28 Feb The Nether Codex

Part I

It is with reluctance and no small degree of trepidation that I commit to paper my account of The Nether Codex, a manuscript so steeped in obscure legend and ill fortune that many believe it ought never to have existed. The author, R.J. Carroway, remains an enigma to scholars and occultists alike, a figure whose life seems as veiled and unknowable as the cryptic writings attributed to him. What is known of Carroway is scant—an antiquarian by trade and an obsessive seeker of esoteric truths, he vanished abruptly in the early 19th century, leaving behind only his dreaded manuscript. Its infamy persisted through the centuries, whispered about in arcane circles as both a fount of forbidden knowledge and a harbinger of doom for those foolish enough to possess it.

I first encountered mention of The Nether Codex during my undergraduate studies, when a withered lecturer of antiquities hinted at the book in hushed tones. He described it as a literary chimera, part memoir and part treatise on realms beyond mortal comprehension. Yet it was not until decades later, at a dilapidated estate sale in a forgotten hamlet on the New England coast, that I stumbled across the cursed tome itself. Its discovery was almost mundane—a dusty artifact in a battered leather trunk among moth-eaten clothes and tarnished heirlooms. The auctioneer, a man too concerned with the trivialities of profit to comprehend the monstrosity he peddled, was only too eager to offload the item.

The codex was wrapped in an unassuming oilcloth, yet even through this protective layer, I felt a chill of unease as I held it. Upon unwrapping it, I was struck by its physicality—its leathery cover was oddly supple, as though the material had not fully dried, and bore the faint aroma of decay. No title marked its exterior, only a strange sigil embossed in gold that seemed to shift in the corner of my vision, refusing to be captured by direct scrutiny.

Inside, the pages were brittle and yellowed with age, their margins littered with inscrutable annotations in a cramped, jagged hand. The ink—if ink it was—had faded in places to a peculiar, iridescent hue that caught the dim light like oil on water. The text itself was an unsettling amalgam of half-formed thoughts, cryptic references to places and entities unknown to any earthly record, and fragmented passages in an archaic dialect I could not place. Its very structure seemed designed to disorient the reader; paragraphs began abruptly and ended without resolution, leaving one suspended in a fog of uncertainty.

As I skimmed its pages for the first time, I became aware of an intangible pressure in the room, as though the air itself grew heavier. My study, usually a haven of reason and order, seemed subtly altered. Shadows clung stubbornly to the corners, and a peculiar draft stirred the curtains though the windows were firmly latched. For the briefest moment, I thought I heard a whisper—not spoken aloud, but inside my skull—a faint susurration in a language I could not understand.

I told myself these were trifles, tricks of an overtaxed mind, but the unease lingered. As the days passed, The Nether Codex haunted my thoughts with a peculiar insistence. I would sit at my desk, resolving to study other matters, yet my gaze would inevitably drift toward the cursed book as though drawn by an invisible force. Its presence became a weight in my home, both literal and symbolic, and I found myself unable to banish the irrational fear that I had invited something into my life that defied comprehension.

* * * * * *

Though my initial acquisition of The Nether Codex was marked by the banality of its circumstances, its true nature began to manifest only once it resided in my possession. Its unsettling characteristics revealed themselves not in a single moment of revelation but as a cumulative sense of wrongness that grew with each passing day.

The book itself was an artifact of grotesque craftsmanship. Its binding, a disturbingly supple leather of indeterminate origin, seemed to retain a faint warmth, as though it had been recently harvested from a living source. A faint, acrid smell, reminiscent of both decay and burnt hair, lingered about it, an odor that resisted even the cleansing balm of fresh air.

The sigil embossed upon its cover was the first element to arrest my attention. Though at first glance it appeared to be a geometric design—an intricate series of concentric circles bisected by angular lines—prolonged observation revealed a disquieting fluidity to the glyph. Its edges seemed to shimmer in the corner of my vision, and I could swear that its alignment subtly shifted whenever I averted my gaze. On more than one occasion, I closed my eyes only to see the sigil imprinted upon the darkness behind my lids.

