Korven still sees darkness, but now it's of her own volition. Her eyes shut, and her ears still focused on the noise of the void. Korven releases a sigh, with eyes still closed, accepting that since she still hears the void, she must have never left it. Even though she was able to access the real world, it was all for nothing. She opens her eyes and still sees darkness. A different darkness, rather than the unforgiving infinite void she was in for the last few hours. She's back, back in her apartment, the dark smoke stands still, the book still hums, but she's back.
Korven rushes over to the book and shuts it before more smoke can spread from Tynro's notes. But as she steps towards it, she notices the smoke has stopped flowing, and the book stops its humming as the smoke clears from the room. As if the void was nothing more than a dream to begin with.
As the light comes back to the room, Korven instinctively shuts her eyes, unable to adapt to the change in light. She slowly starts to open her stinging eyes, with the pain of her wound distracting her. After a couple of minutes of squinting, she manages to open her eyes.
She scavenges around a junk drawer and picks out a bandage, which she starts to wrap herself with. The amount of blood seeping from Korven's wounds would be life-threatening to the average citizen in Kilder, but for Korven, the cuts on her hand, the headache she feels, and the blood dripping from her stomach only give Korven a feeling of relief. Relief that after hours of searching through a void, she had finally found familiarity.
After plugging up the wound, an action she is all too familiar with, she walks over to the sink to rinse off her blood-soaked dagger. After rinsing it with cold water, she washes off what remains with a sponge. The blood comes cleanly, dripping into Korven's full sink.
"By the four covens, what in the world?" She asks, looking at her dagger once more, because instead of the grey, partly rusted, steel dagger, she holds a matte black, void-like, twisted dagger. Like a black mamba slithering, the dagger looks completely different from the straight, basic dagger she's used to.
"I see now, this must be how the void spreads. Tynro's notebook was the object that he had in the void, just like I had this dagger. My reading his notes put me into this void, meaning this dagger might be what traps the next victim." Korven holds it up, admiring the craftsmanship of what she deems the "Insanity dagger".
"A miracle that spreads through its own limitation. I've never seen anything of the sort." She says, with more excitement than ever. Even now that she understands the horrifying workings of this unique miracle. She only sees it as a challenge. The fact that she could outsmart such a powerful miracle proves she can beat Aldrick.
"He might be strong, but he's just a healer."
The overwhelming feeling of calm starts to drain away as Korven reminds herself of the time crunch she is facing. Even though it sounds impossible, if what Wulkin says has any truth, soon the Chosen Angels will become an official religion, and with that comes government protection.
"If anyone is charismatic enough to get the government to support child sacrifices, it would definitely be Aldrick."
Remembering the stressful time limit she has drains her satisfied smile off her face.
Korven steps back to her table and opens the notebook with confidence now that she has escaped the void if it comes to it. She flips through the pages, but even when she reaches the latter half of the book, the dark presence she felt in the first read-through is gone. The scratches all make sense now. Korven is still reading the scribbles of someone insane, but she almost feels as if the dark energy she felt earlier had disappeared. It's the same book, but it's as if the curse were gone. The ever-present void had vanished.
He starts annotating again, without the fear of being trapped in the void. Korven arrives at the last page and starts reading,
"Kilder, Kilder, Kilder. Where have you gone? When truth is for sale, what is the value of a virtuous soul? Do virtuous sOuls exist? If no man is puRRe until deAth why stay alive. If hUUmanity is evil, is an eviLL man pure? If the future is unpredictable, is anythIIng I say true? In a city bUIt on moRe lies thAn bricks, caNN I buiLd a hoMe with truth? He gOT mE He GoT HE GOT ME! WULK SAVE ME. WHAT IS THE TRUTH WORTH WHAT IS THE TRUTH WORTH?!"
Seeing as the sinister energy from the book had lifted, Korven feels disappointed that she still can't make sense of whatever this is.
"Maybe Im looking at this wrong, it might not be the workings of insanity, it might be some sort of coded meaning, everything else in the notes, even after he went insane, makes at least a little sense. It might be some sort of code." Korven finds this theory worth a try,
"The most obvious code would just be to take every capital letter, but that just writes: ORRAUULLIIUIRANNLMHOTEHGT, before everything becomes capitalized. Like hes begining to scream, these letters have no meaning, but maybe that's just the start," she says, while writing down that combination of letters." She reads the passage once more and notices something strange,
"For someone insane, the handwriting may be bad, but all the words are spelled correctly, except for five words that strangely double up on capital letters. These by themselves spell, RRUULLIINN…" She pauses,
"It can't be," she says
"How is Rulin related to this?" she says before thinking again
"I suspected this was related to the Chosen Angels, but is there some way that Rulin has something to do with the void, or something to do with that incoherent ending to the notes?"