Chapter 2: The Man Who Wasn't There
Eiren woke up gasping—again.
Not from a nightmare. Not exactly.
But from the sense that something had been watching him from behind his eyes.
The oil lamp still flickered on the desk.
He hadn't blown it out before falling asleep.
His journal lay open, quill dry beside it.
Three words written in uneven ink:
"I saw him."
Who?
Eiren didn't remember writing that.
But the words were in his handwriting.
Mostly.
He sat up, rubbing his temples.
Ever since he'd taken the coin from the Whispering Fountain three days ago, things had changed.
It wasn't just the voices at the edge of hearing, or the way shadows seemed to twist in his periphery.
It was the sense of absence.
He'd walk past someone on the street, and an hour later they'd vanish from memory.
Faces blurred. Names slipped.
Conversations rewound themselves as though they never happened.
It was like the world itself was being...edited.
He'd tried reporting it to the City Watch.
The officer he spoke to?
Vanished.
No record of him. No desk. No badge number.
As if he was never there.
Eiren ran his fingers through his hair and stared at the flame.
He could still feel that thing's presence—the man in the dream.
Tall. Robed. Faceless.
He never spoke.
But Eiren heard him anyway.
"To be believed... is to exist."
And then the dreams began.
No longer nightmares.
Stories.
That wasn't the disturbing part.
The disturbing part was that every time he woke... something from the story had become real.
A street that didn't exist yesterday.
A neighbor who suddenly had always lived there.
A letter in his pocket he never wrote.
He glanced toward the window.
The night outside was darker than it should be.
Not moonless—starless.
Like the sky itself had forgotten how to shine.
[Quest Triggered]
"Reject the Mask That Knows You."
Reward: +1 Sanity, +1 Fate Entanglement
Failure: ???
He didn't know where the voice came from.
It wasn't sound. It was meaning, pressed directly into his thoughts.
He didn't remember accepting any deal.
No contract. No ceremony.
But the feeling was clear:
He had entered a game.
And someone else was already ten steps ahead.
He closed the journal. Reached for the coin.
It had changed.
Where once it bore the emblem of the city—a lion and sun—it now bore a featureless mask, faintly etched with a snake eating its own shadow.
He should throw it away. Burn it.
But his fingers wouldn't obey.
The coin smiled at him.
Somehow, he knew.
The god was watching.
End of Chapter 2