Chapter 12 — Grandfather's Notebooks
Soma's hands trembled as he held the old leather-bound notebook. Its cover was weathered, the edges cracked as though it had endured decades of travel through jungle rain and desert sun. His breath caught in his throat.
Is this really… my grandfather's notebook?
The thought sent a shiver down his spine. He brushed his thumb across the faded surface, half-expecting the book to vanish like a dream. With careful fingers, he flipped open the cover.
The first few pages greeted him with chaos—lines scrawled in what looked like red ink. The letters warped and bled together as though they had been caught in a storm. They were not words, but living shapes, writhing and twisting across the page like restless ocean waves. His eyes ached as he tried to focus, yet no matter how hard he squinted, the symbols refused to resolve into meaning.
Frustration gnawed at him. But beneath that frustration, a strange pulse of excitement kept him turning page after page. There must be something here…
And then—on page thirteen—the chaos softened. The marks sharpened into faint, wavering words. His breath quickened as he leaned closer, tracing the fragile lines with his eyes.
>In northern Brazil, near the border with Venezuela, close to a Yanomami tribe in the deep Amazon jungle, my team found an ancient temple...
Soma's heart pounded. That was all he could make out before the words dissolved back into their storm of red. But even that fragment set his imagination ablaze. The Amazon? My grandfather was there? What did he discover?
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He flipped again, his fingers almost desperate.
Page Fourteen was different. The red scrawl was gone, replaced by crisp black strokes. The hand was steadier now, deliberate. Each line felt alive, pulling him deeper.
>Who knows how many years I have been stuck here? The sun does not move, the seasons do not change. It feels like time has stopped in eternal day. With this lucid body, I can see and feel everything, but the world cannot see me or harm me.
>A door… a way out. I walked north, south, east, west—every path I could take. Yet always, at the end, I stood before a black void.
>No matter how desperately I ran toward it, the distance never closed. An endless space lay between me and that darkness, mocking me.
Soma's eyes widened. The words radiated loneliness, the kind only a man trapped outside of time could understand. He could almost feel it—the endless daylight pressing down, the still air heavy with silence.
He turned the page with a dry swallow.
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Page Fifteen
>Something abnormal happened today. Hopeless, I stood before the void. Suddenly, I sensed movement—a sand worm lashing toward me. In my frustration, I grabbed its tail and hurled it into the darkness.
>The instant it touched the void, the worm froze. From its body, a white orb emerged, floated upward into the sky.
Soma's hands tightened around the notebook. His grandfather's voice carried both wonder and madness, each word soaked in the weight of isolation.
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Page Sixteen
>As time passes, I feel like I am going mad. With no way out, I returned to the riverside to settle again.
>Because of the giant ants, predators avoid this place. My previous settlement was already destroyed by beasts, so I decided to create a new one here. With logs and bushes, I built a small camp.
>Today, I decided to test what that orb was.
The handwriting grew jagged, rushed.
>Sensing movement, a single ant ran toward me. I grabbed a huge rock and threw it at its head. With a sickening crunch, the creature tumbled into the dirt. I struck again with two more stones until it stopped moving.
>From its body, a fist-sized white orb rose into the air.
>When I touched it, the orb dissolved into my chest.
>A cooling sensation spread through me, as if fresh water was pouring into my very veins.
Soma's skin prickled. He could almost feel that chill himself, as though the echo of his grandfather's experience had leapt from the page into him.
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Page Seventeen
>I think I am broken. My mind drifts apart, and I no longer know the measure of time—how long have I been here? Years? Decades? More?
>My wife… my children… their faces fade like smoke, slipping further from my memory each passing day.
The ink wavered, each stroke uneven, as if the hand that wrote them had been shaking. Soma stared at the words, and his chest ached. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to watch the people you loved blur into shadows.
>To calm myself, I began to meditate.
The entry shifted, steadier.
>While meditating, I remembered the white orb. Perhaps these orbs can help me return home.
>That thought gave me hope.
Soma pressed his thumb against the page, as though grounding himself in his grandfather's flicker of faith.
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Pages Eighteen–Twenty-Nine
>Months passed. I killed monsters and collected their orbs.
The next pages blurred into notes—short entries, almost clinical. A hunter's record.
The margins were filled with sketches: claw marks, jagged wings, the curve of a horn. Beside them were scribbled fragments, listing habitats and killing methods. As Soma leaned closer, piecing the words together, his breath caught. Among the names, a few were ones he recognized instantly.
Monster Records
>Golden Owl
Habitat: Rocky peaks, deep forest canopies.
Weakness: Venom—snake or centipede. Strike when it descends to hunt.
>Horned Tiger
Habitat: Mountain riversides.
Weakness: Venom—snake or centipede. Easiest to kill when wounded alone or drinking water.
>Giant Ant
Habitat: Beneath the Twin Mountains, clustered near rivers.
Weakness: Fire, smoke, or flooding. Never face them in open combat—strike the nest instead.
Soma's breath hitched as he read. These weren't myths. They were real monsters, catalogued like animals in a field guide. His grandfather hadn't just survived—he had studied, adapted, and fought.
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Page Thirty-One
The writing here was longer, more vivid.
>Like every day, I walked across the grassland near the Twin Mountains to hunt.
>At the riverside, I saw a golden owl descending upon an injured two-horned tiger.
>The words slowed, almost cinematic in their detail.
>Seizing the opportunity, I readied my spear, dipped its point deep into poison, and hurled it with all my strength. It struck true—into the owl's eye.