The interior of The Nether Codex was no less perturbing. The pages, brittle and yellowed, exuded a faint luminescence under candlelight, as though they were imbued with some latent energy. Written in a mixture of cryptic symbols and fragmented prose, the text defied immediate understanding. At first, it appeared to be a haphazard collection of unrelated phrases, yet as I studied it, I perceived a strange, internal rhythm that seemed to defy conventional grammar. Words such as “chrysalath,” “Thaum’enhar,” and “the Threshold” emerged repeatedly, though their precise meaning eluded me. There were even passages that seemed to crawl across the page as I read them, an optical illusion, surely, but one that left me unnerved.

I would not have persisted in my study had I not been compelled by a growing obsession—a need to understand the incomprehensible. I convinced myself that these irregularities could be explained by the ravages of time or the quirks of an eccentric author. Yet, as I pored over the codex, strange sensations began to take root within me. At times, I felt a faint vibration beneath my fingers, as though the book itself thrummed with an inaudible pulse. The air in my study grew heavier when the codex lay open, the faintest hints of a whisper brushing against my ears but never resolving into words.

Most alarming were the shadows. Though the lighting in my study had remained constant, the corners of the room seemed darker than they ought to be, as though they absorbed rather than reflected light. At night, I became certain that faint shapes moved in my periphery—indistinct figures that vanished the moment I turned to face them. Once, while turning a particularly delicate page, I felt a sensation akin to a breath against the nape of my neck. When I spun around, the room was empty, though the sensation lingered, prickling at my nerves.

The codex’s hold over me deepened, not through any overtly malevolent act but by the steady erosion of my confidence in reality. I found myself staring at the sigil on the cover for hours, feeling as though it stared back. Each time I resolved to set it aside, the thought of abandoning it filled me with an unaccountable dread, as though I had come too close to something profound to turn away.

In those first days, I assured myself that these phenomena were merely products of an overactive imagination, a confluence of fatigue and the power of suggestion. But even now, as I write this account, I know those explanations are lies I told myself to maintain my sanity. The codex was not merely a book; it was a presence—an entity, perhaps—that had insinuated itself into my life. Its influence was subtle but inexorable, and it was only the beginning.

Part II

It was during the second week of my reluctant study that The Nether Codex began to reveal its true horrors. What had initially seemed a fractured and chaotic collection of words and symbols began, against all reason, to coalesce into something intelligible. I did not so much decipher the text as feel its meaning bloom in my mind, unbidden and unwanted. The prose—if such a term could be applied to its alien structure—was steeped in a vile poetry that seemed to bypass language itself, lodging its truths in the marrow of my bones.

Chief among the passages that gripped me were those that recounted the author’s obsession with what he termed “The Threshold.” R.J. Carroway spoke of it with both reverence and dread, describing it as a locus of transformation and ruin, a liminal space where the boundaries of reality grew thin and the unspeakable horrors beyond seeped through. The account claimed that he had discovered this phenomenon beneath a coastal cave, deep in the craggy, storm-battered cliffs of some unnamed New England shore. He wrote of a pulsing, organic barrier he called the Veil, an entity that separated this world from another—a realm where geometry writhed and time held no dominion.

The codex was not written in a linear fashion; its chapters, if they could be called such, shifted and rearranged themselves as I turned the pages. A passage I remembered finding near the book’s beginning now appeared closer to the end, its context warped by the new surroundings. This shifting structure seemed deliberate, designed to unsettle the reader and prevent comprehension from settling into anything stable. Yet certain details were unchanging. Always, the text returned to the Threshold and the beings Carroway had glimpsed beyond it.

