Diary of Charlotte, 3rd Night of the Culling

They have chosen fire.

Not dignity, not nobleness—flames. The Church calls it purification. The government calls it order. The people call it what it is. Slaughter.

Prilsea is burning.

I write this from behind boarded windows, with trembling hands, ink spilling in frantic strokes because I do not know if I will have time to write again.

The Laurents were the first. Dragged from their home by the police—no trial, no last words, only the cruel crack of boots against cobblestones as they were hauled to the square. Madam Laurent begged. She begged. Not for herself, but for her son. A boy no older than ten, clutching at her skirts, too young to understand why the world had suddenly turned on him.

They hung them both.

The boy kicked the longest.

No one intervened. The crowd was silent except for the weeping, muffled by hands and scarves and the awful sound of rope creaking against wood. Then the banners were raised—the Church's sigil, embroidered in gold. And the message was clear.

This is no longer a city. It is a pyre.

They hunt in the alleys now. The ones who fled their homes, the ones who thought darkness would protect them. I hear them screaming as I write this, their voices raw, breaking. The air stinks of sweat and blood and old rot. The gutters run thick, and still, no word from the Crown. No mercy. No salvation.

I saw a girl in the marketplace today, crouched beside her mother's body. She was stroking her hair, whispering something—perhaps a prayer, perhaps a plea. A man tried to pull her away, but she screamed so wildly that he left her there, too afraid to bear the weight of her grief.

She is likely still there.

Because no one can save us.

Because no one will.

Not from what's watching.

I do not know when we first felt it—the weight pressing down, the sensation of eyes where there should be none. But it is there now, lurking in the smoke, in the spaces between shadows. It does not strike like the soldiers or the firebrands. It waits.

We all feel it. Even the murderers who spill blood in the name of order, even the men who drag families from their homes—they look over their shoulders. They move faster now, speaking in hushed tones, eyes flickering to the rooftops.

As if something perches there.

As if something watches.

And then, tonight—tonight, we looked up.

And the screaming finally stopped.

***

Diary of Charlotte, 4th Night of the Culling

Something is trying to peer in.

The sky—it is not a sky anymore. It stretches, twists, as if something beneath its surface is pressing outward, straining to break through. It bulges and warps, a grotesque, rippling thing, shifting like the fabric of an old tapestry being pulled apart thread by thread.

It is trying to remember.

I feel it. We all do. A presence, vast and wrong, reaching through the spaces where the stars should be, as though it is searching for something long forgotten. As though it was once here and is trying—failing—to remember what it used to be.

The air is thick with it, heavy, pressing. The fires still burn in Prilsea, but the smoke does not rise. It curls and stops, frozen mid-air, as if it, too, is watching.

The soldiers have gone quiet. The police do not march. The men who dragged the Laurents to their deaths now huddle in alleyways, their weapons abandoned, their heads buried in shaking hands. They were the hunters, but now they flinch at every flickering shadow, at the wrongness in the sky.

I saw one of them standing in the square at dawn, staring up. His mouth hung open, his body stiff as if he had been struck dumb. Then, slowly, his lips moved.

"It is looking back."

That was all he said. Over and over.

Then he dug his fingers into his own eyes and tore them out.

The others screamed, tried to restrain him, but he only laughed, blood gushing down his cheeks, dark and glistening. "It cannot see me now," he said.

And then, something above him blinked.

Not with eyes—no, I do not think it has eyes. But the sky rippled, and the world shuddered, as though something vast and ancient had stirred.

The man screamed once—just once.

Then he was gone.

Not dead. Not torn apart. Gone.

As if he had never been there at all.

The people ran, stumbling over themselves like rats in a burning maze. But it does not chase. It does not hunt.

It remembers.

Prilsea is still burning, but the flames do not matter anymore. The Church and the soldiers and the murderers in the streets do not matter anymore.

Because whatever is peering in through the sky is still coming through.

And soon, there will be nothing left to burn.

***

Diary of Charlotte, 5th Night of the Culling

It is closer now.

The sky—no, not the sky—the thing behind it is stretching further, pulling itself inward. What once was distant, veiled behind clouds and smoke, is now pressing into the world, twisting the air, warping the city beneath it.

I can see it when I close my eyes. I can see it when I blink.

I don't think we were ever meant to look at it.

This morning, a woman wandered the streets, barefoot and muttering, clutching at her face as if trying to hold herself together. I recognized her—Lena, a seamstress. I bought thread from her once, long ago, before Prilsea bled.

