XI. [Title Withheld] — [Heavily Redacted]
Time shifted.
I do not mean calendars slipped or scribes missed a leap. I mean the fabric itself caught on something and tore in a new direction.
The whole world changed. There was before and there was after. The calendars would not catch up for centuries.
[...text missing...]
[Subsection Title Withheld]
The space was cramped, functional, and designed for speed over ceremony. [NAME WITHHELD] sat at the table's center, the only one seated. The rest crowded around, pacing, leaning over maps, muttering.
This was not the full pantheon. This was the inner circle.
[REDACTED]: We have reports from the eastern provinces. The [TITLE WITHHELD] has made his decision.
[WITNESS A]: Which way?
[REDACTED]: Against.
[WITNESS B] (voice low): If [NAME] has withdrawn his light—if he tests whether the world needs him—
[WITNESS C]: Then he is a fool. Mortals will believe it is the last day.
[WITNESS D]: Perhaps it is.
[...significant gap...]
[Subsection — Hours of Darkness]
[HOUR 12]
The sky darkened.
The first courier to report it stammered: "The sun—it is gone—midday and it is night—"
[WITNESS E] stood so fast the chair toppled. "What do you mean, gone?"
[HOUR 13 — FIRST HOUR OF DARKNESS]
The water-clock dripped. They waited in a room lit only by brazier and the faint glow of enchanted relics.
[WITNESS F], from the threshold: "The sun has set at noon. The door between day and night stands open. What walks through it will not be what walked before."
[HOUR 14 — SECOND HOUR OF DARKNESS]
The darkness held. No news. No couriers arrived. The silence was worse than chaos.
[WITNESS G], voice small: "Do you think he suffers?"
The room turned.
[WITNESS G]: "The man. On the [REDACTED]. Do you think—if he is one of us—then we watch one of our own be torn and do nothing."
[WITNESS H]: "He is not one of us."
[WITNESS G]: "How do you know?"
No one answered.
[...text missing...]
[Subsection — The Report]
[HOUR 15 — END OF DARKNESS]
A courier arrived.
"He is dead."
The room exhaled.
Couriers to and from the underworld had been prepared. They waited for confirmation that the soul had been received.
The first courier came back. No arrival.
The second courier came back. No arrival.
Then: news of an earthquake.
The room erupted.
[WITNESS D]: "The ground is opening! He breaks free!"
[WITNESS A]: "The tombs—"
[WITNESS I]: "Seal the exits—"
[Subsection — The Ferryman]
A figure appeared at the door.
Not a courier. Not a messenger.
[NAME WITHHELD]. The ferryman himself.
[WITNESS B]: Why is he here?
[WITNESS J]: He has never left his post. Not in living memory.
They waited for him to speak.
He took his time.
"[NAME] has been exiled."
The room exploded.
[WITNESS G] pushed through the crowd: "Why has he not come here?"
[FERRYMAN]: "He is fated to wander."
[WITNESS K]: "What does that mean?"
[FERRYMAN]: "It means what it means. He is exiled. From his domain. From his office. He walks the earth now, no longer [TITLE REDACTED]."
[WITNESS L]: "Will the dead begin spilling forth?"
[FERRYMAN]: "That depends on who succeeds him."
[WITNESS E]: "And who will succeed him?"
[FERRYMAN] shrugged. "I do not know. I ferry. I do not rule."
[WITNESS M]: "What happened? What did he do?"
[FERRYMAN] looked at him for a long moment. Then: "He opened a door he should not have opened. And something walked through."
[WITNESS N]: "What walked through?"
[FERRYMAN] smiled. It was not a comforting expression. "That is the question you should have been asking from the beginning."
And then he turned and left.
XII. [Title Withheld] — [Fragmentary]
[...text missing...]
The persecution was severe in some regions, barely enforced in others. [NAME WITHHELD], who ruled [LOCATION], protected [GROUP] in his territory. His son would remember.
Then [NAME] retired. His carefully constructed system immediately began to collapse. The [TITLE] descended into civil war.
[...significant gap...]