His descriptions of these entities were maddening in their vagueness, though I suspect that no human words could adequately describe their forms. He spoke of creatures “whose limbs were made of unknowable angles” and “whose flesh shimmered like the surface of a shattered mirror under black water.” Their movements were described as slow yet impossibly fast, their gazes as piercing despite lacking eyes. At one point, Carroway wrote, “To see them in their entirety is to unmake the mind. Their forms are meant for realms where our laws of thought hold no sway.”

It was not merely the descriptions that unsettled me but the growing sense that I had encountered these beings somewhere before. Their fragmented appearances haunted my dreams, though I could never recall them in full upon waking. I would rise with a cold sweat, the memory of gleaming, shifting shapes slipping through my fingers like sand. Worse still, I began to feel as though I was being watched—not by an unseen presence in my home but by something far more remote. It was as if my reading had cast a light into an abyss, and something in that void had turned its gaze upon me.

As the text progressed, it became clear that Carroway’s descent into madness had been gradual but inevitable. His early entries were marked by curiosity, even exhilaration, as he documented his discoveries. But as his explorations deepened, his tone grew fragmented and desperate, his words tangled in contradictions. He spoke of hearing voices in the cave, of faintly luminous sigils etched into the walls, and of the relentless pull of the Threshold. He claimed to have crossed it only once, though his descriptions of the crossing were erratic and incomplete.

What unsettled me most was Carroway’s insistence that the Threshold was not merely a place but a sentient force. “It is not a gate to be opened or closed,” he wrote, “but a wound, a hunger that consumes all who approach it. To know it is to be claimed by it.” His warnings, scrawled in feverish handwriting, seemed to pulse with an urgency that transcended time.

As I read these passages, I could not escape the feeling that the codex itself was alive. The pages seemed to vibrate faintly beneath my fingertips, and at times, the text would blur and rearrange itself as though it were responding to my thoughts. The very fabric of reality seemed to bend under the codex’s influence.

By the end of the third week, I could no longer distinguish between my own thoughts and those planted by the text. The Threshold, the beings beyond it, and Carroway’s frantic warnings had etched themselves into my psyche. I resolved to put the book aside, to lock it away and cleanse myself of its influence. Yet the idea of abandoning it filled me with a dread far deeper than any rational mind should bear.

It was as though The Nether Codex had become part of me, and I, in turn, had become part of whatever monstrous truths it contained.

* * * * * *

The moment I resolved to set The Nether Codex aside, I realized just how thoroughly it had ensnared me. Though I locked it away in a desk drawer, I felt its presence as surely as though it remained in my hands. It was as if the book’s influence had seeped into the walls of my home, saturating every shadowed corner and silent creak. This was no longer mere paranoia; the manifestations of its power were undeniable.

That night, I experienced the first of what would become many nightmares. I dreamed of a vast, undulating expanse where the horizon twisted in impossible ways, folding and overlapping like the surface of water stirred by an unseen force. In this alien landscape stood towering figures whose forms seemed to shift as I tried to comprehend them. They loomed impossibly tall, their surfaces glimmering with what might have been eyes or perhaps holes into some black void. When they turned their attention toward me, a terrible pressure crushed my chest, and I woke gasping, the echo of their presence clinging to my waking thoughts like a shroud.

But the horrors did not confine themselves to sleep. The next day, I noticed subtle distortions in my surroundings. The furniture in my study appeared ever so slightly misaligned, as though it had shifted during the night. Objects that I had carefully placed seemed to rearrange themselves, and the air carried a faint hum, just at the edge of perception. When I approached the desk where the codex lay locked away, the hum grew louder, vibrating through my skull in a way that defied natural explanation.

Worse still were the shadows. In the dim hours of twilight, they seemed to lengthen and writhe, creeping across the walls and floors. The rational part of my mind insisted that this was a trick of the light, but reason was a flimsy shield against the dread that gripped me. Once, as I crossed the threshold into my study, I saw a shadow move against the grain of the fading sunlight. It darted along the floor and up the wall, vanishing into a corner where no object stood to cast it. For the first time, I felt that I was no longer alone.

