"If you are reading this book, it means I have deemed the time has come for you to learn the truth. What I have done to make this possible is despicable. Its effect was obtained through the sacrifice of a friend. I cannot guarantee it will succeed. Even so... I had no choice."

Icarus turned the pages with mechanical precision, his meditation active as he read. The opening lines had shocked him; what followed gradually overturned everything he thought he understood while silently stripping something essential from him.

"I cannot say whether I have seen the truth entire. But I know the truth behind the Utopia you now fight. And for that, I must inevitably become their enemy.

"They command powers you may not even be able to comprehend, powers that influence, even make use of, mighty gods. Those powers arise from this very ‘truth.' Where does a god's strength come from? Even the void cannot create power from nothing. A rootless tumbleweed can never grow strong.

"Most believers never question the source of divine power. Such inquiry might even be called blasphemy. But I am a wizard with no faith, and from time to time I cannot help wondering where it all comes from.

"We assume gods draw power from belief. After all, the more believers a deity has, the stronger it appears. But then comes the next question: what is belief? By what right does it grant gods their power? As a wizard and scholar, I could not ignore this question.

"I did not expect the answer to reveal itself slowly, step by step, as my abilities as a wizard and my research deepened.

"As I said at the beginning, that power was ours to begin with. Yes: these gods draw their strength from us, the small and fragile. It is not that we grant them faith. Their power originates from us.

"You know the name of this power well. It once belonged wholly to our kind, though at some unknowable point we lost control of it: void affinity. It is the very thing that determines a wizard's talent.

"In my early years I spent countless hours researching the source of wizardry. I refused to be that ‘rootless tumbleweed.' The idea unsettled me. I needed to understand how the power we supposedly ‘borrowed' from the void might be reclaimed.

"Only long after I ascended to the realm of a legend and crossed paths with the Utopia did I finally understand what void affinity truly is.

"A wizard does not borrow from the void. We merely retrieve what we ourselves once lost there. Nothing more.

"I still cannot describe it precisely. But the ability to reshape the material world, our wizardry, belonged to us in ancient times. It was lost, fragmented, and then converged to form what we now call the ‘void.'

"And the gods derive their power from this same lost ‘void affinity.' I prefer not to call them gods, but ‘proxies.' Even though we lost this power, our souls continue—unconsciously—to influence the forces drifting within the void. And that influence depends above all on our perception.

"Perception is perhaps the most crucial point. When your subconscious believes that this power does not belong to you, that it comes from the void, the amount you can draw upon diminishes sharply. This is also why emotions affect a wizard's strength. When you fall into extreme states—rage, terror, despair—your perception entirely disregards the true origin of this power, and in doing so, it indirectly amplifies a wizard's abilities.

"Just as we cannot pinpoint when we first lost the power that once belonged to us, the notion that ‘a wizard's power comes from the void' has likewise become an accepted truth. This is likely the trap and misdirection the Utopia planted within our foundational wizardly education. In my early years, I too was deceived by that adage.

"Races with few wizards, despite possessing the same innate heritage, can scarcely wield the power that originally belonged to them. So where does that unused portion of ‘void affinity' go? The answer is simple: aside from the half that dissipates and becomes the void itself, the rest flows toward the gods."

At this point, beyond the violent turmoil in his mind, Icarus also noticed something else. Now that he knew the truth, he could no longer generate faith at all. No deity could receive faith from him. That fact alone confirmed the authenticity of everything written in the book.

The author had left no name, yet Icarus was almost certain who he was: Roland, the greatest wizard of humanity, who had vanished without a trace.

"The soul's perception governs void affinity. When the shared perceptions of an entire intelligent race align, all the power they cannot consciously command gathers in the void, coalescing into an existence countless times stronger than any individual wizard. That existence is what we call a god.

"A god's characteristics arise from collective perception. Think of the God of Light, the Earth Mother, the Lord of Sea and Storms, the Goddess of Wealth... Do the believers' descriptions not perfectly match the forms these gods display?

