"Impossible," I whispered.
But I knew.
It was the first time.
my thoughts have killed the man before me, not metaphorically but in reality
the first time thinking had made it to reality.
.
.
.In the passing of time—
In that one, brief, awe-shattering realization...
"Shaahhh..."
Tight. My chest—tight. Too tight. My breathing grows heavier, deeper. Familiar. Too familiar.
"I've been like this before..."No. Not now. No. No. No.
But each second of it feels just like the first time—Dragging. Crushing. Confusing.
My fingers go numb. Pins and needles crawl up my arms like spiders with barbed legs. My back bends with weight I can't see. My chest pulls me down. No—it pushes. It pulls. It's—Everything.
I can't breathe.
Focus. In. Out. I—I can't—
I try to anchor myself. Try to find anything—a crack in the wall, a breath of clean air. But my eyes betray me.
All I see...is my reflection—in the bloodied floor, slick with guts and gore.
Is my heart beating too fast? Or did it stop completely?
Why can't I remember how to stand?
Turn away. Turn away! But I can't.
There it is—Screaming. Ripping. The panic. The desperation. The word I fear most:
DEATH.
MURDERER!
BLOOD!
WHERE AM I?!
WHAT HAVE I DONE?!----
[???] "We need to do something."
My hands move before I even think—swift, automatic—searching through the tarots I prepared in panic, but with purpose.
Because in this world, magic is not chanted, nor cast with wands. It is summoned with thought. It becomes through belief.
Fingers tremble over cardstock, worn and torn from my time I used to serve his High Pontifex
-I draw.
And there—Water into Ice, A power supposedly from nature...
"In my thought I see, the memory of how versatile is water, how it burns and boils, and in the same dignity and degree, sealing even the depths of the sea, and with those thoughts came reality, a manifestation of borrowed imagination"...
-----My hands grew tighter, colder... COLDER???
"what more can happen, HOW worse can it be??"
THERE MY HANDS EMBEDDED ON THE BLOODIED FLOOR FROZEN, Literally...
and in all this confusion, the fight between my thoughts and-
[???]*Gibberish
One thought masked the others
The one of Authority, the reason, the cause why I stand on this situation
Author... AUTHOR!!!----
*FWUMMM
My hands—suddenly free.
Everything around me faded to a pale, washed-out gray. No sound followed, only a silence so absolute, it made the world feel hollow. Not quiet—vacant. A silence that pressed against the inside of my ears until even my heartbeat sounded distant.
I was still there, still in that same blood-drenched room. But something was off. It felt like I'd been ripped out of myself.
Astral Projection?, or Some sort of Divination, Is this my Spirit my Soul?
Below me, I saw my own body—still, frozen in place. No movement.
No breath.
No life.
Everything locked in a moment like a diorama behind glass. Unmoving.
Staged.
as if a video paused deliberately
or at least I thought
I clenched my fist. It still responded. I still had control—at least here, wherever this was.
"I don't know what's coming," I muttered, "but ever since you pulled me into this world, I've been drowning in despair."
Something twisted in my gut. That familiar name. The one I didn't want to say. I hesitated, like speaking it was an offense to something above comprehension.
But I couldn't hold it in.
"Author..."
It barely escaped my mouth. A whisper.
Then louder. Fiercer.
"AUTHOR!!!"
The name echoed—but not through the room. Through me.
With some hopes of maybe, maybe this exalted power would grant audience—a mere me.
Eyes twitching. Unnerving. Staring. Not mine, but of some entity.
It was there. Everywhere. Hiding—No, as if blending.
Like how rain is visible but every drop is not seen, or how the sand can be admired but is uncountable.
It was there...
It was looking at me...
Then a whisper—as if from the grinning mouth of something inhuman, something sinister:
{R..Y....L....E....E....}
Each letter sent shivers down every pili of my skin, and my muscle perched like a needle from some traditional acupuncture.
"FEAR"
The only feeling I could Muster.
.
{WHERE EXACTLY AM I}
"WHERE EXACTLY AM I"
.
