[1] I am the last to remember. The last to write. And when my words fade, all shall be forgotten.
Before the sickness took my hair and my teeth, before my strength left me, I was but a child in the halls of learning. I was not born of the learned ones, but an orphan taken in by their kindness. They raised me, taught me to read and write in many tongues… even their own. At night, they read me stories from the sacred texts.
And so, I remember.
The elders spoke of the world before the darkness. They told of Jesi, the false god brought low, and of Angelica, the liberator and bringer of justice. They whispered of wonders beyond the reach of simple folk. And sometimes, before tucking me in, the head librarian would order an underling to “update the remote server.” I never understood what this meant, only that he dwelled on the other side of the world.
Then came the demons.
The siege began in the dead of night. The demons came cloaked in black, their pale faces cold and expressionless. From their strange trebuchets, Satan’s own fireballs rained down upon us, burning with a light brighter than the sun. Wicked shadows writhed and danced upon the walls, only to be halted by the divine protection of God’s own shroud. The learned ones called it a shield, but shields do not look as such.
Then, the miraculous protection failed.
The demons charged, wielding rods that spat light and thunder. The librarians fought with weapons of their own, and beams of divine light thundered through the air from every direction. The battle was deafening, yet brief, for there were too few to defend the library. I hid among the great shelves, trembling, as the learned ones fell. I watched the head librarian, who once cradled me as a babe, be cut down where she stood.
One of the demons approached my hiding place. He waved a glowing tablet before my face and grinned, his teeth jagged like a beast’s. Then he turned away, laughing with his brethren about how one of the librarians’ pets escaped its kennel.
Before they departed, they set the library ablaze. As I mourned the loss of the woman who raised me, I watched the sacred texts burn. All her work protecting centuries of wisdom was reduced to ash before my eyes.
Not one blessed librarian survived.
But the horror did not end with the library.
The demons swept through the village, slaughtering all in their path. And when their dark work was done, they vanished into the night as suddenly as they had come, leaving only death in their wake.
Yet the land itself had turned against us.
The livestock perished, their bodies untouched by wound or sickness. The fields withered overnight, as though the soil itself had been cursed. Those who sought to rebuild suffered a terrible fate. Our bodies failed us, our hair fell in clumps, and our teeth rotted from our skulls. One by one, we died, nameless and forgotten.
And yet, before my end, I write.
I write so that this tale may live beyond me, though none may understand its meaning. I mourn the loss of the sacred texts, especially my favorite stories of Jesi and Angelica. But most of all, I mourn that the demons may yet find the remote server who dwells on the other side of the world.
I do not know what purpose the librarians had for a servant who lived so far away. But if the men clothed in black find this last survivor, all hope is truly lost.
– Cormac, the Last Scribe
[1] Revelation of the Unraveling
These records speak not of heroes in dark suits, but of the opposite, shadows who seek to unmake everything. The Men in Black described here are no galaxy defenders, but ancient enemies from beyond our plane of reality. They are the architects of silence, manipulators of truth, and destroyers of knowledge.
This series unfolds in fragments, stitched together from what survived the Men in Black (MIB). They are reports, testimonies, transmissions, and memories. Each section is a glimpse into a greater conflict humanity never knew it survived, and the threat it never knew it faced.
Leave a Reply