(Alt Title: "So I Got a Cult Meeting, a Forbidden Book, and Then I Glitched Out of Reality. Cool.")
They don't bow.They don't worship.
They watch me.Like scientists dissecting a bomb that might blink.
White robes. Gold-threaded belts. Hands marked with constellations I've never seen.
And then—one of them speaks.
"You carry the Eye."
I exhale, steady.
"Yeah. It came as a bonus with insomnia and glowing wounds. You are?"
"Archivists. Preservers of a truth erased."
The wind shifts.
The sheep stands silently beside me. For once.
One of them steps forward.
A woman. Her voice is cold, but sad.
She holds something in her hands.
A book.Leather. Ancient. Familiar.
Identical to the one that appeared in my home.
She hands it to me.
"We've found six like this. In temples, tombs, broken libraries. All identical. All addressed… to the one with the Eye."
"You think I'm some prophecy?"
"No. We think you're a result."
She opens the book.Inside: drawings, maps, chemical diagrams, divine runes.
And this sentence, inked in red:
"When the gods and demons united to kill one of their own, the world remembered fear."
"Who?" I ask.
"We do not know his name. Only that he was called—"
They all say it together:
"—the Demon of Science."
My head spins.
"Wait… science? That's what you're afraid of?"
"Not science," the woman whispers."The application of it. To death. To memory. To divinity. He wasn't worshipped. He was understood. And that terrified them."
I flip the page.There's a sketch. A symbol.
A hand holding a shattered ring.
Something burns behind my eyes.
"Who drew this?" I whisper.
"No one living."
The air distorts.
The ground blurs.
Something... pulls.
"I don't feel so—"
The sheep looks up.
"Uh-oh."
Then—
The world fractures.
My body goes static, like a signal jammed between timelines.
The book drops from my hand.
I disappear.
No light. No sound. No spell.
I'm just gone.
The cult stares at the empty space.
The woman picks up the book, opens the page that fell open.
A single line:
You are not the first to forget who you were.