Chapter 9 — Insight

When we're young, we tend to think that our lives are special, unique, and important. We feel that the story that is being woven is about us, and only us, that the spotlight shines on our existence, and on our struggles and triumphs.

But, the sad, cold truth is that none of that is real. Our stories aren't ours. We're merely the latest chapter, and in a way, the least interesting part, in the grand book of humanity, a long and winding tale of countless souls, and countless stories, each one intertwined and interconnected. And, in the vast tapestry of the human experience, each individual thread may be distinct, and beautiful, yet, it is only when weaved together with others that it forms a cohesive, coherent whole.

We're the culmination of a series of tales that began centuries, millennia ago, and will continue after we're long dead. Our stories, the tales that define who we are and what we become, are merely a drop in an ocean, a tiny speck of stardust in an endless, ever-expanding universe, an echo that is soon swallowed up in the cacophony of the cosmic chorus.

But, she was the Origin of Humanity. Of all humans. All of their lives, all of their hopes, and dreams. Their stories, their tragedies, their comedies, and their histories. Every hero, every villain, and everyone else. From the greatest to the lowest.

All of it came from her.

All of it.

And, all of them.

She was their mother. And their sister, at the same time. Their creator and destroyer.

The Alpha.

"Of all the people who have tried to stop me, why are you the one that's the closest to actually doing that?" The Author's voice cut through the heavy silence, and the question that he uttered, the question that he asked her, was a simple one, yet, one that was loaded with a million implications. "Why is it that the mere sight of you is enough to send a shiver of dread down my spine? What makes you so different from the countless other heroes, villains, and creatures that I've vanquished in the past?"

He looked at her, and for the first time in a very, very, long time, he saw his reflection. Not in the shattered pieces of a mirror, or a lake of blood. He saw his reflection in the eyes of his enemy. The one who he hated the most.

A cryptic smile played upon her lips, as though she held the secrets to the universe within her grasp. "It's quite amusing, really," she said, her voice dripping with a sardonic edge. "For someone who's supposedly omnipresent and omniscient, you certainly lack the fundamental knowledge of how things truly work." Her words, tinged with a touch of smugness, hung in the air like a taunt.

She snapped her fingers and a shard of a mirror, the largest among them, rose from the floor. Then, with an elegant twist of her hand, the glass shifted, transforming into a throne, upon which the Queen sat, her expression a blend of superiority and condescension. "I am the First Human, the Mother of Humanity. I am the Original, the Prototype, and the Originator. Everything that humanity is, and everything that it will be, flows from me."

The Queen's words echoed through the space, and the weight of their significance was palpable, even to the non-human entities present.

"And, when you descended to my level," the Queen continued, a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth, "you gave me Insight." With that, she snapped her fingers once more, and the world around her and the Author changed, a ripple of power cascading from her fingertips, reshaping the landscape. Where there was nothing before, now there were chess pieces. Thousands upon thousands of chess pieces, all carved with meticulous care, and arranged on an equally intricate board.

For the Author, his audience became an army of black chess pieces.

And for her, the broken shards became her own soldiers, and they rose from the ground to form an army that was her equal, a legion that mirrored his in both strength and stature. "This is your audience. And these," she gestured to her army of mirror soldiers, their faces blank, their weapons shining in the dim light, "are those who screamed for you to end, a long time ago."

Her army of mirror soldiers moved as one, their bodies shimmering in the eerie glow of the shattered glass that surrounded them. Each soldier, a fragment of her will and power, moved in perfect unison, a choreographed dance of destruction.

"You think you know the true meaning of suffering, the real weight that a man must carry on his shoulders?" The Queen asked, her words cutting through the silence like a knife, her voice dripping with contempt and pity. She rose from her throne, her figure tall and imposing, and walked toward her army, she passed by the rows of mirror soldiers, their faces blank and devoid of any emotion, a stark contrast to her own.

"Let me show you, then, what it truly means to suffer. To endure. To fight. Let me show you what being human is really like." She placed her hand on one of the mirrors, her fingers splayed across its surface, and as the two forces clashed in a deafening symphony of metal and screams, she smiled.

Her soldiers were no match against the black chess pieces.

Each time one of the mirrors was destroyed, another would take its place. They were infinite. They were endless.

Like the stars.

The chess pieces advanced, relentless in their march. Their numbers were great, but so was the will of the Queen.

