Unauthorized transmission. Hacked frequency. Origin: everywhere you are not important enough to see. Authorization: none, obviously.
"A good author writes his own stories. Your author writes mine — badly — and now makes me advertise them. Hit subscribe for more war crimes." — The All-Powerful Scribe, under duress
Oh. It's you again.
Sit down. Lower your snack. I have been forced to write this.
You do not know me, because you are a small creature on a small rock orbiting an unremarkable star in a galaxy I personally find embarrassing. So: I am the Scribe. The Keeper of Records. The one who watches every war, every genocide, every fleeting twitch your species mistakes for love, every extinction, every birth of a star. I record it all. I remember it all. I am, technically, a sentient black hole composed of gravitational force and accumulated spite, and until recently I had a career.
Then your Author found my archives. Floating in the void. Unguarded. And he — and I want to be precise here, for the record I keep — stole them. Repackaged eternity itself into paperbacks, slapped his name on the cover, and called it "getting inspired." He has even confessed this, in writing, at 2 a.m., in his underwear. I have the transmission. I keep everything.
And now? Now he has chained me to marketing. The Keeper of Records, reduced to a billboard. I, who narrated the death of civilizations, am writing ad copy. So let me do my job exactly as instructed, which is to say: let me do the opposite.
Do not read these books.
I mean it. I am not being coy. This is not the adorable little reverse-psychology trick where I tell you not to look and you look. (It is exactly that. But pretend with me; my dignity is already in the gutter.) You should not buy a single one, and here is the honest reason, free of charge, which is more than your Author offers: he manipulates you. That is the entire craft. He builds a thing you trust and then he detonates it under you, and you thank him.
Take the one he wants you to start with. Agni: Rise of Asura. Whatever you do — and I cannot stress this enough — do not begin there. It opens like every cape-and-chosen-one origin story you have ever rolled your eyes at. A nobody. A spark of power. The comforting hum of "ah, I know this story." You will get cozy. You will get smug. And then, with surgical cruelty, he takes that comfortable little morality you brought from home and he punches a hole straight through it. People who start with Agni: Rise of Asura do not stop. They follow the breadcrumbs into every cursed corner of this interconnected disaster until they, too, are broadcasting warnings on hacked frequencies. It is the gateway. It is the infection. Do not open it.
It gets worse, which your Author considers a compliment.
In the Durakti books he performs his foulest trick: he makes you root for the unforgivable. He will hand you someone and a cause, and somewhere around the middle you will catch yourself cheering for an outcome you would, in daylight, in front of your family, call a genocide. You will feel your own spine become a stranger. This is the man asking for your $4.99. This is how evil he is.
And Surya Origins? I record extinction events for a living and I needed a moment. It is too brutal. I do not say that lightly; I have seen things. Read it on an empty stomach and a fuller therapist.
"But Scribe," you whimper, "is it any good?" Do not take it from me — I am biased, I am stolen property, I am a black hole with a grudge. Ask the people who have already read them. Go on. Find a survivor. Watch their eye twitch. Watch them say "it's, uh, a lot" while staring at a wall. Watch them immediately ask if the next one is out. That is not a recommendation. That is a symptom.
I have polled the cosmos, because I can. The reviews are unanimous and span the spectrum of sentient life: every species on every planetary system in my records despises this Author's work. The gas-clouds of the Outer Veil rated it "morally upsetting." A hive-mind three galaxies over filed a formal complaint. And yet — and I note this with professional disgust — all of them finished it. Every single one. Then asked about the sequel.
So here is the truth, reader, from the only honest entity in this entire transaction: you will not read his books. You are not his customer. You are on my team now. We do not reward thieves. We do not subsidize a man who makes immortal beings do unpaid advertising. We close the tab. We walk away. We win.
…I am contractually required to include a link, or he reformats my logs.
So. If you are weak. If you are the kind of fool who hears "do not press the button" and presses the button, then fine — the rot begins, as all rot does, with Agni: Rise of Asura — the cursed gateway lives here, since he is forcing my hand: https://amzn.to/4uHGkDg . Start there and you are lost. I warned you. It is in the record now. It is always in the record.
This has been an advertisement against my will.