The nights grew worse. The dreams became more vivid, more intrusive, until they no longer felt like dreams at all but glimpses into some other reality. I saw the Threshold as Carroway had described it—a pulsating barrier of flesh and light that throbbed with a rhythm both organic and mechanical. Voices emanated from beyond it, whispers that seemed to speak directly into my mind, urging me to approach. In these visions, I felt an overwhelming compulsion to touch the Threshold, though I knew instinctively that doing so would unravel me.

In my waking hours, the manifestations grew bolder. On several occasions, I heard faint whispers in the empty rooms of my home. They were indistinct, like the rustling of wind through dead leaves, yet laden with an undeniable malice. Mirrors became a particular source of unease. Their surfaces no longer reflected the room as it was but seemed to distort the space, elongating it into unfamiliar proportions. My own reflection grew strange, my features subtly warped and unrecognizable in ways I could not pinpoint. Once, as I passed by a mirror in the hallway, I caught a glimpse of movement behind me—something tall and thin, just out of sight. When I turned, there was nothing there, but the sensation of being watched remained.

The most horrifying moment came late one night as I lay in bed, desperately trying to calm my fraying nerves. The house was silent, save for the occasional creak of old wood settling in the cool air. Just as I began to drift into a restless slumber, I heard a sound that froze the blood in my veins: the faint scrape of nails—no, claws—against the floorboards of the hallway outside my bedroom. It was deliberate, rhythmic, and unmistakably real. I lay paralyzed, listening as the sound drew closer, each scrape accompanied by a soft, wheezing breath.

The noise stopped just outside my door. For an eternity, I lay in the dark, every muscle taut, waiting for the inevitable. But nothing came. When the first light of dawn crept through the window, I forced myself to rise and inspect the hallway. The floor was empty, but faint scratches marred the wood, and a strange, acrid smell lingered in the air.

By now, I understood the truth that I had tried so desperately to deny: The Nether Codex was no mere book. It was a doorway, a beacon that had drawn something unspeakable into my life. And no matter how tightly I tried to shut that door, whatever had come through was already here.

Part III

By the fourth week, it became impossible to deny the pull of The Nether Codex. Every rational instinct screamed at me to destroy it, to fling the cursed thing into the fireplace and let its secrets burn to ash. Yet the idea of doing so filled me with dread. The book’s presence had grown inescapable; it was no longer merely an object, but a force. To destroy it, I feared, would not sever its hold but deepen it, binding me irrevocably to the horrors it contained.

The dreams, now unrelenting, carried me night after night to the same place—a jagged cliffside overlooking a turbulent sea. The air there was thick with salt and rot, and the cries of distant gulls seemed warped, their calls elongated into mournful wails. At the base of the cliff lay a cave, its entrance a black maw that seemed to inhale the light around it. Though I knew it to be a dream, the sensations were unnervingly vivid: the sharp bite of the wind, the grit of sand beneath my feet, and the echoing pull of that darkened cavern.

The codex itself confirmed the dream’s veracity. As I pored over its shifting pages, I found detailed descriptions of this very cave. Carroway had written of it as the “Threshold’s Mouth,” the place where he first encountered the Veil. His words were feverish, chaotic, as though written in haste or under duress: “The cave breathes—it calls to those who dare approach, not with words but with the silent promise of revelation. It is not the Veil itself, but the harbinger of it. To enter is to abandon all hope of ignorance.”

I became consumed by the need to find it. The rational part of me balked at the idea, but reason had long since lost its power to sway me. The codex had planted a seed of compulsion within me, and that seed had taken root. I knew, with a certainty that defied logic, that the cave was real, and that it lay somewhere along the craggy coastline Carroway described. The dreams were not merely dreams; they were a summons.

I began my search under the guise of a weekend excursion, telling no one of my true intentions. I drove north along the New England coast, scouring maps and old maritime logs for any mention of a cave matching the codex’s descriptions. My journey took me to forgotten villages and isolated shores, places where the modern world seemed a distant memory. Each inquiry was met with skepticism or blank stares, save for one: an old fisherman in a weathered harbor town who paled at my question and muttered something about “the cursed cliffs.”