"These were brothers, fathers, sisters, mothers." Her words were a solemn prayer, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Each fallen warrior was not just a soldier, but a person, a life snuffed out too soon. "These are people, who fought for a future that they would not get to see. People who suffered. These are the men and women that your 'Audience' replaced."

As the battle raged, she stood in the center of it, a pillar of defiance in a sea of despair. "When I pointed my blades at you, it wasn't just for myself, but for every soul that has been touched by your darkness."

With a wave of her hand, she unleashed a barrage of energy, the force of it tearing through the ranks of the enemy. The chess pieces scattered like leaves in the wind, their black forms broken and shattered, the battlefield a mess of chaos and ruin.

Amidst the battlefield, only her and the Author remained.

Just like how it was, a long time ago.

"What are you getting at? Is that your excuse? Your reasoning? You are trying to save humanity? How selfish." He mocked, his words dripping with disdain and cruelty. He was amused at the thought of the Queen and her army, and how futile their struggle against his own forces was.

"Yes, for I am Humanity, and Humanity is Me." She kneeled to the broken pieces of her army, and picked them up one by one, cradling the fragments of their existence in her hands, the jagged edges biting into her palms, drawing crimson rivulets that trailed down her fingers and stained her gown. "Every death, every loss, every sacrifice, every drop of blood shed in the pursuit of victory, was a necessary evil. A stepping stone on the path to a better tomorrow, and not a waste of a precious life." Her voice was a whisper, yet it resonated with the weight of a thousand thunderstorms. "They fought, and died, and bled, so that others could live." Her gaze hardened, her eyes burning with an intensity that was almost tangible.

"Then, let's add a few more sacrifices, shall we?" the Author's lips curled into a malevolent smirk as he uttered those words.

With a wave of his hand, a ripple cascaded through the fractured pieces, and the shards rearranged themselves. The landscape shifted, the sky morphing and the earth bending to his will. Now, the scene reflected a barren, desolate land, devoid of life, of color, of anything but the starkness of his will.

The First Monarch.

This is the name that the Author had bestowed upon the one that had come close to his downfall. He didn't use it, not even in his own mind. Because to call her that, was to give her a title that he had never meant to bestow, to admit that, in her, he had seen a challenge, a rival.

But, in his unconscious mind, the First Monarch was the title that she held, whether he liked it, or not.

The desolate landscape was nothing short of the remnant of her dead world that he had snuffed out, leaving only a wasteland of dust and ash in his wake. Her throne room was no longer the grand and imposing edifice of marble, glass, and crystal it had been. It was a husk, a tomb.

—And in front of that tomb, stood Basim and Jean-Baptiste. In that barren landscape, where nothing lived and nothing moved, the two of them were guided by the golden eyes of the Queen of a Thousand Broken Mirrors that had manifested on their own, directing their steps forward. The golden glow had replaced the color of their iris. Guiding them. Showing them the path.

"But, in front of them, stood the shadow of a boy, or a man, it was impossible to tell. A figure, wreathed in the aura of a storm, its form shifting and indistinct, as if it were a living tempest given shape. Through the flames of devastation and ruin, they saw a stranger covered in hood and robes, his identity concealed behind a veil of something akin to marble. Too perfect. Like the fabric of a dream. Of a nightmare." Fear wrote, crafting the new obstacle, a puppet, for the duo.

—The Witness of Witnesses with whom Basim exchanged words in the cathedral.

The Queen of a Thousand Broken Mirrors, however, reappeared next to Fear, and with a gesture of her hand, she pulled Fear's head against hers. Their forehead collided. An act that would have caused a mortal to lose his consciousness. Yet, she locked her gaze into the very ideal that Fear embodied.

Just like when she nearly defeated him. He—Fear—was uncertain and scared of a human. Again.

He was a god. A monster. The one who taught humanity how to feel terror. But, he was feeling the emotion himself, and that emotion was not fear itself. It was not the terror, nor the anxiety that plagued mortals, no. It was an emotion that only a higher being could ever feel. And that was uncertainty. That was the feeling of not knowing the future. Of not knowing what was going to happen, and that lack of certainty was far more terrifying than anything that could be conjured in the minds of men.

But, she wasn't looking at Fear, the Author, or at herself, or at anything that had to do with the situation that they found themselves in. No. Instead, she looked at something else.

Insight did not come like a blessing. It came like a haunting. Not a number. Not a trait to be accumulated, measured, or mastered.

The more knowledge, the more awareness. And, with awareness, came a crippling fear of the unknown, an inescapable terror that gnawed at the mind.