{HOW_}
"HOW_"
.
Then it came.
Not a voice. Not a sound. A presence—older than sentence, louder than silence.
{None you think aren't written. Your thoughts—unrecorded, Your life—scripted.}
{I. see. you.}
{I am now your Author. Your Weaver. Your Writer.}
The air around me grew heavy, as if the laws of existence themselves bent under the weight of a quill scratching against the parchment of reality.
It wasn't language—it was truth, invading every corner of my soul.
{I know what you seek.}
{Understanding. Explanation. Meaning.}
{Pathetic. Fleeting.}
{Most Miniscule of things. of the fraction tenths of what I can-
However
I am not benevolent of nature}
A smirk, a grin invisible, yet undeniable.
It grinned behind the fabric of the void, behind every line of fate already written.
"All that is purchased... comes with payment.And all tolls must bebled."
"Does thine child wish for such contracts?"
The question didn't offer choice. It offered consequence.
Behind it: the scent of inked destiny, the rust of chains, the weight of a thousand unwritten tomes.
This was not a deal unwritten,
rather some prophecy waiting to be spoken...
those were his words, far different from before now drenched in tones of bitterness, of malice and maleficence
"YE-"
Before I could finish some utterance of words, as if it was already an answer tailored, the room vanished, blinked into oblivion
and there I was again in that familiar setting inmy dream
Five Seats towering, lined neatly, engraved with decorations, flourished in some sigils of unknown divination, and at the center is theTABLE OF ILLUSIONS...
"A memory."
No... more like imagery—as if I were trapped inside some ultra-fine, hyperreal 3D realm. Not merely watching...Living.
I saw it all—the history of answers.
But it wasn't subtle. It was forced.
And with every fleeting thought, I never realized...
Not until it was too late.
There was no warning. No cue. These weren't memories played—they were written. Not with ink. Not with pen. But with iron, dipped in blood. And not on paper, or parchment...
On my skin.
Crkk... Crkk...
Each letter carved its way through me.
Pain—unimaginable. Incomprehensible.
"Nngh—!"... NGRAHH!!!!!!!!!
I wanted to scream. Iwanted to cry.
But it kept going.
Crkk... Crkk...
Each stroke sank deeper—scraping past flesh, etching meaning into my soul.
Crkk... Crkk...
And the only rest I had was that space of every letter
"Gh—ghh... haah—"
I could feel it now—this wasn't recollection. It was punishment. It was torture in the shape of truth. A script etched into my being.
And I...I was the page of its satisfaction
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simultaneously Down there in my body, who's supposedly frozen in time, in that Blood stained Manor of House Kappel, brews terror in the minds of those Unknown visitor...
-{ Celestine Hodges : WITNESS spectra[blue]
used to be a direct "CONFESSOR" of the High Pontifex ,currently an officer of the Ministry}-
Master Hodges, apologies for the delay... I mean—who would've thought that tip from [???] about House Kappel actually moving on the Kholers would be real? It sounded like—"
He didn't get to finish.
his expression shifted that from doubt and fear that his officer would scold him from tardy or lazy, to un utter disbelief
The words caught—mid-sentence, mid-breath—as his eyes locked onto the scene before him. The smug uncertainty in his voice twisted into somethingraw.
Something like horror.
His face drained. His knees buckled slightly.
"G-wekkk..."
He doubled over, retching violently to the side.
"S-sorry, Master... I—I couldn't help myself..."
One by one, the others behind him entered.
And one by one... they followed. Six Seekers. Hardened, trained, tested.
But not for this.
Eyes widened. Hands trembled. Not a word could soften what they saw.
Afterall who's mind wouldn't be shattered, in the mere image of a room
not just filled-
but painted with blood
as it dripped from the heights of the ceiling to the floors below...
and bodies were dismembered, some burned and churned in an assorted manner,-
as if it was some art piece of a psycho, carnage of a cold blooded murderer
Along the grooves of the darkened hall, showed signs of confrontation, some slash and some ushers of spells invoked
but many can't disagree
it was no fight
It was a MASSACRE
And at the center of it all...
