I was on a roll, for the last three days I kept making nothing but bad decisions. Being haunted in my dreams wasn’t my own decision, but the follow up surely was. The book I picked up was just another bad decision to add to the pile.

‘The History Hidden by the stars.’

The world is made up of many layers. The first layer is the one that mortals like you and I see. The second layer is the one that mortals of the forgotten past witnessed. There are many other layers, but the second layer is the most important.

The divine like to hide that layer, it does not speak well of them. but nonetheless the second layer exists, it is not truly forgotten. To find the second layer one must go to places that even the divine dare not to. There in the places that darkness once resided shall you find records, but remember, the divine fear it for a reason.

The next few pages spoke much of the same, so I skipped them. eventually nearly halfway through the book the instructions, on how to explore places that the book, explicitly warns not to explore ended.

Turning my brain back on I continued reading.

from the many efforts of the family, I managed to scrape together a history. The many that fell to get the records that made the backbone of this tale are few. They are hundreds, but they are few, far more died to record this.

In ancient ruins and caves deep in certain locations we found writing. the act of describing these places is forbidden by the heavens, but the writing itself is not. Many speculate reasoning behind such a move, but we all came to the same conclusion. The gods are too weak to affect something written within the true darkness.

The records speak of a god, a god that treated its people fairly. We can tell as much by their lamentations. The people cried out for their god; they mourned it even as they were driven to insanity.

But what about the darkness itself? The force that wiped the world clean. It was something born from the death of that god. With the family’s techniques we were able to determine that it contained the divinities of death, destruction and darkness.

The strange thing about this darkness is that one can see. There is no light, but something deceives our eyes into thinking there is. we decided that this was probably why the records were so detailed for the next part.

Churches were emptied. The dedicated followers of almost every god disappeared from the world at that time. But the god that died, it’s followers did not disappear. The lost were still faithful even as their churches were burnt by beings mostly referred to as traitors or thieves.

We assume it to be the doing of the other gods. We especially believe this since the gods themselves were the ones to hide this incident.

All hope for our mission had been lost when we discovered that nothing had survived. But we attained hope when a piece of dried skin from an unknown species was discovered. Etched into that skin was characters that we found familiar.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Decoding that ancient leather, we found that there were followers that survived. They prayed relentlessly to the corpse of their god and kept a spark alive. we sent out an expedition of forty men to where we suspected the corpse to be.

One man returned and provided the family the essence of life that we needed. The followers of that god were long dead, so too was the spark, but there was something. deep within the corpse was bound a body that caused the death of all who approached it.

After so long the family finally had a true direction. And now I am happy to see that the future generation has made progress that I can see before I pass.

“Neat.”

This was at least more believable than the other two but deluded beyond belief. To truly try and mess with divinity was something not even someone at mothers level of insane would do… right?

I looked at the last page in hopes of finding a sentence saying it was all a joke.

I didn’t, instead I found a different handwriting, one far prettier than the other pages. was Despite the large difference it still felt somewhat close to the previous one. Along with the change in handwriting the page looked like it had been rained on and someone quickly wiped it off.

This page seemed to be a dedication or a letter. I found it confusing, and I ended up reading it aloud which baffled me even more.

“My child, I know you will not read this, but I will forgive you.”

“I will forgive you for walking away that day. for ignoring this old man’s last words. For spawning such a wicked idea. For being too consumed in our mission to even smile at the little bundle of joy you brought to me that day.”

“I know that your dedication is my fault, I know that you do not care. but I still hold hope that you will take interest in our history”.

“This story, it is old, far older than the paper and ink that are its current form. I have transcribed it into this form to tell you what you wish not to know.”

“My daughter, I know that someday you will find what you are missing within these pages. I pray for your success; may the Maribelle line continue in the great perpetual darkness”

After perpetual darkness there is no period, but I am sure that the original author ended the sentence there. Beyond it the sentence changes handwriting. The style felt familiar, but the meaning of the words eluded me.

“For it is all that is good and holy.”

I muttered the words, but still, I couldn’t understand. In the story the darkness was caused by the death of a god. Why would such a darkness be good, or did they mean a different darkness?

Below this is where the writing ends, but it is in the style of what I presume to be the original author’s handwriting.

To my daughter, E. J. Maribelle.

Signed: John. C. Maribelle.

How… lovely… that. Was. Pleasant. To. Read. Nothing weird at all about dedicating a book about the death of a god and how to explore extremely dangerous ruins to your daughter.

I put the book back and stepped away. The previous two books were on topic, but if I had already read three books of dodgy authenticity. It was probably best that I stopped.

I walked over to the window I came in from with my lamp. Sitting calmy on the window as a bloodied handprint.

“Yeah, I thought as much.”

I walked back and set the lamp down turning a nob to extinguish it. not like anyone could tell whether I used it or not.

Trying to make best of the moment I went back to the window and decided to climb down one handed. Another bad decision I was sure, but the servants might just think I never left.

Once back on solid ground I was about to return to my annex. The wonderful trail behind me was a great reason not to however and I decided to sleep in the shed.

Camping out would require supplies from the shed anyway, but then again, I could be leading them to the shed…

I decided to sleep in the storage shed anyway.