Name: The mystique
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Chapter 1 Prologue

Who are they?

The ones who crawl between the blank pages of history, the ones who slip through the cracks in the stone foundations of the world-unseen, unrecorded. Not kings. Not leaders. Not gods. Something else entirely. The architects in the dark. The ones who truly control.

Do we hold power?

No. I don't believe we ever did.

We wear crowns of metal and paper and pretend they grant us dominion. We cling to titles and gold, to bloodlines and bloodshed, as if those things mean something as if they shield us. But even the most powerful men wake in sweat. Even the emperors lock their doors at night. Even the rich hire guards. And kings-yes, even kings-fear the will of their people.

So, where does power really lie?

Is it in the hands of the one who rules? Or the many who obey-but with teeth bared, just waiting for the moment he stumbles?

Or does it lie with the ones the people themselves dread?

The criminals? The outcasts? The things hiding beneath the skin of the world?

Tell me-if everyone is afraid of something, and no one is free from fear... who is left holding the leash?

You might call this paranoia. Madness. Maybe it is.

But I've seen things. I've felt them breathing just behind the veil of what we call "reality."

I see further than most. That isn't a boast. It's a curse.

Sometimes, I feel like a man seated above kings, high on some invisible throne of thought and observation-watching, understanding, knowing too much. And knowing is dangerous. Knowing too much unravels the world. You begin to question whether the ground beneath your feet is stone or just the surface of something else, something alive, pretending to be still.

Is that delusion?

Absolutely.

Do I care?

Not at all. Because once you've seen it-truly seen it-it-it-you can't return. You can't blink and pretend it was the dark playing tricks. You can't wipe it away like fog on a window. No. You remember.

So I ask you... Do you believe in the supernatural?

You probably don't. Most don't. Most can't.

You think yourself rational. Grounded.

A creature of facts, not fables.

But you would be mad to think the world ends where your senses do.

Where do you think the legends come from?

The myths?

The tales of wolves walking like men?

Of eyes glowing in the thickets?

Of doors that open to nowhere?

Of gods and demons hiding in plain sight?

Do you believe all that just spilled from the mouths of drunk peasants and desperate priests?

No.

There is a reason every culture has monsters.

There's a reason every child instinctively fears the dark.

It's not imagination.

It's memory.

Inherited memory.

We've forgotten what we once knew: that the world is not safe. It never was. We've covered it in concrete and wire and convinced ourselves we're in control. But beneath the steel and glass, under the soil, behind the veil of civilization-something ancient waits.

I saw it. Or something like it.

I don't know what it was exactly. I don't pretend to.

But it wasn't human.

And it wasn't just animal, either.

It watched me. Not like prey. Not like predator.

Like it remembered me.

You think monsters live in stories. I used to believe that too. That all the old names-Lycan, shapeshifter, Beast of Gévaudan-were metaphors, the psychosis of frightened people trying to explain the unexplainable.

Now? I'm not so sure.

Those knights didn't fear the woods for the wolves.

They feared what they couldn't explain.

They feared the forest remembered things long before man walked on two legs.

There are bones under every city. Whispers in the cracks of stone temples. In every culture, there's a word we try not to say. In every tongue, there is a name we bury. But names have power. And those names? They remember.

Do you understand what that means?

We never ruled this world.

We were allowed to believe we did.

And that permission? That illusion of control? I think it's fading.

Whatever crawls beneath our feet is starting to stir. Maybe it's hunger. Maybe it's boredom. Maybe it's curiosity. But something is waking. And it remembers us.

I intend to find it.

I intend to dig deeper than any man ever dared. I want to scrape through the crust of this safe little world and uncover the rot underneath.

Not because I'm brave. I'm not.

I'm obsessed.

I need to know what walks beside us, veiled by the thinnest shadow, never blinking, always watching. The ones in the corners of old paintings. The silhouettes in the eyes of dying men. The watchers in the dark.

Maybe they're beasts.

Maybe they're gods.

Maybe they're the true rulers of this world.

And maybe, just maybe, if I go deep enough... I'll find out the truth.

Even if it breaks me.

Even if I never come back.

So if I vanish-if you hear nothing more from me, no final confession, no note scrawled in blood or madness-know this: I didn't lose my way. I found it. I walked into the dark, and something... walked with me.

Maybe it speaks in dreams. Maybe it wears skin. Maybe it's been whispering through the trees since before language crawled from a throat. I don't know what it wants.

But I think it remembers.

And if I never return, don't come looking. Not out of fear. But because it won't want to be found again. It let me find it once. That's enough.

Lock your doors. Burn your offerings.

Because some truths aren't meant to be uncovered.

Some monsters don't live in the forest.

Some live beneath your house.

And some are already awake.

Waiting.

Listening.

Smiling in the dark.

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The mystique

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