A figure stood. No—not stood. Remained.
A man once called Lord. Stein Kappel, master of this manor—now reduced to a grotesque effigy. His body was impaled, riddled with tens of dozens of thin, deliberate blades Not the rage of war. The precision of execution.
A pitiful sight... for a man of his legend.
And across from him, lower to the floor—another figure.
Kneeling. Bound by frost that clung to his wrists like manacles. Arms locked in a posture of restraint—or surrender? But his face...
Unmoving. Pale. Cold.
Eyes open—not in panic, not in pain, but in quiet awareness. As if he had been waiting for this moment. As if he knew they'd come.
Nicaisse Kholer. Fourth of House Kholer. Alive... but still as death. And staring directly at the intruding Seekers.
He didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
Because everything around him already had.
The rumors were true.And he was not feared because of hisname.
He was feared because of what he do...
.
.
.
In Celestine's mind, a sliver of relief clung like mist—She had acted quickly. Fast enough to prevent something far worse than what was already painted inside that cursed manor.
One of the younger Witnesses—barely past his Seeker trials—mustered the courage to ask:
"But... if he was capable of that, how did you manage to restrain him?" "And without even a fight?"
Celestine paused.
Her words didn't come easily. Not because she lacked the truth—But because how do you name what defies sense?
"He was..." she hesitated, searching. "Gone. Not fully there. Delusional." "Like his mind had fractured open."
Her voice grew colder. "The Authors must be favoring us. Had he fallen any deeper into madness... he would have become a Horror." "And that—"she exhaled, "would've made the previous Pontifex Incident look... merciful."
The young Witness blinked. "Horror?" he echoed, confused.
Another, older Witness, scoffed gently. "He's new. Barely awakened. Forgive him."
"Experience," he said, "precedes understanding."
He turned to the lad. "Let me simplify."
"In this world, we don't chant incantations or wave wands. Magic is thought. Imagination made tangible."
Well to put it simply, People like us who are granted the power of "Seeing" can conjure or manifest our imaginations into reality right?
of course, the strength of one's "Sight" Vary from person to person...
"Some of us—like the Seekers—can barely imagine color or texture., much less to conjure.. these are mere students. helpless. learning.
Some can see it more clearer but requires some sort of external stimuli, like an instruction of how to imagine something, from color, to shape and texture —
before we use common day objects or things of nature like rain, fire, thunder, or wind as they grow, some imprint their thoughts into Artifacts—cards, relics, charms that help them remember the shapes of their minds. like Cards that contain the image of their spell of choice, some uses manifest, that describes the change they wanted to form...
"Witnesses," he gestured around them, "like you and I, have crossed that threshold. We don't just see—we shape.
Far beyond that, people eventually learned how to memorize their imaginations, these people are the ones that helped in revolutionizing the use and creation of Artifacts, people who can create tools that help the person envision their Imagination through external help
"Artiste— they stand at the top of the Mastery, but."
"Then there are the Visionaries." His voice lowered, reverent.
the Prodigies of this world
"They don't just imagine. They remember what never was. Command spells like instincts. Houses like Kholer, or the old Kappel line—countless spells are embedded into their thoughts, as if some Arsenal for war"
other than the strength of their mental imagination, we also grade this people based on the strength of the imagination itself that they manifest, after all it is easy to imagine a simple fire in every aspect and manner, but imagining that fire turning into lighting requires far more control
we grade them in similar manner of the VISIBLE LIGHT SPECTRUM, or simply called their spectra.
Red < Orange < Yellow < Green < Blue < Purple < Violet < [???]
Red being the lowest and Violet the strongest
Spells grow exponentially from these scales,
"Red is simple utility—heat, light, movement. Violet?""Violet bends war, carves reality, ends legacies."
Celestine stepped back into the conversation, solemn.
"What happens when someone like that breaks?"
perchance let say
Had their Mind Broken Loose? become Psychotic,
"DELUSIONAL"
The young Witness frowned. "Do they lose their power? Or... misfire?"
