Aiden never believed in gods.
Honestly, he barely believed in his alarm clock.
But that night, something changed.
The alley was familiar—his nightly shortcut after another miserable shift. Same cracked bricks, same trash smell. Except tonight it felt… wrong. Too long. Too dark. Like someone had secretly switched it to "infinite hallway mode."
At the end of that impossible stretch, a door just waited.
Not leaning, not broken—just standing there like it had been waiting for him.
It swung open before he even touched it.
(Cool. Totally not haunted. 10/10 safe vibes.)
Inside—rows of shelves clawed upward into forever. Books chained shut, their locks twitching like beating veins. And the whispers… oh god, the whispers. They slithered between the aisles, patient, hungry, like they'd been fasting just for him.
In the middle stood a pedestal.
One book rested there.
Dripping.
Bleeding.
Alive.
Aiden's stomach dropped. Every rational neuron in his brain screamed don't. And yet his hand moved anyway, like he was the dumb horror-movie extra we all yell at: "Nooo don't touch the cursed object, bro!"
The instant his fingers grazed the cover, the world shattered.
The book screamed. Blood hissed across the stone floor. And then—
a voice slammed into his skull like a Discord notification from hell:
"Reader of the Divine. Page One… Claimed."
His vision exploded white. The ground dissolved beneath his feet.
And Aiden fell, plummeting straight into the impossible—
the Archives of God.
---End of Prologue---