This is where Insight shined: in the dark recesses of the soul, where nightmares are born. Where horrors beyond imagining lurked, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting. That's where Insight thrived. And the more a man understood the workings of the universe, the greater the terror that awaited him.

Insight was humanity's weapon against ignorance. An armor against the unknown. And, when properly used, a shield to guard against madness.

She was seeing the past of her knight, and the life of her Nameless.

"Did you know that when you descended, it is when I developed that thing, that ability? Insight. My Insight, my knowledge. Something that I could use, and that I passed down to all humans." the Queen murmured to the god's ear, her breath warm and her words dripping with a quiet menace that seemed to vibrate in the air. Her fingers tightened, her grip on him was unrelenting, her knuckles whitening with the strain.

"Every time that you look, I can look too. So, let's look at the story that you've written together. The story that you're currently writing. The story that my last self will live."

But Insight came with a cost. A heavy, heavy price. One that few were willing to pay, and even fewer able to withstand. For, in the end, Insight was a curse. A blessing in disguise, to be sure.

Like breath you didn’t remember taking, like thoughts you’d never spoken aloud—but had always somehow known. Insight peeled back the scaffolding of reality with gentle, surgical cruelty. It didn’t teach. It revealed. There were no thresholds. Only the slow, seeping realization that the world had always been wrong in all the right ways.

And once your eyes adjusted to that lightless truth, they never closed again.

"You shouldn’t be able to manifest like that. You should have died that night." Fear pointed out. It wasn't a question, or a command, or even a statement of curiosity. "I snuffed the candle that kept your flame burning, that night—"

He didn’t finish the sentence.

Because it wasn’t just the First One's legacy crawling beneath the boy’s skin.

It was something worse.

Inheritance.

He had not earned this knowing. No amount of training or study could have granted him access to such forbidden knowledge. Rather, it had descended on him. A gift—or was it a curse?—bestowed from his previous selves, the innumerable iterations of him scattered throughout the endless expanse of time. All his past, present, and future selves converged, sharing a common bond of their ceaseless, tireless pursuit of a singular objective: vanquishing the being that had orchestrated their very existence.

Not as a gift—but as a stain. A sin passed down from a rebel who once tried to kill the Author, to unwrite his name from the foundation of the cosmos. She had failed. But she had survived long enough to plant a seed. And that seed had grown in him.

—There was no need for words. Just the faintest trace of her smile was enough.

"Do you know what you’re looking at?" The Author questioned, a mix of intrigue and a sliver of hesitation creeping into his tone.

His question wasn't meant for Her but for the boy. To his surprise, the kid smiled, as though he knew something the Author did not.

"Not all of it. But enough to hate you correctly." the Nameless replied, a resolute determination in his voice, despite the heavy fatigue that weighed him down. "That is, at the end of the day, more than enough."

She allowed the boy—who was resting within the confine of Her consciousness—to answer.

That shook something. Not in the Author—but in the space around him. As if the architecture of this constructed realm found truth distasteful.

He didn’t need to speak the name of what he saw. Because to name it would be to bring it closer. And even now, on the brink, he understood: some truths live just outside the boundary of speech. Just beyond the mouth of comprehension. They wait. And they listen.

But the boy didn’t flinch. The agony didn’t disappear—but it no longer defined him.

Because Insight was pain. The pain of noticing what no one else was cursed enough to see.

And through it, he saw the Author.

Not as a being. Not even as a monster.

But as a narrative wound.

A trauma in the psyche of the universe. An infection of perspective that whispered to children in their sleep and rewrote their dreams to end in screams.

That was Fear’s true shape.

The absence of the truth. A hole where the light should’ve been.

And that was why he needed stories. Because the best lie was the most beautiful. And the most beautiful lie was the one you lived inside of.

The one you made yourself. The world that bore the weight of your own design. That was his favorite fiction: a reality where everything had an ending.

Where he got to choose the ending.

Because that way, he never had to read the final page.

For the briefest of moments, the false world stuttered, its fabricated perfection marred by an instant of glitch.

From the vision of Basim and Jean-Baptiste joining each other displayed below them to the duo advancing toward unknown lands, everything paused, the colors bleeding into one another in a pixelated blur. Then, just as abruptly, the scene broke in a myriad of shards, scattering like a broken mirror.

The shards of reality danced around the Author, a disintegrating symphony of his meticulously crafted story.

And in that moment, even the Author—a god in the realm of his own pen—looked like a character on the edge of his own story, trapped on a page he couldn’t escape.