He didn't remember Standing up
But his hand was still bleeding, and the dagger was still warm.
Adrian take a deep breath.
One two tree.
Again.
He glared at the skin-bound book behind him, the bone clasps glinting in the low temple light.
"You manipulative piece of shit."
His voice echoed slightly.
"You almost had me. You almost made me say the words."
He spat again, this time with more force.
"Whisper for forty-eight hours in a grave? Yeah, sure. Right after I walk off a cliff and ask it to kill me politely."
He stopped. Looked down at his palm. The blood had slowed, but the pain remained sharp and real. His fingers curled around it — protective, furious.
"Was that part of the test? Or were you just hungry?"
No answer. Just the faint, dry silence of the Death Sovereign Temple.
He turned his gaze to the obsidian coffin.
The place where he'd found all three Scriptures.
His jaw tightened.
"Celine," he muttered. "You said not to pick Death."
He walked toward the black stone, step by slow step.
"You left these books. Said you were warning me. Said you burned your path to leave this behind"
He stared down at the coffin, as if expecting her shadow to rise from it.
"But why should I believe you?"
His voice cracked — not from emotion, but from pressure. From the weight of too many unanswered things.
"You were a Celestial. You could've lied. You could've failed. You could've set this up"
He started pacing again.
"I almost went with Hollow Grave. You said not to. So I listened. But maybe that was the point"
He stopped, bitter.
"Maybe I was supposed to stab myself. Maybe that was the ritual"
He laughed, once. It was dry and empty.
"Maybe there's no good path at all"
He looked toward the remaining book.
The Scripture of Fractured Truth.
Cracked. Still. Watching him, but saying nothing.
His voice dropped.
"And what the hell are you? Why do you feel like you already know me?"
Adrian stood still for a long time, breathing slow, steady.
His hand still throbbed from the wound. The sharp ache crept up into his wrist and settled in his arm like a warning that refused to fade.
He glanced at the Scripture of Knowledge.
Gold-threaded. Elegant. Still quiet.
He crouched beside it again and ran his fingers across the smooth cover.
"No tricks. Just power," he murmured. "Destruction. Elements. Control"
A beat.
"If I picked you… I'd be able to burn down anyone who stood in my way"
He meant it. He knew what this path offered.
He could see himself doing it — eyes glowing, lightning crackling through his veins, carving runes into the battlefield before anyone could lift a weapon.
But then he looked down at his body.
His burned skin. The nerves that never quite stopped screaming.
The ghost of the Soul Ocean was still wrapped around his bones.
"I don't want to fight like that," he said.
His voice was steady, but hollow.
"I don't want to stand in the open. I don't want to throw fire or scream spells across a field."
He clenched his injured hand.
"I don't want to die again."
The words came out quietly, but they rang through the temple.
He stood, leaving the Scripture of Knowledge where it was.
"You're not the problem," he said aloud. "You're powerful. Too powerful. That's the issue."
He turned to the last book — the cracked one, bound in fractured glass.
"I don't want to be seen," he whispered.
"I want to slip through lies. Hide in truth. Twist things quietly. Leave no trail."
He stared at the broken cover.
"And that's the one thing I've always been good at."
He sat in front of the Scripture of Fractured Truth.
This time, he didn't hesitate.
The decision was made.
There were no more comparisons. No what-ifs.
Adrian Vale had chosen his path.
He sat still in front of the Scripture of Fractured Truth, glass cover split with thin fault-lines like a spider's web. The light caught on each crack, scattering his reflection into fractured versions of his own face.
None of them looked back the same way.
He opened it again.
The same page greeted him — the one he'd read before.
How to Make the Vow:
Choose a lie about yourself.
It must be something you know is false — a fact you have denied, a truth you have avoided, or a fantasy you wish were real.
Write this lie as if it were your absolute truth and swallow it.
Use your real name, and describe yourself entirely based on that lie. This becomes your "Fractured Identity."
Carve out all the skin on your face and burn it.
Live as your Fractured Identity for three days.
Speak, act, and believe as if the lie is your only truth. Deny anything that contradicts it — even if it causes harm, confusion, or collapse. The world must reflect your delusion.
At the end of the third day, stand before a mirror and say the vow without blinking or breaking character:
"I vow to walk the fracture where thought unravels and truth devours itself.
Let no name remain intact, no belief unbroken.
Where I step, logic weeps, and the Lie becomes God."
If you hesitate, forget your lie, or accidentally speak a truth — the Vow fails.
