The old man shrugged, and looked me in the eyes.
"Frienzi, I pity you. Really I do. You're bound to the spirit within this book, but it's not your fault. There's a certain price we pay for words, this is one of the many woes."
The old man starts pacing around the room, but his gaze never leaves mine. He picks up the book and places it in my hand.
"It recognizes you as its source of nutrients. And now it's only bound to you. So shall you be."
The old man started retreating from my apartment, and didn't even bother to glance back at me. He then left the apartment and closed the door, leaving me stranded here with this anomaly in my hand.
I look down at the book and start flipping the pages, the contents within it are still foreign to me, and I never get close to deciphering the contents.
As I flipped the pages, a strange thing happened: there's empty pages at the back of the book.
"This.. it's not possible.. this wasn't here before.."
I grabbed a pen on the table and tried to write on it. Miraculously, the words I wrote were absorbed by the pages, leaving no trace of the pen's ink. It intrigued me, after years of research, something finally happened.
But why now?
The question lingers in my mind, but I pay no attention to it, as I was busy with the new discovery.
"Out of all time, this is when I finally made progress, yet I got no leads."
I tap my on my chin, thinking of a way that would work. Just as I was lost in thought, my eyes landed on a particular object — the quill. The same quill I found next to the Gospel when I first took it in.
"Of course! Now everything is in place."
I have never thought it would be any use, but now.. this is the only option I have.
I grabbed the quill and dipped the tip with a black ink. Then, I started to write on the page, but I was dumbfounded when the ink also vanished.
What has possibly gone wrong this time?
A series of questions with no clear answers, I need an answer, and I need one now. I started pacing around my apartment, thinking of a rational way to make this work.
In a moment of frustration, I decided to take drastic measures — poking my fingertip with the quill, drawing a small amount of blood on its tip. I then set the book down on the table. This is it.. either I return with something, or I never return at all.
I then started writing the first full sentences inside the gospel — 'Video, Scribo, Muto'.
The blood ink stays intact on the pages, as the words glow with a bright red.
"Hah.. ahaha.. Ahahah! I Did It!!"
I let out a maniacal laugh like a drunken madman. The truth is — maybe I am a madman, years of isolation and self critique, I've been drowning inside the piles of research papers.
Now.. I finally float somewhere in the vast ocean. Finally belong somewhere.
— Penning a new chapter…