My name is Isorn, and I am the Church's chief scholar.
I used reason to consume a fragment of an Outer God. The experiment succeeded, and I failed.
I haven't gone mad, but my very existence has become a source of contamination. Anyone who comes near me will mutate, go insane, and die.
The Church wants to erase me. The cult wants me to descend.
I fled into the wilderness and used seventeen lives to calculate the truth: I am not the source of the contamination. I am a sign that this world is about to rot.
And before me, this sign had already appeared seven times.
Each previous version of me chose to stitch the wound closed with their own body.
I am the eighth.
But this time, I don't want to be just a patch.
I want to ask the eyes deep in the void:
You've been watching all this time. Have you ever calculated your odds of losing?
