Chapter 1: The First Tear
Entry #1
They tell you time is supposed to dull the mind, make you forget the face of your mother, the feel of warmth, the meaning of words like "home." But I remember. I remember it all. The dirt path to the forest, the way the sun painted gold on the edges of the trees, the smell of summer on the berries I never brought back.
I was fifteen then. Now, I've wandered for 100s of thousands of years..
If this diary survives me, if any version of me remains in any corner of the Pearl, let it be known: I didn't ask for this. I was just a boy in a world that felt like something out of an old English tale—peasants and kings, bread and blades, all struggling under skies too big to care. We didn't have magic, not like the others. We had rot and war, faith and fear.
That day, my mother asked me to fetch berries. She promised my favorite treat. I didn't argue. I went into the woods whistling.
And then I saw it. A tear—like the world itself had been stabbed with a needle. It wasn't light or shadow, it was absence. A place where the rules didn't apply. Before I could think, it pulled. Or maybe I stepped forward. I still don't know which is worse.
On the other side? Everything. Or nothing. I fell through dimensions like raindrops through clouds. I saw stars weep, cities grow from the bones of gods, machines that dreamed, and worlds where time ran backward like a cruel joke.
Most people can only use the power of the world they were born into. Their bodies are shaped by the physics and laws of their dimension. But mine changed. Maybe because I was born without power. Maybe because the Pearl—the great being that is existence itself—chose me. My body adapted. Mutated. Evolved.
Now I can wield the systems of all the worlds I visit. Magic, technology, spiritual harmonics, willpower-based martial codes, soul currencies—if a world has a way to shape reality, I can learn it. That power has kept me alive.
But it's also why they're hunting me.
The White Forces. That's what I call them. They're not really a group, not in the way we think of it. They're more like… functions. Four-dimensional constructs designed by the Pearl to eliminate threats. They act like white blood cells, cleansing infection. To them, I'm a virus. A risk. Something that breaks balance.
They don't care that I never asked for this. They don't care that I just want to go home.
But I don't even know where home is anymore. My world is buried beneath layers of dimensions, infinite as the Pearl itself. I'm not even sure it still exists.
So I write. In a book made from thought, bound by memory, hidden in a sliver of a world that may never be found again. My diary. My map. My mind.
If you're reading this… you're either me or someone who's found my ghost.
Good luck.
—Alaric