As they pressed deeper into the Forest of Bookshelves, the pale phosphorescence was swept away in an instant, replaced by a golden radiance pouring from the Shelf of Truth—the axis around which the world turned.
This was the geometric center of a vast prison of records stretching to the horizon. The roar of destruction outside was severed by an absolute wall of Providence, leaving this space governed by perfect stillness, as if the universe had not yet been born.
The central shelf towered above the rest, its form composed not of wood or stone, but of pure crystallized light. Around it, eerie pale flames flickered—specters stripped of every known color. Standing before the shelf, Koyoi felt the flame within her breast surge toward a breaking point, flickering so violently her vision threatened to dissolve into white.
From the thousands of golden volumes, the echoes of the gods' true, noble names overflowed like falling droplets. Within each drop were etched the vivid memories of the gods who once nourished this land and answered the prayers of its people.
“...Found it. This is the one. This Nameless Volume... it is the Index of Truth the Observers have hidden for millennia.”
Kuon’s voice trembled with a mixture of madness and ecstasy. His prosthetic left eye, unable to bear the weight of truth radiating from the index, began to leak a dark, soot-stained blood from the depths of the pupil.
“Kuon! Stop! That book—there’s something dangerous about it!” Koyoi cried out.
Kuon’s lips twisted in a grimace that mocked his own agony. Without hesitation, he reached for the golden tome with slender fingers. The moment he touched the cover, a thunderous Roar of Providence shook the archive. It was no physical tremor, but a soul-shaking groan—the sound of the world’s very definitions being rewritten.
Koyoi felt the three gods within her drawstring pouch awaken simultaneously, seized by unprecedented shock and awe.
“...Ah. ...No, it can’t be... This is our... our true...”
The murmur from the pouch was a collective gasp of horror, like a final death rattle. They finally understood that the origins they had believed in were a fiction—a narrative twisted and rewritten through countless observations.
As the pages of the Index flipped violently despite the absence of any wind, images projected directly into their minds: the gods in their original beauty, and the cold records of the Observers who had dismantled them into mere components. Overwhelmed by the deluge of information, Koyoi sank to her knees upon the dirt. She pressed her palms against the earth and let out a long, heavy breath.
“...I can’t believe it. The gods... from the very beginning...”
Koyoi could only remain there as tears overflowed, rooted by the shock. According to the records, the gods were never natural beings. They were living vessels of record, intentionally cultured by the Observers from the seeds of excessive prayers left in the cracks of Providence.
Those monsters had used the gods’ pure love as fuel for the world, physically dismantling them under the guise of thinning the herd and recycling the remains as components for their own civilization. The laws of this beautiful world were nothing more than a massive cycle of exploitation, built upon the sacrifices of both gods and men.