[NAME] marches on [LOCATION] to face [NAME]. The night before the battle, he reportedly saw a vision: a [SYMBOL] of light in the sky, with words.
His soldiers painted the [SYMBOL] on their shields.
[NAME] drowned in the river. [NAME] entered the city as sole ruler.
[WITNESS A] is silent. I asked him what this meant. He said: "A symbol is just a symbol."
I am not so sure.
The Factions
The [GROUP] did not agree with each other.
The factions are multiplying faster than I can track.
[NAME] says the [DEITY A] is different from [DEITY B]—a lesser deity, a demiurge, who created this flawed world.
[NAME] teaches that the divine realm contains multiple emanations, and that the material world is a mistake that can be escaped through secret knowledge.
Each faction has its own scriptures, its own leaders, its own version of the truth. They excommunicate each other with enthusiasm.
Reported to [WITNESS A]: recommend we apply pressure to these fractures. If they divide themselves, they become manageable.
[WITNESS A] approved the strategy.
The strategy was sound but ultimately failed.
XIII. [World Stories] — [Selections]
The Northern Project
[NAME WITHHELD] did not wait for [LOCATION] to fall before looking beyond the [REGION].
Delivered messages to the northern frontier. The general writes with the precision of a clerk, but what interests me is what he leaves out: the terror in the legions when the [PEOPLE] charge. These are not farmers with spears. These are professionals of violence who sing while they kill.
[WITNESS A] was there. I saw him watching from a ridge. He was not cheering for [FACTION].
[...text missing...]
The concept of the End emerged as opportunity.
The South is salted. The [GROUP] have taken the temples. But the North remains virgin territory—cold iron, hot blood, and a people who understand that glory is purchased in death.
Proposal: Construct a new pantheon. Not replacement—recruitment. Find the wanderers among our own kind. Give them masks. And give the mortals a story they cannot resist: that the world will end in fire and ice, and only the chosen slain will feast in the halls of the victorious.
The Eastern Road
The field agent went to [LOCATION].
Reports had come along the trade routes that intrigued.
Reports of a monkey born from stone.
The stories are remarkably consistent. A boulder on a mountain, nourished by the light of sun and moon for ages beyond counting, eventually develops a magic womb. From this womb comes a stone egg. From the egg comes a stone monkey.
The monkey's eyes move. Two beams of golden light shoot toward the [TITLE] Palace. The [TITLE] is startled.
The pattern is familiar. The [OBJECT]—the navel-stone, fed by earth and sky. The cosmogonic egg of [TRADITION] tradition.
But there is something else. The monkey was trapped under a mountain for five hundred years before his release.
I have seen this pattern too. [NAME], buried beneath [LOCATION]. Great forces contained by earth, waiting to emerge.
Who is this monkey?
[...text missing...]
The pilgrimage acquired other companions.
[NAME WITHHELD] was a former [TITLE], banished to mortal form for [TRANSGRESSION REDACTED]. He was lazy, lecherous, and constantly looking for escape routes.
The [CREATURE] is [NAME].
Certain of it. The same wild energy. The same inability to control appetites. The same fundamental earthiness. And the crime that banished him—harassing a [TITLE]—is precisely the sort of thing my [RELATION] would do.
He does not recognize me. Or if he does, he gives no sign.
I do not reveal myself.
XIV. [The Medieval Thread] — [Partial Recovery]
The Coven and the Compact
In [DATE], a town called [LOCATION] was established. The [PEOPLE] wars were ending. The old worship was fading. There was a vacuum in the wild places.
The town appeared [FAITH]. But in certain back rooms, certain women kept older lamps burning.
Beneath the surface, a coven had established itself—daughters of the House of [NAME] who served the [ADJECTIVE] interest.
[NAME WITHHELD] was drawn there.
He had been wandering since the [EVENT], since the exile of [NAME], since the world turned against the old shapes. The [SYMBOL] faces on the churches called to him—vestiges of what he had been.
The Daughters did not welcome him. They saw him as a pest.
But he did not leave. He watched.
The Transgression
The legend of Lady [NAME] is well known.
