“The crisp smell of a book that had shared many tales always lures the strangest of companions.” - Iye Sekt - Historian of the First People

Footsteps echoed through halls long forgotten, trespassing in a sacred site of worship. His uncovered feet grazing the wet stone floors, rushing to the end of a hallway decorated with intricate carvings. One depicted a root, embracing what seemed to be a shard of massive proportions, another showed what seemed to be cloth- tearing in two.

The bearded man came to a stop as he found what he was looking for, a circular door nestled betwixt thick vines and leaves. In the centre of it lay a detailed map of the known world- no, even more than what had already been discovered. A crooked finger emerged from the man’s cloak and came to rest on the place on the map in which the ruin was situated, he dug deeper into the stone until it began to pull. Blood from his finger began to spiral around the door eventually pooling into seventeen different wells.

The man pulled out a folded piece of paper and began unfurling it to reveal a complex pattern with a similar seventeen key points highlighted, he set the paper down in front of the door and began melding the blood spirals on the door to match those of the paper. When the copying was finished, he leaned into the door and uttered a few breathy words before finally stepping back.

The paper set alight and imploded into itself and then floating back to the ground as granules of ash. The man didn’t even bat an eye, for something far more important was occurring mere paces in front of him. The blood that was trapped in the door began to glow, as it did the same pattern began to surface on the man’s skin making scars from his neck to his ankles. Once the door had bonded with him he stepped forward and carefully placed his hand on the centrepiece.

The door obeyed his will and separated into twelve distinct pieces before retreating back into the walls opening the way for the man. He tiptoed towards the threshold before finally crossing it and finding himself in a much larger room than the one before. There was no braziers but the room was still lit in an eerily blue light. The man walked to the middle of the room and grasped onto a pedestal, on it was another pattern that was different from the one he had just encountered.

He reached out his hand, placing it on the pedestal. On his arm, one part of the pattern glowed. It seemed that this pattern was only an extract of the larger one, a piece of the greater puzzle. Not unlike the door the pedestal began to pull, dragging blood away from the man. As it did a blue tinted essence began to seep through the floor and begin to form into multiple different shapes. The man willed more blood out of his arm, causing the shapes to form faster into more complex and far more detailed pieces of artwork. The room was even brighter now and the dark recesses of the ruin that were completely hidden to the eye were now revealed, showing elaborate architecture that boasted balconies and outcrops that overlooked the room. Running up the wall were serpentine-like figures that crested at the roof and coalesced into one single figure that seemed to endlessly extend like a fractal.

“This cannot be, this is not how I imagined it.”

The man struggled to keep away tears as he forced himself to look at the still-forming shape in front of him.

“The only thing I’ve learnt is that I know nothing at all!”

The shape formed into a face for a brief moment, looked down at him almost with remorse before forming into an entirely different beast. What it showed the man was beyond comprehension, countless points with lines to connect them all.

“What is this? A map? I don’t know where to begin! At least show me where to start.”

The man began to cough up blood, his time had run out. He looked up in desperation as he tried to commit everything he was being showed to memory. Finally he collapsed, slumping of the pedestal. The face then reappeared once again looking down at him.

“It is not your place to know. At least not yet.”

“Even after all the gifts bestowed upon you, your kind is still unable to even fathom the beginnings of the thread in which we place ourselves on.”

The face looked upwards, though the sky was blocked by a mountain of dirt and stone the face looked towards the stars.

“♪ Oh Envious One, strike me down so that I may understand your plight. My child, my child I have forsaken thee.

Grasp unto my lie and tear me apart, reach into my core and birth me anew. In your endless infancy I offer you my heart.

But I wrought jealousy upon this cradle, thrust myself upon what you held dear so that i could bathe in you once more. ♪”

The tune that the face sung echoed throughout the entire mountain, continuing on through the mountain range. Birds disturbed from their slumber flocked to a safe place, animals prowling through the forests perked their ears to listen to the hollow tune. The sorrow of its singer forced sadness among those who heard it.

“And now I must atone for my sins, as you once did for me.”