The Grimoire pulsed faintly under my arm as I stepped into the dying night.
I didn't dare open it again — not yet.
Not without preparation.
I wasn't Ethan Voss, the academic fool who stumbled into forbidden rites out of morbid curiosity.
I was Raj.
And I understood one thing better than anyone else:
Power without preparation was suicide.
Finding an old satchel hanging by the broken door, I carefully wrapped the Grimoire in tattered cloth and stored it deep inside.
Later, when I had time to study it properly — when I had weapons at hand — I would return to its secrets.
Not before.
The house groaned as I left, the broken spirits inside watching silently, their pale forms receding into the dark.
Let them.
I had bigger questions to answer.
The walk back to my house was long and silent.
No cars on the roads.
No buzzing of neon lights or distant hum of cities.
Only the whisper of the wind and the distant cries of unseen beasts across the blackened fields.
The town — Ravendale, as some half-remembered scrap told me — was dying.
Or perhaps it had already died, and the corpses simply hadn't noticed yet.
My home stood at the edge of town: a crooked little building swallowed by ivy and shadow.
I lived alone here, apparently — Ethan had been reclusive, obsessed with his work.
A convenient arrangement.
No family to question me.
No friends to notice the change.
Perfect.
Inside, the house smelled of dust and forgotten lives.
Old books lined every wall.
Journals lay scattered across the floorboards like fallen leaves.
I set the satchel on a heavy oak table in the center of the room and collapsed into the nearest chair.
For the first time since awakening in this stolen body, I let myself think.
Really think.
I was Raj.
But who had Raj been?
Fragments floated through my mind — broken pieces of another life:
The sand-swept streets of Sahara desert.
Ancient tombs hidden beneath desert dunes.
Nights spent chasing whispers of forbidden knowledge.
The hunger for more, always more
Then I Died Mysteriously.
I shuddered.
No... it had gone right, in a twisted way.
Raj had perished, but not into oblivion.
Instead, I had slipped through the cracks, finding a hollow vessel waiting for me.
Ethan Blackwood: dead at the wrong time, in the wrong place.
A perfect door left ajar.
But something else gnawed at me, something larger.
This world.
The night outside the cracked window felt wrong in ways I couldn't fully name.
The air was heavier.
The stars — unfamiliar constellations swirling in alien patterns.
This wasn't Earth.
This wasn't any Earth I knew.
Sifting through Ethan's shattered memories, I pieced it together slowly, painfully.
Here, the world was called Veyrith.
A world eerily similar to Earth, but not the same.
Civilizations rose and fell here, driven by science, politics — and secrets buried far deeper.
Ghosts, demons, monsters — they existed.
Real.
Dangerous.
But hidden carefully from public eyes, concealed behind layers of lies and carefully maintained ignorance.
The Veil Protocols, Ethan's memory whispered — an ancient, global agreement among the powerful to keep the supernatural unseen.
To keep humanity blind.
Yet under that thin skin of normalcy, Veyrith seethed with things that hunted in the dark.
Sorcerers called Veilbreakers.
Organizations of hunters and scholars.
Secret cults worshipping ancient beings.
A world where knowledge was deadly, and power even more so.
And now...
I was a part of it.
I leaned back in the chair, staring up at the rotten ceiling.
A slow, bitter grin crept onto my face.
In a strange way, it was perfect.
Veyrith was a world made for people like me — seekers, survivors, predators cloaked in scholar's robes.
And I had no intention of playing by its rules.
The Grimoire throbbed faintly in the satchel, sensing my thoughts.
Waiting.
Soon.
When I was ready.
But first — understanding.
Preparation.
Power.
Veyrith would not forgive fools.
And I had no plans to die a second time.