I am the last.
I do not expect to remain so for long.
There are things in the dark now. Not eyes — no, never eyes — only the sense of being watched, even when you are alone. Especially when you are alone. That is how it begins. Then you stop being sure of where the floor is, of whether this page was blank when you started writing (it wasn't, I'm sure it wasn't).
I wanted answers.
That's all. That's how every sin begins, isn't it? Not with malice nor with blood. Just pure, demure curiosity. And to think my parents had warned me of this so many times when I was a child… but you have to understand: we —
we were so curious.
Do you know what it feels like, to hear a language no one has spoken in a thousand years, and still understand it? To look at a thing — a relic, an object, a scroll, for instance — and feel it looking back?
I hope you never come to find out. I wish I didn't.
We thought it was knowledge, enlightenment, a key to what lays behind history's veil. But some doors aren't locked. They're sealed. That's different, that's worse, that means someone put something inside and didn't want it getting out. It is such a simple thing, now that I think about it! But… think? Think is the wrong word. I don't believe thinking is still something I can afford.
We broke the seal.
I don't know if it was me. I think it was me. It feels like it was me, but who knows? Maybe they're not here anymore because it was one of them instead, or maybe I just happened to live longer, who can say at this point.
I've torn out the page three times now. It always comes back. Ink doesn't behave anymore. I don't think the ink is ink, my arms are all cut up.
They're gone. I won't say their names. Not because I don't love them — because I do. Because if I write them, they'll hear. And then they'll be wrong again. I don't want them to suffer anymore
Please I beg you help me Er—
No. No, no. Stop. Stopping the pen is becoming harder and harder…
One of them still sings, sometimes. I don't know which. The melody comes through the pipes, through cinder falling from the sky, through faint and soft moonlight, if clouds aren't on the horizon.
He isn't bound by the laws of our world. He has no shape, not truly. At first we thought he had escaped the scroll. But then we realized: the scroll is not a prison. The scroll is a part of him. The words are just the skin he shed.
I don't know how long I've been writing. I don't know if I'm still in the same room where I started. The door is gone, or moved. I hear footsteps that don't echo right. I don't think I'm alone anymore. Hell, I don't think I'm me anymore.
Do not look for the scroll.
Do not read it.
Do not speak the name you find inside, if you happen to find one.
We thought we were pulling a specter into the light. But the light grew dim around it, no matter how bright it was to our childish eyes. Perfectly sweet, oh so delicate moonlight, singing words of ruin to our deaf hears... even now, no, right now, for the first time I see you!
It started at the university.
It ends—
no
it does not end
it does not end
it does not
end
it—
the river isn't flowing right
they won't stop smiling
something is inside the clocks
I buried it just behind that decadent lecture hall
dig on a day with no moon
for God's sake please bring no mirrors
if you find the scroll,
burn the reader.