"No." Her voice was final.
"They become HORRORS"
"The mind, unchained from reason, spirals into blood-born delusions. And their magic? It no longer reshapes the world."
"It reshapes them."
Such creature knows no bounds and does not held back,
as if telling a story, brief but precise
There in the Southern Lands...
"A single Seeker—barely Red—once became a Horror and tore down a border citadel."
"Now imagine someone like Nicaisse Kholer."
"A Visionary."
"What abomination would the world birth... if he turned?"
Silence followed.
Even the walls of the manor, stained and wounded, seemed to shiver at the thought.
BOO!!!
a playful joke to disperse the tension, Afterall as their superior, keeping morale is Her obligation
WAHHH!!!,The young Witness shouted in fright, as if a ghost had passed through her...
"Don't worry, it may be Possible but, still Visionaries, won't be visionaries if they hadn't had strong will, wouldn't they?" Hodges added...
But deeper in his mind, a thought lingers, but what if it does? .... ....
And yet, despite Her, feeble attempts of diffusing the tension—
*GRAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
"GRAHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The silence shattered. A guttural cry—raw, ragged, inhuman—erupted from the once-still body of Nicaisse Kholer.
It wasn't pain alone. It was despair. Existential, soul-deep, cosmic despair.
And then—light.
Not golden, nor warm. But pale. Cold. Wrong.
It spilled across the manor's corridors like ink spilled in reverse, crawling over walls that had long forgotten illumination. Light not divine—But dissecting.
The shadows fled, not in fear... but as if commanded.
And there, in the wake of it—
Sigils.
Words.
Incantations.
Images as if scriptures formed, some in circle some in pentagon, some are like stars pointed, nevertheless—it wasn't illusion...
but what's undeniable
was the source of it all
the body of Nicaisse Kholer,
who was bathing in the blood of Kappel, now bleeding on its own, from head to toe not an inch or crevice was spared...as these aforementioned scriptures, write—No Tore—to his very skin to his very soul...
as if some Unknown entity was etching and writing, with his blood at its ink and his flesh as the paper...
Finally one thought surrounded my inner thought, Celestine whispered to herself
Did I fail?, is he really gonna turn into a horror? as those thoughts wake her trembling mind, a flash of memory, trauma emerge of how She was once the witness of a horror the emerged...
—In response, I gathered myself and hardened my nerves, I prepare my tarot, my strongest spell, a spell that would turn the air into a several degrees below, this unlike a typical frost-attribute spell, rather than to bind, is supposed to tear the flesh apart, I got it once from a sketchy merchant, apparently He called it, Blizzard...
And so with that said I ready my Thoughts, Imagined the air blowing colder and colder, preparing to Manifest, lest Nicaisse really turned himself into a horror—
But then someone stopped me, A voice, Unfamiliar, not one of my men, but someone else...
there where four of them, one tapped me on the shoulder
"Thats enough, it's alright, Nicaisse Kholer, is not gonna turn into a horror"
and what's your basis? I replied"—turning around to finally realize
we weren't the only one's who caught wind of the Kappel's Action... apparently
The Confessors, from the First Seeker's Cathedral, under the Command of his High Pontifex
a religious organization, prominent here in the north, claiming to be establish by the first seekers to worship the guidance of the Authors, also my first Home...
One of the confessors shouted: "it is indeed what we think it is"
are they saying its a—
STIGMATA, The other Confessors aid.
"Do not intervene, this is the work of The Authors, it is their will, and in their will, we shall follow— all that commits blasphemy shall eternally burn"
...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INSIDE THE TABLE OF ILLUSIONS
The pain—indescribable. Not of flesh, but of thought. Of realization.
It burned through every nerve, screamed through every vein.
But in the heart of it—Amid the agony...
I saw. I understood.
A clarity so sharp it cut deeper
And then—like a marionette with its strings severed—
I collapsed.
No strength to scream. No strength to speak....