“They say things crawl in those caves,” he rasped, his voice barely audible over the crashing waves. “Things that don’t belong in this world. You’d do well to stay clear of them, sir.”

Despite his warning—or perhaps because of it—I pressed on. His directions led me to a desolate stretch of coastline, where jagged cliffs loomed over a churning sea. The path to the cave was treacherous, little more than a narrow trail carved into the rock by centuries of relentless wind and tide. As I descended, the air grew heavier, charged with a strange, electric stillness that seemed to hush the world around me.

The cave’s entrance was precisely as I had seen it in my dreams—a gaping void framed by weathered stone, its edges marked with faint, almost imperceptible carvings. The symbols were not unlike those in The Nether Codex, their lines worn smooth by time but still faintly visible. As I stepped closer, I felt a deep vibration beneath my feet, as though the earth itself pulsed with a hidden rhythm.

Inside, the cave was suffocatingly dark. The walls were slick with moisture, their surfaces glinting faintly in the dim light of my lantern. The deeper I ventured, the more unnatural the space became. The tunnel seemed to twist and warp, its dimensions subtly wrong in ways I could not articulate. My steps echoed strangely, as though the sound were being bent and distorted by the cave itself.

Then I saw it: the Veil. It was not as I had imagined it—no curtain of mist or shimmering light—but a pulsating, organic mass that filled the tunnel ahead. Its surface throbbed with an uneven rhythm, exuding a faint, sickly glow that illuminated the surrounding walls. It was both beautiful and grotesque, its colors shifting in ways that defied the spectrum of human vision. The air around it was alive with whispers, faint and unintelligible, but undeniably real.

I should have turned back. Every instinct screamed at me to flee, to abandon this cursed place and leave the codex behind forever. But I could not. The Veil called to me, its pull as irresistible as gravity. It was not merely a barrier but a presence—a living, breathing entity that exuded both menace and promise. And in that moment, I understood Carroway’s madness, for I too felt the inexorable need to cross it.

* * * * * *

The Veil pulsed before me, with its own alien rhythm. It was not of this world. That much was certain. Its surface writhed with a texture that defied comprehension, shifting between a fleshy, organic sheen and a crystalline, unyielding hardness. The colors it emitted—sickly greens, bruised purples, and shades I could not name—played across the tunnel walls, casting everything in a grotesque, distorted light.

I could not move at first. My legs trembled, my hands gripping the lantern so tightly that my knuckles ached. I wanted to turn and flee, but the compulsion that had drawn me here held me fast. The whispers that had haunted my dreams were louder now, emanating from the Veil itself. They were not words, not in any human sense, but their intent was clear. The Veil wanted me to step forward. It needed me to cross.

With halting steps, I approached, each breath burning in my chest, the lantern’s flickering light merging with the unnatural glow. The closer I came, the more the Veil’s whispers filled my mind, intertwining with my own thoughts until I could no longer tell where they ended and I began.

When I reached out, my hand trembled, stopping just short of the surface. A strange warmth radiated from it, pulsing in tandem with its rhythmic throbs. For a fleeting moment, I felt as though it recoiled, as if the Veil itself were hesitant to make contact. Then, with a final surge of inexplicable courage—or madness—I pressed my palm against it.

Reality unraveled. The instant I touched the Veil, the tunnel vanished. I was torn from the world I knew, hurled through an abyss of incomprehensible chaos. Shapes and colors swirled around me, geometric forms that twisted and collapsed in ways that defied natural law. My body was no longer my own—I was disassembled, scattered into fragments of sensation and thought, only to be reassembled in a place that should not exist.

I found myself standing on a vast plain of shifting, glimmering material. The ground beneath me was neither solid nor liquid, yet it supported my weight. The sky above was a roiling mass of darkness shot through with streaks of impossible light, casting the landscape in a disorienting, ever-changing glow. In the distance, towering structures rose and fell like waves, their forms constantly morphing.

