To the Esteemed Priestess Metira Dijkstra,
You do not know me, and I expect you have been warned to mistrust any shadow not cast by your own flame. Still, I write to you not in malice, but in possibility—for there are truths that even your god, radiant though she may be, does not wish you to see.
There is a book.
It is not bound in skin, nor inked in blood, nor written by a madman in the throes of some planar hysteria. It is older than that. It is calm. Patient. It does not scream—it whispers. And what it whispers… changes everything.
This book lies deep within the abandoned halls of the Rakthavarna Scriptorium, in the lost temples beneath the Cham Marches—a place your superiors will tell you is cursed. And they would be right. It is cursed... with truth. And truth, as you know, is rarely welcome among liars.
The book does not seek to destroy your faith—only to examine its foundation. What you believe you escaped, what you think you’ve overcome, what you preach now with such fervor—these, too, are stories. You’ve been taught to call them healing. But what if they were inherited delusions? What if your redemption is just another leash—gilded, yes, but a leash nonetheless?
I know of Ravana, your so-called Herald. I know how he distorts the Pallid Flower into a thing of worship and rot. I know that he fears you, not for your betrayal—but for what you might still become.
You have begun to see light. I commend that. But light without shadow is blindness. And if you truly seek to free others, to spare those whom you love a world ruled by tyrants in silk and illusion, then I urge you: Read the book.
Not all prisons have bars, Metira.
Some are written in doctrine.
And some—are written in you.
With measured sincerity,
Dvaarash Karnak
Raja of Rakthavarna, Keeper of the Forgotten Flame