Another day to live. Another day wasted.
Maybe I'll die tomorrow. Maybe not.
But such is fate, isn't it? Twisted and cruel like a game that never ends until the battery runs out.
I was lying in my bed, looking up at the ceiling with an empty gaze. The only sound that can be heard is the sound of a French television show that I forgot to turn off.
I turn my head towards the coffee table, the hot coffee that I had brewed 2 hours earlier has begun to lose its warmth. Beside the coffee mug, sat a familiar book — yes, there it is. The Gospel of Nyx. The very book that defied my belief as a scientist.
In my 6 years of researching about time, space and matter, never would I imagine to have stumbled upon a power so.. mystic, majestic, yet foreign. The ancient language within it, the power that can be forged by truth seekers.. It's the key to all mysteries.
On top of the book is a feather, not just any feather, it's a quill — Mnemosyne's Quill, which I use to write inside the book with my own blood. One shudders to imagine how painful this path is. Not because of the bleeding, but for the madness it had cost me. This is the price the bloody bastards pay.
I got up from the bed and reached for the gospel. As my hand was about to touch it, the pages glowed dimly — it's hungry, dying of thirst, and it wants blood. Because once you feed it, the book doesn't see you as its master, but as its slave, its feeder.
"Damned book. I would die to see you burn."
I grab the book, and flips through the pages, notes that I intentionally added inside of it were gone. Again. It seems that this book feeds not only on the human blood, but also knowledge.
"What kind of creation are you?"
I've tried everything I can since I became the not so proud owner of this book. I tried to set it on fire, tearing its pages, and buried it in the dirt. Yet.. all are futile, when I wake up, it returns by my side — closer than a lover, patient like a corpse waiting to be filled again.
Suddenly, there's a knock on the door.
Knock. Knock.
I set the gospel down on the table and went to open the door. As I opened it, I saw a familiar silhouette, and I had no doubt who it might be.
My prediction was confirmed when I fully opened the door to see a man in a long white robe. The robe reached the ground as the man stood still while facing me.
"Old man"
I said casually, the man isn't bothered in the slightest by my provocation. Instead, I look in his eyes, his gaze landing on something inside my small apartment. The book, of course it's the book.
"You've yet to break free from its shackles. The gospel doesn't see you as its master, yet it clings to you like a life support. Frienzi Escoffier."
He said with a low deep tone. He then proceeded to push right past me, directly intruding on my apartment. But instead of resisting, I followed closely behind him. The man stopped in front of the table where the Gospel of Nyx is resting. He outstretched his right arm to touch it, as a faint glow of golden energy radiates from it — he is purifying it.
After some time, the glow faded away, the old man put away his hand at his side. He shakes his head.
"You're in a stroke of bad luck. The spirit inside this gospel.. it's not a common one. It's one which has been used by people before you."
I didn't quite understand what the old man was saying, but whatever it meant, I know that even if I hide across another multiverse, the book will continue to haunt me.
— End of chapter.