Adrian's eyes narrowed. Just below the last line, something new had appeared.
The ink shimmered faintly, like it had just been written.
"The stronger the lie, the less chance of failure"
He stared at the words.
"You weren't there before" he muttered.
He didn't smile. He didn't frown.
He just sat still and thought.
"A weak lie falls apart. But a strong one… the kind that burns you when you say it… that's what you want"
He leaned back against the stone wall.
"Fine."
"Let's find one."
Adrian didn't close the book.
Not yet.
The words were still glowing faintly on the page. Or not words — not exactly.
Current lie used: !@#$%^&!@#$%!@#$%
Success rate: 99%.
He stared at the string of corrupted symbols, unsure if they were meant to mean something or if the lie he'd chosen was simply too warped to be translated. The letters looked like they had been chewed up and spat back out by the world — twisted, unreadable, and wrong.
The 99% success rate glowed just below.
That number should have reassured him.
It didn't.
He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, and studied the lines like they were a diagnosis.
"That's almost a guarantee," he muttered. "One percent chance I lose everything. Not bad."
His voice was calm, steady. But his jaw had gone tight.
He looked down at his wounded palm, now scabbed with dried blood. Then up again at the reflection in the cracked glass. His face stared back, broken into slivers. None of the pieces matched.
The silence stretched.
"This isn't just a fake name or a clever story," he said quietly. "This is personal."
He looked at the text again, at the lie he couldn't see — but still felt.
It was already crawling around the back of his mind, whispering.
The more he thought about it, the more real it became.
And that terrified him.
"Three days," he whispered. "Three days of pretending I'm someone else. Speaking the lie, acting like it's true. Denying who I actually am."
A pause.
"How long before I stop remembering what's real?"
The thought hung in the air like smoke.
His hands curled slightly into fists, the wound in his palm pulsing in response — a slow, rhythmic ache. He didn't flinch.
"If I pick this... there's no 'after.' Not really. I don't just come back to myself when it's over."
He ran a hand down his face, feeling the skin that would soon be gone.
"This lie… it's not something I made up."
"It's something I've buried."
The silence pressed in closer.
"What happens when I make it real?"
He sat there with that question.
Long enough for it to echo.
And then:
"Maybe it breaks me."
His voice didn't waver.
"Maybe I forget who I really am. Maybe I never come back."
Another pause.
His fingers grazed the edge of the page — careful, deliberate.
"But I'll still be breathing."
"Still moving."
He closed the book.
This time, it closed with weight.
Final.
Adrian stood.
Slowly. Deliberately.
His body felt heavier than it had an hour ago — like something unseen had settled across his shoulders the moment he closed the book.
He didn't leave the Scripture behind.
His fingers wrapped around it — the Scripture of Fractured Truth, still warm from his lap, still flickering with unreadable words behind cracked glass.
He tucked it under one arm, holding it close like something fragile and dangerous.
Then he moved.
Toward the far wall of the Death Sovereign Temple, past its towering pillars and silent arches. There, beneath a pair of weeping bone statues, the floor dipped into a shallow basin — wide, dark, and ancient.
An old offering pit. Blood-stained. Shadow-drenched.
Perfect.
He knelt and set the Scripture beside him, placing it on a raised slab of stone like a sacred object. It didn't react. It didn't need to.
It had already chosen him.
From his satchel, he pulled the rest of what he needed: charcoal, blank hide, the bone dagger.
He laid them out in a clean row. Ritual tools. No hesitation.
Then he paused, glancing around the temple's edge.
Something was missing.
Fire.
He stood again, pacing deeper into the forgotten corners of the Death Temple.
Most of the tomes were carved from bone or chiseled into stone, unreadable to all but the dead.
But there — behind a shattered lectern — he found them.
Three books.
Made of real paper.
Old. Brittle. Human.
No magic. No runes. Just dust and silence.
He didn't care what they once said. He tore them apart page by page and carried the stack back to the basin.
There, within his charcoal circle, he built a fire.
Words became kindling.
History became fuel.
He struck flint. Flame caught.
The fire rose in a sharp, dry burst — hungry, crackling, bright.
Adrian sat beside it, cross-legged again. The Scripture at his side. The dagger across his knees.
He washed his hands. Even the torn one. The blood ran in thin trails and sizzled near the fire.
The temple said nothing.
But it watched.
He looked down at the dagger again.
Then up — into the flames.
"One more step," he said.
Not loud. Not solemn.
Just real.
"And I don't come back the same."
He picked up the dagger.
And didn't look away.