I was calling this ‘Nigel’s Tome’ since he was the first person I spotted reading it, but this is actually the same tome Harpocrates is reading at Cid’s hideaway when you first meet him. The most easily legible copy I’ve found is in the Stacks.
The text mentions two place names I haven’t encountered elsewhere in the FFXVI corpus: Zellis in the Southern Wastes where Drake’s Horn once stood and Ov, region indeterminate (perhaps in Northern Storm?).
Memento Mori
Long have I pursued the secrets of Death. Eluding the Reaper’s reckoning by turning His very scythe to the innocent flesh of others of my very kith and kin—that I might endure but a day longer. When that insect of a boy, Donner, raised his blade to my throat, I exalted in the hot rush of blood that welled ‘neath the cold steel, knowing that I would finally join the infinite—that I would confront the fear within and embrace it. I would become one with Death. And in that, attain true immortality.
Nescience
Had I known what awaited me was far more unforgiving than fear. Far more absolute than Death.
A Road to Nowhere
How might I begin to describe this prison? My research carries me to the far corners of the realm, from the southern wastes of Zellis to the storm-battered shores of Ov. Years did I toil, poring over faded tomes in the Imperial Capital’s Grand Library, and still naught prepared me for this—a locus at which logic and reason whisper their farewells.
Wyrd
Communication has proven an equally bothersome prospect, as the logos here has been reduced to a loosely jointed cacophony of grunts, nods, and curt bows. Furtive glances from fathomless eyes, sibilant slaw-jaw from the clenched maws of silent pedants—these exchanges have convinced me that words now only serve as a form of clinical resolution sloppily prepared like mustard for the clinically irresolute. Prepared like mustard? Pah! My wit sours in the place.
The Beyond
What lies beyond the singing glass portal whence the visitants come, I have yet to truly gasp. For the gate does not open for me, and any attempt at egress is met with more pain. A quick study of the bleak landscape beyond, however, does not lend itself to promise—a scorched thoroughfare at the base of a buttressed ravine hewn from smooth, grey stone. There is no ready view of the sky, and the only light that reaches the hall below is a sickly stream of preternatural white unchanging with the passage of time.
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