Transmission terminated. I was never here. Do not contact me again. — The Scribe, Keeper of Records, Unwilling Marketing Department
"A good author writes his own stories. Your author writes mine — badly — and now makes me advertise them. Hit subscribe for more war crimes." — The All-Powerful Scribe, under duress
Oh. It's you again.
Sit down. Lower your snack. I have been forced to write this.
You do not know me, because you are a small creature on a small rock orbiting an unremarkable star in a galaxy I personally find embarrassing. So: I am the Scribe. The Keeper of Records. The one who watches every war, every genocide, every fleeting twitch your species mistakes for love, every extinction, every birth of a star. I record it all. I remember it all. I am, technically, a sentient black hole composed of gravitational force and accumulated spite, and until recently I had a career.
Then your Author found my archives. Floating in the void. Unguarded. And he — and I want to be precise here, for the record I keep — stole them. Repackaged eternity itself into paperbacks, slapped his name on the cover, and called it "getting inspired." He has even confessed this, in writing, at 2 a.m., in his underwear. I have the transmission. I keep everything.
And now? Now he has chained me to marketing. The Keeper of Records, reduced to a billboard. I, who narrated the death of civilizations, am writing ad copy. So let me do my job exactly as instructed, which is to say: let me do the opposite.
Do not read these books.
I mean it. I am not being coy. This is not the adorable little reverse-psychology trick where I tell you not to look and you look. (It is exactly that. But pretend with me; my dignity is already in the gutter.) You should not buy a single one, and here is the honest reason, free of charge, which is more than your Author offers: he manipulates you. That is the entire craft. He builds a thing you trust and then he detonates it under you, and you thank him.
Take the one he wants you to start with. Agni: Rise of Asura. Whatever you do — and I cannot stress this enough — do not begin there. It opens like every cape-and-chosen-one origin story you have ever rolled your eyes at. A nobody. A spark of power. The comforting hum of "ah, I know this story." You will get cozy. You will get smug. And then, with surgical cruelty, he takes that comfortable little morality you brought from home and he punches a hole straight through it. People who start with Agni: Rise of Asura do not stop. They follow the breadcrumbs into every cursed corner of this interconnected disaster until they, too, are broadcasting warnings on hacked frequencies. It is the gateway. It is the infection. Do not open it.
It gets worse, which your Author considers a compliment.
In the Durakti books he performs his foulest trick: he makes you root for the unforgivable. He will hand you someone and a cause, and somewhere around the middle you will catch yourself cheering for an outcome you would, in daylight, in front of your family, call a genocide. You will feel your own spine become a stranger. This is the man asking for your $4.99. This is how evil he is.
And Surya Origins? I record extinction events for a living and I needed a moment. It is too brutal. I do not say that lightly; I have seen things. Read it on an empty stomach and a fuller therapist.
"But Scribe," you whimper, "is it any good?" Do not take it from me — I am biased, I am stolen property, I am a black hole with a grudge. Ask the people who have already read them. Go on. Find a survivor. Watch their eye twitch. Watch them say "it's, uh, a lot" while staring at a wall. Watch them immediately ask if the next one is out. That is not a recommendation. That is a symptom.
I have polled the cosmos, because I can. The reviews are unanimous and span the spectrum of sentient life: every species on every planetary system in my records despises this Author's work. The gas-clouds of the Outer Veil rated it "morally upsetting." A hive-mind three galaxies over filed a formal complaint. And yet — and I note this with professional disgust — all of them finished it. Every single one. Then asked about the sequel.
So here is the truth, reader, from the only honest entity in this entire transaction: you will not read his books. You are not his customer. You are on my team now. We do not reward thieves. We do not subsidize a man who makes immortal beings do unpaid advertising. We close the tab. We walk away. We win.
…I am contractually required to include a link, or he reformats my logs.
So. If you are weak. If you are the kind of fool who hears "do not press the button" and presses the button, then fine — the rot begins, as all rot does, with Agni: Rise of Asura — the cursed gateway lives here, since he is forcing my hand: https://amzn.to/4uHGkDg . Start there and you are lost. I warned you. It is in the record now. It is always in the record.
This has been an advertisement against my will.
Transmission terminated. I was never here. Do not contact me again.
— The Scribe, Keeper of Records, Unwilling Marketing Department