[Those who touched the fragments of time glimpsed the branching and countercurrents of the river;
Fragments of thought and consciousness possessed the authority to distort perception;
Fragments of emotion held flames that could ignite life, as well as seeds of madness and destruction;
Fragments of space contained the mysteries of connection and separation, opening up realms and passages;
Fragments of sight, when fused with the eyes, could reveal the blurred outlines of fate, yet also drag one into deeper shackles and struggle...
This power was not gentle. It was both a gift and a curse. Those who drew too much from it would themselves be devoured, eventually becoming even more unstable fragments, drifting between the cracks as they waited...]
Wade looked at the next page, but all the writing there had become blurred and illegible.
He ran his fingers over the rough, uneven paper. Several pages in the middle seemed to have been soaked in water, their ink bled into smears. He could occasionally make out a word or two, but had no idea what they meant.
It was not until he had turned another four or five pages that he could intermittently see handwriting that was barely recognizable:
[...Pain and his eyes—this was the price he paid, but it was far from enough... Dusk arrived, and they all left this land...
While losing their protection, they also lost their shackles. Perhaps that was fortunate for the humans and other living creatures of this world as well?
Yet the rifts had always existed, like several passages in the vast ocean narrower than even an ant hole—though narrow, they were not wholly absent.
One day, drifting wanderers would find those passages and return. When that day came... if humanity could find a way to seal the passages, perhaps its arrival could