Adrian Vale read in silence.
The library didn't speak, but the books did. Quietly. Reluctantly.
Sentences shifted across the page like living threads, rewriting themselves the longer he looked. Not metaphor. Literal. The book was breathing.
And then he read it:
"The First War was not a battle"
"It was a forgetting made real"
"The gods tore the world apart"
He stared at the line for a few seconds, exhaled slowly, and muttered,
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
He didn't sound shocked.
He sounded tired.
He closed the book gently, stood up, and looked around.
No alarms.
No divine thunder.
Just a quiet library made of shadow, thought, and ink that never dried.
He half-expected to hear some disembodied voice demanding he stop reading.
Instead, the shelves just stood there—endless, dark, waiting.
He moved to another shelf, pulled down a thicker volume, and opened it.
The pages were warm—too warm. Like they remembered something they didn't want to.
"Fifty-four gods once ruled. Fifty-four Laws held the world stable"
During the First War, twenty-six ceased to exist"
"Their Laws were erased. No memory remains."
Adrian tilted his head, flipped a few pages, then tried a different book. Then another. Same thing.
Nothing. No names. No symbols. Not even a concept.
Just blank space.
Not blacked out. Not censored.
Just absent, like the parchment didn't even know it was missing something.
"They didn't just die," he murmured. "They got erased."
The books weren't being poetic.
They meant it literally.
These gods hadn't fallen or faded. They had been erased from existence.
Their Laws weren't dormant or scattered.
They were no longer part of the world. And no one remembered what had been lost—not even the other gods.
He flipped to a divine diagram—fifty-four circles arranged in a perfect wheel. Twenty-six were blank.
No scars. No ruins.
Just holes.
Like they'd never existed.
The other eighteen glowed faintly. Not bright. Not proud. Just… functioning. Barely.
He kept reading.
"The remaining gods do not remember what was lost
Their thrones stand untouched, but no memory rests upon them"
Adrian narrowed his eyes.
"Of course they don't" he said. "If you remembered, you might have to admit what you did"
He leaned against the edge of the shelf.
This wasn't a war in any conventional sense. There were no records of enemy lines, no celestial sieges. Just… an internal collapse. A purge.
The divine equivalent of a group panic attack with world-shattering consequences.
One of the books noted a different term.
"The Purge of Thrones"
He rubbed his chin.
"Catchy," he muttered. "Sounds like something someone came up with after they survived it"
He returned the book, then picked up another—thinner this time. Just a few pages. More like a record than a history.
"Reality does not recall what was removed, but it still limps where it once leaned"
That one made him pause.
He read it again, then slowly nodded.
"Yeah. That tracks"
He thought of old patients—people who didn't remember the trauma but lived around it anyway. Who smiled like everything was fine, but flinched at invisible edges.
That was this world.
Not broken. Not dead.
Just incomplete.
Missing vital supports, pretending to stand on its own.
He sat down on a bench of cold marble and parchment. Thought for a while.
So much had been removed—so many Laws that had once governed reality, just gone. No one remembered what they did, or what had held the world up before. But something had filled in the gaps. Not stability. Not structure.
Just inertia.
The world had kept spinning because it didn't know how to stop.
"That's what this place is," Adrian said quietly. "It's not a temple. It's a memory"
He got up again. This time slower.
There was no panic. Just calculation. Awareness.
He was piecing it together.
The gods hadn't survived because they were stronger. They had survived because they hadn't died yet. And now they were propping up what was left—blind to what they had erased, or too afraid to acknowledge it.
He wandered deeper into the hall. No walls. Just books. Just truth.
Then he saw it.
A new book resting on a pedestal that hadn't been there moments ago.
Dark cover. Breathing.
It didn't glow. It pulsed.
He stepped closer.
The title carved itself slowly across the leather like someone whispering it into being.
The Second War of Gods
Adrian stopped.
Brows furrowed.
He didn't say anything at first. Just stared at the book.
Then:
"You people really couldn't stop at one, could you?"
He stepped up, ran a hand along the cover.
It was warm.
Alive.
Maybe still writing itself.
He sighed and shook his head slightly.
"Well. Let's see how bad you messed it up the second time."
And he opened it.