Divine Singularity || Reader x Murder Drones

II

Tessa hummed softly to herself, the sound muffled slightly by the half-chewed pieces of apple tucked between her teeth. She hardly noticed the sweet juice dribbling down her chin, soaking into the bedsheets beneath and staining them in pale amber. Ordinarily, the sight alone would have her worrying about what her mother would think—snacking so late and dirtying her bedding—but at the moment she could not have cared less if the entire mattress rotted beneath her. Her attention was elsewhere. Entirely elsewhere.

Curled atop the blankets in her candlelit den of pillows and cushions, Tessa sat cross-legged with the strange old book spread open in her lap, one socked foot bouncing unconsciously while her eyes devoured line after line of faded text. The room around her had become far more cluttered than usual: loose papers scattered across the bed, scribbled notes hastily jotted in the margins of old homework sheets, and a new section of her room's wall that had become home to a maze of red thread connecting notes together. The air smelled of old paper, apples, lavender oil, and dust baked warm beneath candlelight.

And at the center of it all was this book.

This maddening, fascinating book.

Her fingers carefully turned another page, brows knitting tighter the further she read. The paper itself felt wrong beneath her touch—not physically wrong, but in a way she struggled to describe. Not merely weathered by time, but by meaning. How long had this thing existed? How long had it been carrying secrets through centuries the way scars carried stories across skin? The ink had faded in places into thin ghostly scratches, yet in other sections it remained unnaturally dark, as though freshly written despite the clear decay surrounding it.

It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

And she loved it.

Truly, utterly loved it.

Tessa had spent years rummaging through the Elliot family library, through collections so vast she doubted even her parents knew half of what they owned. She had read occult manuscripts, astronomy charts detailing dead constellations, journals, medical tomes, mythologies from half the globe, grimoires, and much more. The Elliot estate hoarded knowledge the way dragons hoarded gold, even if her parents never used it.

Yet nowhere—not once—had she ever seen mention of the religion described within these pages.

It was disturbing the more she thought about it. Things as big as religions did not simply vanish without leaving traces behind. Humanity was terrible at forgetting. People left records for everything: wars, famines, kings, cults, disasters. Even failed beliefs left fossils in history. Yet this? This book described entities, concepts—all with the confidence of a faith that had once been vast and deeply rooted. Entire passages spoke as though the reader should already understand them, should already know the language and symbols and stories being referenced.

But she didn't.

Nobody did.

It was like uncovering the bones of a civilization that history itself had swallowed whole.

"God," she whispered around another bite of apple, eyes darting hungrily across the page. "What are you?"

One particular section had utterly consumed her attention for the better part of twenty minutes now—a collection of poems. A few particular lines had rooted themselves firmly into her mind, namely revolving around the supposed central figures of the religion.

The Solver and Encoder, as the book put it.

"A thousand teeth...," she murmured thoughtfully, tapping the page. "...And a thousand eyes..."

She flipped backward several pages, scanning earlier passages. There were recurring motifs everywhere—gardens, stars, decay, rebirth, wings, hunger, roots threading through metal, light trapped inside vessels that did not belong to it. Symbolism layered atop symbolism until the entire thing became a labyrinth of meaning. It was enough to make her head hurt.

But it wasn't like that would stop her.

If anything, the difficulty only sharpened her obsession.

Tessa leaned further into the pillows piled behind her back, one knee bouncing restlessly beneath the blanket while candlelight flickered gold across her face. Shadows danced beneath her eyes from hours spent reading, but she hardly noticed. The world beyond the pages had long since faded into irrelevance. All that existed was the book and the maddening need to understand it.

Never before had she been so thoroughly consumed by something.

Not drone engineering—not even close. And she loved engineering. Loved the elegant precision of machinery, the satisfying click of parts locking together, the miracle of breathing life into cold metal with nothing but patience and ingenuity. And with the drones she had collected as her family, it had practically become her childhood.

And the occult? That had been an entirely different sort of fascination altogether—equal parts rebellion, wonder, and just a general curiosity for the more macabre. It thrilled her because of the supernatural and the mystery, because it brushed against the unknown.

Something this book had in spades.

Hell, it did not merely pique her curiosity, It pulled at her, like a hook lodged somewhere deep behind her ribs.

Every passage she deciphered only seemed to reveal ten more questions lurking beneath it, each mystery unfolding into another and another. Certain phrases seemed to linger in her thoughts long after she looked away, echoing in the back of her mind the more she tried to push them down.

And despite all of that—despite the growing unease curling coldly in her stomach—she could not bring herself to stop turning the pages.

There was a feeling growing in her now. Excitement, perhaps. The intoxicating thrill of standing at the edge of discovery. Like finding the first loose thread in a tapestry and realizing, with sudden breathless clarity, that if you pulled hard enough the entire thing might unravel in your hands.

What else did this book know?

What other secrets lay buried in its pages, waiting patiently for someone curious—or foolish—enough to uncover them?

Outside her bedroom window, the full moon hung in the sky, pale silver light spilling across the manor grounds and filtering through the curtains in ghostly beams. It painted her room in soft lunar hues, illuminating the scattered papers, the melted candles, the skull resting silently atop her desk, and the girl hunched over on her bed. The night air whispered softly through the cracks in the windowpane, cool against her skin, but she barely noticed the temperature nor the fact her blankets had slipped off her form.

Because in that moment, sitting beneath the gaze of the moon with her heartbeat drumming steadily in her ears and the scent of old parchment filling her lungs, Tessa James Elliot made herself a promise.

No matter how long it took.

No matter how strange the truths became.

No matter what waited for her at the end of those pages.

She would uncover every secret this book held.

Every hidden meaning.

Every buried truth.

Every.

Single.

One.