>Hours later, both beasts lay dead before me. I observed their orbs rise into the air, glowing like moons.
>Then something happened.
>My body began to glitter. A brilliant light erupted from within me.
Soma's heart raced as he read. The ink seemed to pulse on the page, each word hammering into him. He could almost see it—his grandfather standing over two colossal corpses, bathed in searing light, the air trembling with power.
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Page Thirty-Two
>From that day forward, I discovered I no longer needed to touch the Souls.
>Souls came to me.
>Like metal drawn to a magnet, they rushed toward me from afar. At first, the range was small. But by measuring with my own height, I estimated the range was more than five hundred meters.
>I had become something new.
The tone had shifted. Where earlier entries had carried despair, these lines burned with a dangerous kind of excitement.
The notebook wasn't just a record of survival. It was the record of a transformation.
The next lines bled with hunger:
>I decided to collect a huge number of souls. I have to do something big.
In the south, there was a vast forest. From four directions, I ignited fires. Little by little, tree after tree caught fire, and the forest burned like a living sun.
Trapped beasts could not escape. Caught in the middle, they died in the wildfire. Those fortunate enough to flee the flames came out of the forest, and I threw poisoned spears and arrows to kill them.
Hundreds—thousands—of souls flew toward me, and I absorbed them all.
Once again, a blinding light came from within me.
Soma's throat tightened. He could almost see it: the endless blaze stretching across the horizon, beasts shrieking as their fur and flesh turned to ash, souls streaming upward like sparks to be devoured. His grandfather—calm, methodical—had burned an entire forest alive for strength.
For the first time, Soma felt fear not for the monsters his grandfather described, but for the man himself.
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Page Thirty-Three
>In my excitement, I damaged all my weapons. Sitting in my camp, I created another spear. The spear was not straight enough. Using fire, I tried to bend it, but when I applied pressure from the opposite side, the tree branch bent abnormally.
Soma leaned closer, eyes narrowing. The words carried a note of disbelief.
>Not believing myself, I grabbed another tree branch and tried to bend it like the previous one. It bent without resistance.
A pause in the writing. Almost as if his grandfather himself had stopped, stunned by his discovery.
>Instantly, I had a brilliant idea. I grabbed a rock and tried to shape it into a knife design—and it worked.
Somehow, in my hands, the rock behaved like mud.
Soma's pulse raced. Manipulating matter? Stone turning pliable, bending to will? It sounded less like survival and more like the forging of a god.
The entry grew feverish:
>Next, I made many weapons: a dagger, a long sword, a bow and arrows, an axe, and a mace.
The ink strokes thickened as though written in frenzy. Soma imagined his grandfather surrounded by crude yet impossible weapons—tools born not of skill, but of raw, unnatural power.
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Page Thirty-Four
>Seeing my broken camp, I decided to repair it with stone. I created a wooden wheelbarrow. Over the next few days, I went to the riverside and brought back many large stones, then built an igloo-type structure.
The words were simple, but Soma could picture it: sweat glistening on his grandfather's skin as he hauled stone after stone, a lone man shaping a fortress from nothing.
>At that time, I experimented with my power on many things. Not only wood or stone—I could manipulate any hard material.
Soma's fingers trembled as he turned the page.
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Page Thirty-Five
>At the riverside, I grabbed a handful of sand and thought to manipulate it into glass. A few moments later, the sand turned into shimmering glass.
The handwriting here tilted upward, almost euphoric.
>Little by little, I completed my house and created thick glass to cover the roof.
Soma stared at the stone walls and the glass roof above him, trying to picture his grandfather's hands shaping them. The thought sent a chill through him—this house wasn't built with ordinary labor, but with a power that defied nature itself.
Soma's skin prickled with unease. This wasn't just survival anymore. His grandfather had crossed a threshold—into something unimaginable, something beyond human.
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Page Thirty-Six
>Like every day, I hunted the ants by pouring water into their hills and driving them out with smoke. Suddenly, one of them rushed at me. Knowing it could not harm me, I laughed and swung my fist at its face. But the moment I struck, the creature shook its head with a violent hiss and shoved me backward into the river.
>I was dumbfounded. Why, unlike every other time, had I not become mist? How was the ant able to touch me?
>Through experiments, I finally understood. Somehow, if I did not touch—or even try to touch—anything, then for this world and its creatures, I did not exist. They could not see me. They could not reach me.
>The realization was astonishing. I could stand on the river's surface, and the water did nothing to me. Only when I tried to swim, or when I reached out to grab the current, did the river suddenly seize me and drag me with its flow.
After reading this, Soma's eyes widened. Now he understood why the swamp had pulled him under. It was not the mire itself—it was because, in his desperation to escape, he had tried to seize the mud with his hands. That single act had made him real to the swamp, and it had swallowed him whole.
Soma turned the page with mounting anticipation—only to stop cold.
The page was blank.
He frowned, running his finger across the parchment. It was as if the page had never known ink at all, a silence pressed into parchment.
He flipped again.
The next page was empty too.
Soma flipped through page after page in growing desperation, but every sheet was the same—stark, untouched, empty.
His mind spun. What happened here? Why were the pages empty?
Soma closed the notebook at last, his hand lingering on the warm leather cover. It felt heavier now, as if the weight of its secrets pressed against his palm.
He let out a long breath. The room seemed quieter, the air thicker. The silence of the blank pages echoed in his mind.
With careful hands, Soma set the notebook back down.