Makun paused and rubbed his temples. His half-opened third eye throbbed with every sentence, a dull, steady ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. So reality is just broken pieces of something whole? He kept reading.
The first fragments became the Primordial Entities, beings of pure thought and will that exist in the deepest layers of The Deep. They remember what they were. They hunger to return.
The second wave became the Hollow dwellers: demons, djinn, forgotten gods. They forgot the Source but sense its absence like a wound.
The third became spirits, ancestors, elementals, lesser entities. They have no memory of the Source, only an instinct to seek higher realms.
And the final fragments became flesh. Humans. The densest form. The furthest fall. The deepest separation from the Source.
Makun's jaw tightened. We're the bottom. The most disconnected.
But that didn't add up. If humans were at the bottom, how did Zack have that kind of power? What about the veiled woman, or even Zuri, who could see things ordinary people couldn't?
He sank deep into thought. Was the presence a Primordial Entity, then? Or a Hollow dweller? How far do I have to grow to pay her debt? What did she mean by climb? What am I supposed to aim for? Then he noticed something uncomfortable: the more the book told him, the less he seemed to know. He needed more.
He turned the page, and new text bled onto the paper, the ink looking fresh against the yellowed page.
THE REMEMBERING
In ancient times, before empires, before cities, before recorded history, there were those who remembered. Through meditation, ritual and sacrifice, they thinned the barrier between flesh and spirit. They touched The Deep, communed with entities and walked the layers of reality, and in doing so they reconnected with the Source. This was the birth of mysticism.
Knowledge spread. Tribes became kingdoms, and shamans became priests. Power flowed to those who understood the truth: reality is negotiable. They shaped fate, commanded spirits, and built empires on spiritual foundations.
Reality is negotiable. That was what the veiled woman had done, what Zack had tried to do, what the presence had shown him when she broke his chain. They weren't following reality's rules. They were rewriting them.
He read on, eager now, and the next section made his stomach drop.
THE SUPPRESSION
But power breeds fear. The first Ascendants, those who climbed highest toward the Source, realized a terrible truth: if everyone could reach mysticism, no one could be controlled. And so they conspired.
Between the 16th and 18th centuries, a coalition of Enlightened and Grand-tier mystics enacted the greatest ritual in human history. They constructed The Veil: a spiritual barrier separating the Physical Realm from The Deep, a filter that left 95% of humanity blind to spiritual reality.
They called it the Age of Enlightenment. Rational thought replaced spiritual knowing. Science dismissed mysticism as superstition. Religions became institutions of control rather than paths to the Source. The masses were severed from their birthright.
Makun felt cold. Everyone chained to their nine-to-five jobs, everyone numbed by social media, all the wars around the world: all of it had a deeper meaning. Was the fake news real after all? Were the conspiracies true? They did this on purpose. They blinded us on purpose. His hands trembled slightly as he read on.
The ruling families, bloodlines of the mystics who orchestrated the Veil's construction, hoarded what remained. Knowledge became currency. Power became inheritance. Wars were waged to control spiritual anchors. Economies were manipulated through probability mystics. Governments were puppeted by Elite and Master-tier operatives.
The world you see, the poverty, the conflicts, the chaos, is not random. It is design. War is harvest time. Poverty is control. Entertainment is sedation. And those who profit from this design will kill to protect it.
Makun was completely absorbed now, and with every line he understood more about the world and how invaluable this book truly was. Everything made sense through this lens: twenty-three years of bad luck, his constant failures, the feeling that the world was rigged against him. It had been rigged, actually rigged, by design, by people who wanted to keep him and everyone like him blind, weak and powerless.
War is harvest time. For a moment the words snagged on something in him, on the voice in the dark and the old man's talk of farming, and he almost followed the thought. Then he let it go. That was about wars and nations, not about one man with bad luck.
He tried to turn to the next page. His fingers caught the corner and began to lift it, but the page wouldn't move. It felt glued, as if the book itself were resisting. He pulled harder, and nothing happened, except that the throb in his third eye sharpened into a pain that lanced through his forehead.
Then he remembered the note at the beginning. Without certain aptitudes, you will not be able to understand what is written in this book. Some chapters will not even be able to be read by you.
He hadn't known it, but the book fed on spiritual energy, the same energy he had been spending all night to see the particles, follow the pull to the market and read these pages. He had been draining himself without realizing it, and now he was empty.
The exhaustion hit all at once. His vision blurred, the words swam together, and his head felt too heavy for his neck. The book slipped from his fingers and thudded onto the floor beside the mattress. He tried to reach for it, but his arm wouldn't obey. His body was forcing him to rest.
It was seven in the morning, and dawn light filtered through the cracked window, painting the shabby room in gray and gold. His eyes closed, and he was asleep before his head reached the pillow.
The book lay open on the floor. Its pages glowed faintly for a moment, then went dark.