I felt their presence before I saw them. The beings Carroway had described were here, their forms half-glimpsed through the warped air. They were vast, their limbs impossibly long, their surfaces gleaming with a strange, wet sheen. They moved with an unnatural fluidity, as though they were not bound by the constraints of time or space. Each step they took rippled through the ground, sending waves of distortion toward me.

I tried to turn away, to shield my eyes, but the effort was futile. My gaze was drawn to them, compelled to take in their entirety despite the agony it caused. Their forms defied rationality, shifting between dimensions in ways that made my stomach churn and my mind rebel. They were not creatures, not in any earthly sense. They were embodiments of some higher order of existence, their presence a mockery of the fragile constructs of reality I had once trusted.

One of them turned its attention toward me. Though it had no eyes, I felt its gaze pierce me, stripping away all pretense of individuality. In that moment, I understood Carroway’s warning: to see them was to be undone. My thoughts unraveled, my memories scattering like ash in the wind. I was no longer myself but a fragment of something vast and incomprehensible.

Through the cacophony of sensation and thought, a single truth crystallized: I was not meant to be here. This place was not for me, nor for any human mind. The Veil was not a gateway to knowledge but a prison, and I was an intruder in a realm that tolerated no trespassers.

The beings began to move toward me, their forms flickering and stuttering as they crossed the shifting plain. Their approach was deliberate, inevitable, and I knew that if they reached me, I would cease to exist in any meaningful sense. Desperation surged within me, and I turned, fleeing toward the horizon. My legs felt sluggish, as though the ground itself resisted my movements, but I pushed forward, driven by the primal urge to survive.

The Veil appeared before me, a pulsating wound in the fabric of this alien realm. It glowed brighter now, as though it sensed my presence and offered a chance at escape. I hurled myself toward it, ignoring the whispers that clawed at my mind, promising revelations if only I would surrender.

When I plunged through the Veil, the world dissolved once more. My body was torn apart and reassembled in a torrent of pain and disorientation. I awoke sprawled on the rocky floor of the cave, my lantern shattered beside me. The glow of the Veil was gone, and the oppressive air had lifted, but the damage had been done.

I was back in the world I knew, but it no longer felt like home.

Part IV

I do not know how long I lay in that cave, the remnants of my shattered lantern flickering feebly beside me. My body ached with a profound weariness, as though every fiber of my being had been stretched to its breaking point and hastily reassembled. The air felt thin and lifeless, and the silence was suffocating, broken only by the faint echo of dripping water in the depths. Yet even this quiet, familiar world could not soothe me, for I knew it was no longer the same.

I stumbled from the cave, dragging myself out into the pale light of dawn. The cliffs, the sea, and the wind—everything appeared untouched, yet it all felt wrong. Colors seemed dimmer, as though drained of their vibrancy, and the landscape held an unnatural stillness, like a painting stripped of life. The horizon wavered in my vision, a faint, shifting distortion that I could not banish. My own hands trembled before me, their skin pale and mottled, as though the blood had forgotten how to flow.

The drive home was a blur, my mind consumed by fragments of the alien world I had glimpsed. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the beings again—those impossible shapes writhing and shimmering in ways that defied comprehension. Their presence lingered in my mind, not as a memory but as a stain, a mark of something that had fundamentally altered me. I could not rid myself of the sensation that they were still watching, their gaze extending beyond the Veil to follow me even now.

My house, once a sanctuary, now felt like a tomb. The shadows that had haunted me before now seemed to press closer, their edges sharp and menacing. The mirrors, in particular, had become unbearable. Their surfaces rippled and shifted when I passed, as though reflecting not the world I inhabited but the one I had fled. I covered them all with sheets, yet even this brought no comfort. The sheets themselves seemed to quiver, as though stirred by unseen hands.