"Perceptions gather to form the gods' embryonic shapes. The miracles these gods manifest then reinforce those perceptions. Thus believers, without realizing it, deliver fragments of power to gods, shaped through their faith. The more believers, the stronger the god.

"A simple extension of this logic concerns the void's abominations. Beyond orderly perception lie chaos, savagery, madness. Such perceptions can never unify. Forced together, they tangle and clash, becoming the deranged, malicious, and frenzied existences we call the void's eldritch gods.

"You may have noticed that gods seldom express their own thoughts or act on their own initiative. Nearly all divine descents are predicated on their believers' prayers. This is natural. Gods are confluences of their believers' perceptions. Only by harmonizing those perceptions can they even begin to form something like a ‘self.'

"The friend I sacrificed revealed to me part of the pattern behind a god's self-awareness. Divine consciousness arises from the power converged by believers' perceptions, yet those perceptions are ever-changing and never fully stable.

"A god's consciousness is unlike ours. It remains blurred and indefinite almost all the time. Thus gods rarely communicate directly with believers, offering at most vague and fragmentary impressions.

"There are only two circumstances in which a god may gain a clear, defined consciousness akin to that of intelligent beings. The first is when their faith reaches a critical mass, when thousands of aligned perceptions merging into something stable enough to be considered ‘definite.'

"The second is when their faith collapses and the god is on the brink of death. With insufficient perception to define its personality, the god—for a brief moment before falling into silence—can rely on the remnants of its power to form a true will of its own.

"Based on these principles, the Utopia has devised means to ‘slay' and ‘manipulate' gods. Slaying a god means overwhelming its believers' perceptions. Manipulating a god means influencing a portion of its personality without supplying enough perception to kill it, forcing it to enact something akin to divine descent.

"You are reading this because Utopia has already used such methods to influence a god, harnessing divine power to advance their plan. Even if this means stripping the existing races of their gods, I must reveal this truth to you and make you aware of the danger.

"Once your perception truly understands the origin of divine power and the ‘void affinity' you have lost, your soul will no longer unconsciously transform that power into faith for the gods. Deprived of faith, the gods will naturally perish—and Utopia will no longer be able to take advantage of them.

"Remember what I said: our lost power remains within the void. For this reason, no matter when or where, our souls are connected to the void. The soul is the bridge between the material world and the void. And gods, as aggregates of perception and consciousness, can exploit this unbreakable bridge to forcibly influence the souls of intelligent beings.

"If Utopia successfully harnesses divine power, you should already foresee the consequences: no one's will would remain safe. That is why I must act..."

At this point, Roland's writing came to a stop. After explaining his reasons and the truth he had uncovered, he seemed to have thought deeply before reaching this conclusion.

"But you failed. Utopia still succeeded in using the God of Light to accomplish their goal. If not for coincidence—and the innate gifts of the Winged—I would never have learned this truth. Who knows how much more the Utopia controls?"

A hollow ache welled up in Icarus. Even Roland and his plan had ended in failure. He could infer when this manuscript should have appeared: at the moment of the God of Light's descent. But it never surfaced. It was clear who had stymied Roland now: the ever more unfathomable Utopia.

Before Icarus could continue brooding, his body turned the page mechanically. The last of Roland's writing unfolded before his eyes.

"What follows is something I myself wished to tell you, matters I have yet to fully understand. There are three paths in this era that draw from the power we lost.

"First, allow me to state clearly: the void and the material realms are equal. And in this age, wizards, magicians, and knights represent the three paths of power.

"Wizards are those who seek to reclaim their own lost power from the void.

"Magicians are those who, abandoning the void almost entirely, forge a new foundation, pursuing magic, a power shaped from mathematics and logic.

"As for knights, whether through their potentials or upon becoming legends, they exert influence upon the material realm just as the void would. I do not yet know what this power truly is, but I am certain of their path: they do not retrieve the power lost in the void, but instead forge a new strength similar to it through their own flesh and will."