[NAME WITHHELD], frustrated by his wife's persistent advocacy, issued a cruel challenge: she could have her relief if she rode naked through the town. She agreed—on the condition that the townspeople stay indoors and avert their eyes.
A compact was struck. The shutters closed. She rode.
What happened next is recorded in folklore as the tale of Peeping [NAME].
The tailor was not a tailor.
Subject: [NAME], rustic divine. Status: vagrant within [HOUSE] jurisdiction.
Charge: Violation of civic compact. The townspeople had entered a sacred agreement of non-looking. The subject broke it.
Severity: The transgression occurred within our territory, under our watch.
Recommendation: Binding or worse.
[NAME WITHHELD] could not resist. He was the spike of panic, the god of the furtive gaze.
A broker arrived in time to negotiate a deal.
Terms accepted: [NAME] to become a servant to House [REDACTED]. He owes them service. They own his talents until they choose to release him.
He accepted the binding rather than face worse.
The Idol
When House [NAME] decided to move against the [ORDER], they needed an instrument.
[NAME WITHHELD] was assigned a role: become the idol the [ORDER] were accused of worshipping.
The subject is to appear at designated locations in the guise of [NAME REDACTED]: goat-headed, hermaphroditic, bearing the signs of [SYMBOL].
Purpose: To provide substance for accusations. When the trials begin, there will be testimony that is not merely fabrication.
He found it boring.
"I am made to stand still while robed men mumble. This is not worship. This is theater."
The trials began in [DATE]. The order was dissolved. The last [TITLE] was burned.
His service was noted. But the Daughters were not satisfied with mere compliance.
The Piper
The [IDOL] assignment ended. [NAME WITHHELD] slipped away before they could deploy him again.
In [DATE], a town called [LOCATION] hired a piper to clear a rat infestation. He played his music, led the rats to the river, and demanded payment. The town refused. He returned, played again, and led the children away.
One hundred and thirty children followed the piper into the mountain. They were never seen again.
[...text missing...]
The [PLAGUE] arrived in [LOCATION] in [DATE]. By [DATE], perhaps a third of the population was dead.
The Piper mask returned. [NAME WITHHELD] was assigned—or perhaps volunteered—to work the plague roads. Leading the afflicted away. Clearing towns of the dying.
He enjoyed this work far more than playing [IDOL]. This was his nature: the spike of panic, the music that moves against consent.
But he went too far.
Subject has exceeded sanctioned parameters. Music-compulsion deployed against non-approved targets. Reports of hypnosis for personal gratification.
Recommendation: Termination of service. Punitive metamorphosis. No leniency.
House [NAME] moved against him.
He fled before the sentence could be carried out. He vanished into the wild places, the edges of the map, the territories that no court had claimed.
A finished sentence remained. Only the ledger's afterimage to mark what had been lost.
The Crossing
By the late [CENTURY], the gods had reached a nadir.
The [PLAGUE] had killed perhaps a third of the population. The survivors asked questions. The rhythms of ordinary life that had sustained the hidden gods were disrupted.
Some gods withdrew entirely. Others wandered. And some—drawn by forces they did not fully understand—converged at a river crossing during the [SEASON] season.
The document that follows was recovered from a priory. The author was a mortal poet who witnessed more than he understood.
[...text missing...]
The gods had seen each other. They had recognized, through their animal masks and mortal disguises, that they were not alone.
And they had seen the [CREATURE].
After the crossing, the gods began to recover.
Not immediately. Not fully. But the slow bleeding of power that had characterized the post-[EVENT] era began to reverse.
The [CREATURE] had been sighted—that impossible bird, that symbol of what dies and returns.
If the [CREATURE] could rise from cold ashes, perhaps other resurrections were possible.
Closing Note — Update II
Additional materials have been recovered since the initial release.
The investigation continues.
Certain chapters remain sealed. Certain testimonies cannot yet be disclosed.
The compiler notes that patterns are emerging. The [OBJECT] appears in multiple contexts. The solar jurisdiction disputes recur. The question of succession remains unanswered.
Draw your own conclusions.
[SIGNATURE REDACTED]
[LOCATION REDACTED]
November 19, 2019