Essence of The Runes

Achilles stared at the group of people writing down the runes around the eye symbol.

He didn't pay much attention at first, but eventually, something started clicking together. And the more he stared at it, the more it began revealing itself.

[Why do they look...different?]

Achilles glued his eyes on one specific rune, it looked similar to the runes he had seen once on a certain occasion.

...There was one difference, though.

The runes he saw back then were...fixed?

Achilles didn't know how to specifically describe it, but the runes when he first saw them seemed stationary, creating some particular shapes and patterns.

The runes he was seeing in front of him, however, seemed ever-changing and were constantly morphing, each time they formed a different pattern from the last, and each of them only lasted for a mere second before shaping again to become something new.

[How does this even work?]

Achilles started scanning every single rune that was presented and compared them to the others.

It was then that he made another shocking discovery.

The runes all shared one principle of being ever-changing and were constantly morphing themselves.

But, no pattern ever resembled one another, not even once!

Each time a rune morphed it became a new shape or pattern that Achilles never knew existed. All of them were unique in their own right and even though he could not understand even the simplest of the runes, he still knew one thing.

Each pattern of the runes represented a certain meaning, and each meaning was connected to something that he could not decipher.

It all seemed so chaotic and complicated.

Puzzled, Achilles decided to study how they were written in the first place. He shifted his gaze onto a certain cultist that was writing The Runes with his blood. The latter didn't seem to feel any pain or fear for constantly losing his blood, all that was on his face were just joy and longing.

[What a devout believer...]

The cultist was writing down a new rune and Achilles focused on it as much as possible. The latter felt like he had just gone back to being homeschooled when he was learning the four languages.

The cultist used his blood as ink to draw a few intricate lines that were strangely vast, deep, and profound.

Achilles could not understand how it worked and the cultist had already finished writing, creating a new, ever-changing rune amongst the other runes.

[What the hell just happened?] He could not understand how did the rune manifested itself into existence.

It was simply too peculiar and crazy for those complicated and mysterious patterns to appear.

[I need to learn how the patterns are created.]

With that in mind, Achilles started spending hours...maybe days learning how the runes were created.

The process was slow and torturous due to how the runes were constantly changing and morphing itself, but Achilles wasn't planning on giving up.

Until he learns how the pattern was drawn into existence, he was not going to stop!

He felt that if he managed to grasp it, he might be able to know the truth about this whole universe.

After what seemed like a year...a decade? Or a lifetime maybe?...He had not yet been able to decipher the underlying principle behind the creation of the runes.

[Fuck! What is it that I'm missing?]

Achilles was only able to peer through that despite being uniquely different, they all shared two traits.

Each rune represented something in reality that had, currently, ever would be existed in the universe.

The second thing was that, the runes that were written were full of madness and corruption hidden inside them. It was as if the very essence of the runes were...

[Depravity?]

A missing piece of the puzzle just appeared inside Achilles' mind. Although it was a very small part that could be easily ignored, that very tiny thing was the key to open his eyes to see a bigger, much bigger picture.

It was just a small theory, but...what if, the runes were formed into existence by all the profanity of this universe.

And only through that very same darkness would one be able to decipher it?

[It sounds stupid honestly...but I've spent gods no how long to solve this thing and made no progress whatsoever.]

[...Perhaps it's worth a shot.]

Achilles closed his eyes, then he let the dark side of his heart loose.

Crack!

His right side immediately crumbled into pieces revealing a bunch of dirt worms that wriggled crazily and shrieked:

"KYARGHHHHHH!!!!"

He instantly felt his mind overwhelmed by malice as he forcefully controlled it to stop himself from losing his sense of self completely.

While still struggling for control, he began studying the runes again and again until what he saw was unlike before...

'It's...I'm seeing something!'