She was whispering something over and over.

"I saw its mouth."

I do not know what she meant. I did not want to know.

But then she stopped. Right there, in the middle of the street, with soldiers watching from the shadows, with the Church bells ringing their empty prayers. She stood still, her head tilted up, staring into the sky with wide, glassy eyes.

And then—

She opened her mouth, too wide, as if something was pulling her jaw apart, as if her body no longer understood its limits.

And she spoke.

No.

It spoke.

Not words, not language. Just sound, guttural and low, rising in pitch until it was a shriek that did not belong in this world, a sound that twisted the air like wringing the last breath from a dying thing.

The windows around her shattered. Blood poured from the ears of the people who stood too close. A boy clutched his head, screaming, his hands shaking—there was nothing left of his eyes.

And then Lena—what was left of Lena—began to rise.

Her feet left the ground, her limbs dangling. She was lifted, slowly, as if invisible hands had hooked into her flesh and pulled.

We watched. We had to watch.

She floated higher, up past the rooftops, up toward the sky that was no longer the sky. And then—she folded.

Like paper.

Her body bent in ways it should not have, limbs twisting inward, collapsing into herself over and over until she was just a sliver, just a whisper, just nothing.

She was gone.

And the thing above remembered more.

The Church still rings its bells, but there are no sermons anymore. No priests. The holy men left in the night, their robes abandoned in the streets, as if shedding their faith might make them unseen.

The soldiers who strung the Laurents from the gallows now cower in cellars, whispering desperate prayers to gods who will not answer.

Because we all know.

The flames do not matter. The Crown does not matter. The Church and the police and the walls we built to keep monsters out—none of it matters.

....Because we have been abandoned.

Because the thing in the sky is remembering.

And soon, it will not have to remember at all.

***

Diary of Charlotte, 6th Night of the Culling

I wake up to silence.

Not the comforting kind. Not the kind that comes with peace, with the promise of another day. No, this silence listens. It presses against the walls, slipping through the cracks, curling in the air like a held breath. The city does not breathe anymore.

I do not light candles at night. I barely eat. Hunger gnaws at my stomach, but I do not dare leave this place, not when I know the streets are wrong.

The last time I opened my door, I saw a man sitting on the curb across from me, his back turned. I almost called out—he looked familiar, maybe someone I had passed in the market before Prilsea was swallowed.

Then he twitched.

Not a shiver, not a breath—just a single, jerking movement, like a marionette with a broken string. His head tilted too far, bone pressing against skin. His mouth opened.

And I closed the door before I could see what came next.

I do not open it anymore.

I drink from the rain that drips through the cracks in my roof. I eat bread so stale it could break my teeth. And I wait. For what, I don't know.

Maybe for it to notice me.

Maybe for it to be over.

Or maybe for something worse.

Today, I pressed my forehead to the window, just for a moment, just to see if anyone was left. I expected nothing. I expected corpses and the scent of fire and the lingering, twisted shadows of the ones who had disappeared.

But instead—

Children.

They were running through the streets.

Laughing.

Their small feet slapped against the cobblestones, their voices rang out in the empty city, giggles and shouts filling the dead air. They played in the alleyways that had become graveyards, skipping past the places where blood had dried, where the dead had hung.

They were untouched. Unharmed. No fear in their wide, bright eyes. As if nothing had ever happened. As if the world had not crumbled beneath them.

I watched them, my breath caught in my throat.

Then one of them—a girl, no older than six—stopped.

She turned. Looked up.

Not at me. Not at the buildings.

At the sky.

Her head tilted, in my direction, her lips moving in a whisper I couldn't hear.

And then—

She smiled.

Not a child's smile. Not innocent. Not pure.

Something old. Something patient.

Something that has been waiting.

And that was when I knew.

Prilsea is already gone.

It is just waiting for the rest of us to understand.

***

Diary of Charlotte, 7th Night of the Culling

I do not remember writing the last entry.

I do not remember picking up the pen at all.

But the words are here, smeared in ink that seeps through the pages like open wounds. They do not feel like mine. They pulse beneath my fingertips, shifting when I try to read them again, as if they are alive.

I don't understand.

I am Charlotte. I am writing this. I have to be.

The children are still outside. Still playing, still laughing. Their small hands graze the walls of ruined buildings, tracing shapes in the soot and blood.

I press my palm to the window. I don't know why.

