The air screamed with tearing scripture. Pages fred into the horizon, infinite yet fractured, each verse jagged like shards of gss. They flickered with brilliance, not whole, but broken half-truths, riddles without endings, revetions without context.

  And the human mind, starved for patterns, hungered.

  Lea’s skull burned. The words weren’t coherent, yet she wanted to piece them together, needed to, as if one more phrase, one more verse, might grant her something real.

  Her lips trembled, her throat dry, whispering scraps she didn’t even understand.

  "…north… sea… will of…"

  She clutched her head, nails digging into her scalp... If I just listen harder… if I just—

  No. No, it was wrong!!

  Every phrase promised completion, but none delivered. Each half-truth tore at her thoughts, splitting them into jagged fragments. She felt herself spiraling into that hunger, craving an answer that did not exist.

  The smoke roared.

  "Miss Mashhith" swelled in defiance, bck vapors thrashing like a wound made flesh. Its presence pressed against the fractured brilliance, unbeing cshing with half-being.

  For a moment, the Tome's words stuttered, pages fluttering out of sync, jagged sylbles cut short.

  Then— like a hand grown bored of a toy— "Miss Mashhith" withdrew.

  No struggle. No defeat.

  It simply peeled itself from the world, leaving nothing behind but the ache of its absence.

  Lea gasped as the wrongness left her, only to be consumed again by the gnawing brilliance. Her sword cttered from her grip.

  She stared into the radiant horizon, her body trembling, her mind whispering... I need to know…

  A hand seized her shoulder. Auger grabbed her, snapping her out of the trance.

  "Do not listen.", His voice cut like a bde, cold and sharp.

  "I… I can still—", her words caught on the compulsion.

  She wanted to turn back, to cw at the pages with her bare hands, to drag the answers out.

  Auger's face was grim, stripped of amusement. He hauled her into his arms without ceremony, "If you listen, you are already lost. Even I cannot bear this for long."

  Her fists struck weakly against his coat, her hateful gaze directed at the one who had summoned a god, "We—we can't just leave! He's right there! I almost—"

  "You will die!!", Auger snapped, lightning crackling faintly along his cane, warding off the gnashing sylbles cwing at the air, "That is not truth. That is hunger given form. It will devour you, thought by thought, until there’s nothing left but a husk that needs more."

  Lea's gaze darted back.

  She saw Dickenson beneath the radiance, mask cracked, body convulsing. His ughter and screams twisted together, his voice mangled into senseless repetition, "Almost… almost… almost…"

  The pages above writhed, feeding him riddles and endings that never came. And still, he reached up with trembling arms, desperate for more. Even forgetting his dedication to The Maker...

  Lea’s heart twisted.

  They were running. Not victorious, not even alive by choice— just escaping, while the light of half-truths tore souls apart. The people on the fairground were driven insane once by the curses of The Maker, then another by the Tome of Light's ravings. And the thousands of innocents in the city.

  Bitter tears burned her eyes as Auger carried her through the colpsing byrinth. She was too weak, too weak to do anything...

  "I hate this...", she whispered, her voice shaking. Not at Auger, not at the God of Light.

  At herself. For almost wanting the lies, for not being strong enough to even resist.

  Auger said nothing. His jaw was set, his eyes forward. But his grip on her tightened, as if he knew just how close she had been to falling.

  As they retreat far from the city, she sees the wood around Dickenson wraps around him, then yers of illusions hiding him away from sight... he had escaped.

  It was bitter, extremely bitter...

  She could only watch as screams echoed from the city she almost called home...

  That day, Lea vanished from Ein...

  =0=0=

  The days after were not counted in hours, but in screams.

  Ein, once spoken of as a refuge, a city of order beneath the Three Rings' watch, staggered under the weight of madness.

  Whole families vanished overnight. Some were found wandering the outer fields days ter, their clothes torn, eyes hollow, muttering fragments of half-sentences like cracked records.

  Others were never found at all, lost to alleys that should not have existed, swallowed by illusions that had no reason to linger once Dickenson fled.

  Those who remained behind fared little better.

  The fairground was a graveyard of broken minds. Men cwed at their faces until blood slicked their hands. Women tore apart their homes searching for words that were never there. Children whispered verses to invisible companions, smiling as if told a secret no one else deserved to know.

  It took days to clear them, days of priests and hunters dragging the raving masses into quarantine halls, days of holy water and rites of severance, days of silence when even the churches did not know whether to call what happened a curse or a revetion.

  Even then, it wasn't enough.

  Madness clung like oil.

  Some were too far gone, their sanity eaten away by riddles that had no answers. They sat, rocking and ughing softly to themselves, waiting for lines that would never finish. Others grew violent, turning on neighbors, screaming that the truth was hiding in their flesh.

  Bodies piled.

  Prayers faltered.

  And with each passing day, Ein's reputation crumbled.

  Merchants spoke in hushed tones of the night the fairground fell. Travelers carried the tales beyond the borders that Ein, city of the Three Rings, had been touched by something even its guardians could not control.

  The churches themselves could not hide it.

  They had to call aid from outside orders, from holy institutions sworn to gods Ein had long distanced itself from. Especially the madmen from the Church of Sacrifice, their knowledge and soothing were better than anything the Church of the Three Rings could do.

  Cleansing fires burned bright in the city squares, incense choking the streets as entire districts were ritually purified.

  But the whispers remained.

  Ein, the safe haven of faith, was no longer safe.

  People began leaving in caravans, their trust shattered. And those who stayed did so not out of faith, but because they had nowhere else to go.

  The name of the Tome of Light was never spoken aloud, not officially. But everyone knew.

  They spoke of it in taverns and temples, in voices low and trembling... a god of half-truths had bared its pages upon them, and left the city bleeding madness.

  It was a breach of mysticism, one that can only be barely controlled.

  Ein staggered on, but its shadow stretched long.

  The fairground never reopened.

  The city never healed.

  And the church's dream of safety, of order… was broken, its cracks id bare for all to see...

  Underneath the Rue Cathedral, Owen and Bishop Rudiger stare at the broken statues of The Three Rings. The might of a true god was too much for these pale imitations to protect against.

  "We have to comply with the government's demands of letting the other churches take root in this city...", Own tightened his grip; there was no bigger humiliation than this, "How could we expect the appearance of that accursed book?!"

  Archon said nothing for a while, his face grim and solemn, "The Tome of Light is more of a natural disaster than a god... There is nothing we could've done... with the situation of the time..."

  "It is our negligence that the situation got out of hand. The culprit who controlled that puppet got away without any consequences.", he turned his back, "Keep the Abyss Hunters here under control, and do your duty as captain, Owen."

  Owen could only nod...

  In the desote streets of Ein, Andre finally had time to wander around. The first pce he came to was Lea's pce.

  She was one of the countless missing people, but some Abyss Hunters who survived said a masked Pathstrider with descriptions that fit her body type closely, and wielding a parasol with a hidden sword. It had to be Lea.

  The st report about her was her charging into the tent to confront the mastermind, along with an old gentleman.

  She might have perished based on the situation, but Andre wanted to believe his junior is still alive. There was no corpse, after all.

  "I pray for the Lord to protect your every step."

  Rhaps