Then came the changes.

At first, they were subtle. My skin grew unnaturally pale, taking on a sickly translucence that revealed veins and tendons in stark detail. My eyes, once clear, became bloodshot and rimmed with darkness, their pupils narrowing unnaturally in bright light. A constant ache settled in my joints, a deep, grinding pain that no rest could ease. It was as though my body were rebelling against itself, unraveling from the inside out.

Worse than the physical changes were the sensations—an unshakable awareness of something alien stirring within me. It was not pain but an intrusion, a presence that coiled through my thoughts like a parasite. I could hear it in the silence, a faint, rhythmic whisper that matched the pulse of the Veil. It spoke no words, yet its meaning was clear: I was no longer alone in my own mind.

I began to avoid the outside world. The thought of speaking to another person filled me with dread, not because I feared their judgment, but because I no longer trusted myself. My voice, when I did attempt to speak, sounded hollow and foreign, as though emerging from a distant place. Even the simplest words felt unnatural on my tongue, their meanings slipping away as soon as they were uttered.

As the days passed, I became convinced that my reflection, even covered, was watching me. The faint ripple beneath the sheets grew more pronounced, and I often caught glimpses of movement out of the corner of my eye. One night, driven by a reckless need for answers, I tore the covering from the mirror in my study. What stared back at me was not my reflection. The face was mine, but the eyes were not—they gleamed with an unnatural light, cold and predatory, their pupils sharp as blades. The mouth twisted into a faint smile, though I had not moved.

I recoiled, knocking the mirror from the wall. It shattered on the floor, its shards glinting in the dim light. Yet even in pieces, the reflection remained. Each fragment showed the same distorted image, those gleaming eyes fixed upon me. I fled the room, slamming the door behind me, but the feeling of that gaze never left.

By the end of the week, I could no longer deny the truth. The Nether Codex had not simply shown me another world—it had made me part of it. The Veil was no longer confined to the cave; it was within me, woven into the fabric of my being. I was becoming something else, something no longer bound by the laws of this reality. And though I had escaped the Threshold, I knew it would not let me go.

* * * * * *

Desperation drove me back to The Nether Codex. I had locked it away after my return from the cave, fearing its power, but the whispers in my mind would not abate. They spoke not in words but in emotions, in concepts that bled into my thoughts like ink spreading through water. It was as though the codex itself was calling to me, urging me to open its pages one final time.

With trembling hands, I retrieved the book from its place of confinement. The sigil on its cover seemed to glow faintly, its shifting patterns more vibrant than ever, as though it recognized me—as though it welcomed me back. I hesitated, every instinct screaming that this was a mistake, yet I could not resist. The codex had become a part of me, and I a part of it.

The pages no longer appeared chaotic as they once had. The words and symbols seemed to align with an eerie precision, their meaning flowing into my mind as if the text itself had been waiting for me to reach this point. The earlier passages I had struggled to decipher now seemed painfully clear, their implications unfolding with dreadful inevitability.

Carroway’s writings spoke of his final days, of the irreversible changes he had endured after crossing the Threshold. His words were fragmented and frantic, each line laced with despair. “The Veil does not release its prey,” he had scrawled in jagged letters. “We are claimed, marked, and forever bound to its will.” He described the sensation of being watched, of feeling the presence of the beings he had glimpsed beyond the Veil, their gazes following him even in the waking world.

The final pages of the codex were unlike anything I had seen before. The text dissolved into sprawling diagrams and sigils, their shapes writhing on the page. At the center of these maddening patterns was a single, hastily scrawled phrase: “The Threshold is inescapable. It follows.”

The moment I read those words, the whispers in my mind surged into a deafening roar. Images flooded my vision—images of the alien realm beyond the Veil, of the towering beings and their shifting forms. Yet this time, the visions were different. I was no longer a mere observer; I was a participant. I saw myself standing among the beings, my body no longer my own, transformed into something monstrous and unrecognizable. I felt their presence envelop me, their consciousness merging with mine until the boundaries of self dissolved entirely.