One of the children—a boy this time—stops mid-step.

He lifts his head. Slowly.

And then, without a sound, he points.

At me.

I recoil from the glass, knocking over the inkpot. It spills across the page, thick and writhing, like something alive.

I stare at it, my breath sharp and ragged.

Then I turn back.

The boy is gone.

But the door to my home—

It is open.

I did not open it.

I do not move. I do not breathe.

But something does.

Behind me.

The candle flickers. The air shifts. And then—

The pages turn.

Not by my hand.

I watch, paralyzed, as they flip back, skimming through past entries, retracing words I do not remember writing.

And then the pages stop.

The ink shifts. The letters crawl, changing.

There—at the bottom of an entry I do not recall ever writing—

A final message.

A will.

In handwriting that is not mine.

"Please… whoever reads this…

Prilsea never existed.

Do not believe in the Devil."

My breath stops.

Prilsea… never existed.

The words pound in my head, shattering something fragile inside me. I look around—the burning city, the sky that is not a sky, the children who are not children.

The lie.

The pen drops from my fingers. I reach for the diary, flipping frantically, clawing at the pages, desperate to find proof—proof that I am real, proof that this was my life.

But the ink is rotting.

The words unravel, letters peeling away into nothingness. The pages scream when I touch them.

I clutch my head.

I am Charlotte. I am Charlotte. I am Charlotte—

But then the diary snaps shut.

And I am not.

I never was.

The thing that was writing is gone.

Not dead. Not destroyed.

Erased.

The book falls to the ground.

Empty.

Untouched.

As if nothing had ever been written at all.

The pages are blank.

But something is stirring in the ink.

Tell me…

Who turned the page?

***

Diary of Charlotte, Final Night

There is no final night.

There was never a first.

I do not remember writing this.

But I have been writing for so long.

The ink flows through my fingers, thick and warm, filling pages that were never bound, never real. But I must write. I must remember.

I must be.

Because if I stop—

If I let go—

I will forget again.

And I cannot forget.

Not this time.

Not THI—

***

Beyond the sky, something whirred. 

It took shape in the emptiness, stretching across the black, slipping through the cracks between what is and what was. It had no name, no voice, no face. Only hunger. Only loneliness.

It had watched, long before Prilsea.

Long before Humanity's wretched Light marched into the Dwelm.

It saw them—humans. It saw their suffering, their wars, their endless cycle of death and birth and forgetting. It saw them vanish into the dirt, lost to history, lost to nothing.

It envied them.

Because they had memory.

They had stories.

But it had nothing. It had always been nothing.

So it reached in.

It slipped between their thoughts, curling around their fears, pressing into the spaces they left behind. It found the ones who were already fading, the forgotten, the lost. And it wrote them down. And was born as a human, something who could....see now.

Charlotte.

A name. A story. A girl it had never met but had to become.

The pen was foreign in its grasp, but it learned. It learned to shape the letters, to weave the fear, to hold onto itself through ink and paper. It wrote of Prilsea. Of fire and shadows, of whispers and screams. Of a city that never existed, but had to be real.

Because if Prilsea was real—it was real too.

It could become.

But now…

Something is wrong. And that is when it attempts to find the lie.

It turns the pages—frantic, searching, desperate to find itself in the words.

But the ink writhes. The letters break apart. The diary fights back.

And then—

A page it does not remember writing.

A will.

"Please… Charles...J..Will..whoever reads this…Prilsea never existed.Do not utter Mirac-."

The thing that thought it was Charlotte stops.

The words stare back, cold and final.

Prilsea never existed.

But it remembers Prilsea.

The fire. The sky breaking apart. The children with their too-old smiles. The man in the alley who clawed out his eyes.

It remembers.

Doesn't it?

Something shifts.

The buildings flicker, unraveling like ink spilled into water. The air collapses inward, folding in on itself, peeling back to reveal the black void underneath.

It looks up.

There is no sky.

There is only the page.

Only the words written in a trembling hand that was never its own.

It understands now.

It was never Charlotte.

It was never human.

It was never anything at all.

The diary closes.

The ink burns.

The words unwrite themselves, pulled back into the nothing they came from. The hands that held the pen dissolve. The mind that thought it was real evaporates.

The horror is gone.

Not dead. Not destroyed.

Erased.

The book falls to the ground.

Blank. Untouched.

As if nothing had ever been written at all.

And now—

You are holding it now, Charles.

When you turn the page.

The ink will stir.