VV

Somewhere in the mortal realm, in a half-filled notebook, between pages of awful attempts at poetry and crude, unfinished line drawings, there was a half-baked story idea. Scribbled with red ink in the illegible penmanship of a madman

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Somewhere else on Mount Helicon, out of earshot of Mount Olympus, a muse birthed in Pieria devised a plan to bring that half-baked idea to life, even if the narrator had to lose the love of his life or his fucking mind in the process

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"The allure of the struggling artist still pulls me in, you know?" Lady Larouge mused, her emerald eyes gazing into the distance. "A chaotic canvas of creative beginnings. A well of untapped potential hidden behind unflinching eyes that stare past the veil in the corner of a dingy bar, lost in search of something he forgot he was looking for long ago." Her voice carried a mix of nostalgia and defiance.

"There's something magical about the ones who don't chase the spotlight," she continued. "They write on the backs of receipts, spill their thoughts into coffee-stained journals, creating with no promise of applause or reward. It's pure, it's raw, it's a kind of madness that's both beautiful and tragic."

She paused, a thoughtful expression crossing her porcelain face that betrayed no hint of her inner world. "They're not driven by success or the usual trappings of fame and fortune. They're motivated by the spark, the thrill of creation, the act of turning nothing into something. That's why they start things they don't finish, why their brilliance gets lost between the cracks of daily life. But maybe that's what makes them worth saving. Their art isn't just a product; it's a lifeline."

Leaning back, she declared with a resolute tone, "If I have to step in, bend the rules, and guide one of them directly, so be it. This time, I'm not just going to inspire, I’m going to interfere. I'm going to light a fire under this one, push him to the brink. Because some stories deserve to be told, no matter the cost."

Mortal Realm “Present Day”

My name isn’t Jake Ruckley, but using my real name wouldn’t make the events described in the following pages any more believable. The true story of how I unraveled the fabric of reality last summer is wilder than my imagination could conjure up. The voyage between one universe and the next unfolds outside of what we would call time. Without time How does one start a story that takes place somewhere where beginnings and endings don’t exist and there is no logic for any words let alone words for things that don’t exist. How can I tell the truth about a story from the womb where everything fundamentally to both is birthed?

It is not my intention to be believed nor to tell the truth, though one doesn’t necessarily have to do with the other. That’s also not to say what you’re reading is a work of fiction. Far from it. These are the only words I could find to make sense out of the events that led me to become the narrator of this true story…