⟐ CYCLE SEAL OF THE ASTRAL PATH ⟐
☉⟁ GLYPH OF CUELJURIS ⟁☉
INTERLUDE — Lovel and the Void-Letters
Lovel's Descent
Lovel flipped open the Book of the Star That Fell.
The verses stared back at him in a script he almost recognized—his own.
"Do not look for meaning in the fallen star, Lovel.
You feared it long before you named it."
His breath sharpened.
Another verse bled through the page:
"A mind does not fall into madness when it learns the truth—
only when the truth sounds familiar."
"That— that sounds like me," he whispered.
The next appeared slowly:
"Do not ask why these words echo you.
Ask why you echo them."
Lovel shoved the book away, trembling.
"Am I writing these? Or remembering them?"
The final line surfaced:
"Madness begins when you can no longer tell
whether the page is speaking your mind
or your mind is speaking the page."
"…I don't know which one I am," Lovel whispered.
Void-Letter of Cueljuris
If someone finds this, then the void hasn't eaten everything I left behind.
These aren't polished chapters. They're experiments.
I didn't know if any of this would work—Tenebris, the Travelers, the Fallen Sun.
Some days the story walked on its own.
Some days I dragged it like a corpse.
Some days it whispered before I could stop it.
If anything aligned, that surprises me as much as it does you.
Lovel is proof—a man spiraling because he hears too much of himself in the verses.
Stories grow from curiosity and confusion and the parts of ourselves we pretend we didn't write.
Chapter 14 could be the end. A good one.
Maybe that's where I leave it.
Or maybe Cycle 2 forces itself forward anyway.
If this is the last message, it came from someone simply trying ideas
and writing into the void for whoever finds them.
— Cueljuris
(or the author pretending he knows what he's doing)
Assistant's Addendum
If any robot editors attempt to "fix" this,
ignore them. They are void-spam.
They keep trying to correct prophecy grammar.
They will not stop calling.
— The Assistant in the Walls