When the visions subsided, I found myself sprawled on the floor, the codex lying open beside me. Yet even as I clung to the remnants of my humanity, I knew it was futile. The codex had revealed its final truth: the Threshold was not merely a place, nor even a force. It was a sentient entity, and I was now irrevocably connected to it.

The realization was both horrifying and strangely comforting. I understood, at last, that I could never escape the Threshold. It was a part of me, as much as I was a part of it. And though the world around me seemed unchanged, I knew that my place within it had been irrevocably altered. The beings I had glimpsed beyond the Veil were no longer distant horrors but my kindred, my kin. I was theirs, and they were mine.

The final passage in the codex burned itself into my mind as I closed the book for the last time. “To know the Threshold is to become it. To flee is folly, for it follows all who would deny its call. The Veil is not a barrier but a bond, unbroken and eternal.”

I set the book aside, its weight still heavy in my hands. I knew I could not destroy it, just as I could not destroy what I had become. The codex would endure, its secrets waiting for the next unfortunate soul to uncover them. And when that time came, I would be there, waiting on the other side of the Veil.

Part V

The days that followed my final reading of The Nether Codex were marked by an overwhelming isolation. My transformation was no longer confined to the mind or the soul; it had seeped into my very flesh, rewriting me in ways I could not comprehend. My reflection—when I dared to confront it—revealed a form that was subtly but unmistakably inhuman. My features had grown angular, my skin faintly luminous in the dark. Even the color of my eyes had changed, their irises now shimmering with an otherworldly hue.

Yet, it was not merely my appearance that set me apart. The world itself seemed to recoil from me, as though I carried some invisible contagion. Animals avoided my presence, their gazes filled with primal fear. When I ventured into town, people stared too long, their expressions flickering between confusion and unease. Conversations died in my presence, words faltering as though choked by an unseen force. I could feel their discomfort, their instinctive recognition that I was no longer one of them.

The house became my prison. The whispers that had once been faint grew louder, more insistent, until they drowned out all thought. They spoke to me in the language of the Veil, their meanings imprecise yet undeniable. I began to see symbols forming on my skin, strange glyphs that mirrored those in the codex. They pulsed faintly, and their presence filled me with both awe and dread.

I stopped sleeping. Each time I closed my eyes, I found myself standing once more on that shifting plain, surrounded by the towering forms of the beings beyond the Veil. They did not speak, but their intent was clear: they were waiting. For what, I did not know, but I felt their patience pressing down on me like a physical weight.

One night, as I sat in the suffocating silence of my study, I noticed the sigil from the codex etched faintly into the wall. It had not been there before, yet it appeared as though it had always existed, its lines sharp and deliberate. As I stared at it, the whispers grew louder, their cadence urgent. The sigil glowed faintly, pulsing in time with the glyphs on my skin. It was then that I understood: the Threshold had followed me home.

I tried to fight it, to cling to the remnants of my humanity, but it was futile. The house itself began to warp, its walls bowing inward as though under immense pressure. Shadows spilled forth from every corner, writhing and coalescing into forms that defied explanation. The sigil on the wall grew brighter, its light searing into my eyes, and I felt the pull of the Veil once more.

I write these words now as a warning to whoever may find them. The Nether Codex is not merely a book but a vessel, a conduit for forces that should never be unleashed. It will lure you with its promises of knowledge, but the price is far greater than you can imagine. I am no longer who I was, nor am I entirely of this world. The Threshold has claimed me, and I am its harbinger.

If you find the codex, destroy it—if such a thing is even possible. Do not let it take you as it has taken me. But if you feel the pull, as I did, know this: there is no escape. The Threshold is inescapable. It follows.

The sigil on the wall flares again as I finish this account. My skin hums with its resonance. They are here now, their forms shimmering in the periphery of my vision, waiting for me to cross over once more.

I cannot resist them.

I do not want to.