lasting over a decade, which then ended with bloodshed so great that the substantive nameless population was born. Children left behind with no parents; their names a mystery to most, and now, their lack of a name is a stark reminder that these were the offspring, the spawn, of those who had gone against the status quo, causing a war that ended killing countless innocents as a byproduct.

And the last day of this war? A massacre so extreme that he couldn’t read its descriptions without anger swelling him from the inside, not toward the victims of this massacre, but the perpetrators of it, his own Priesthood, his own kingdom... But then there was the grief mixed with that, the softness and sadness that he felt, as he had to think and see the world through the eyes of those who were there. The fear they must have felt. The blood, the violence, the unjust actions of the so-called “righteous men.” All and everything that they had had to experience and witness...

Those minds—if their bodies weren’t murdered, mangled, and broken that day, then their minds must’ve been.

Ignar had seen the world like that, and thus he had seen it as such as well.

It wasn’t exactly the same, but the unfairness that then caused the deaths of these poor Atheains was not that different. Who of them wanted to enter the Shadows, to enter the Veil, as they called?

Then, at last, as his emotions crashed within him as if great waves in an ocean, a storm that raged without an end, the silence was broken.

“We will continue tomorrow,” Gar spoke, his voice flat, his brows quivering ever so slightly, his eyes of ocean blue empty, and without the sparkle they usually had.

That day, they left in silence.