“Dear guests, the lord viscount’s daughter has always been a feisty, beloved figure of our respected court, and it is an honor to be allowed to toast to their health. But today, we gather here, as a token of our co-operation and community, a symbolic gesture of goodwill and the greatest blessing to our people, may the light shine upon us and eliminate the darkness within, so we may live long lives and never fall victim to the sins of our past.” I said, holding my testing bottle as my token glass, while the attendants ran to each lord and lady, every viscount and noble, handing them a glass of the new wine.

  “Cheers to their health,” I said, and drank a drop from the tester, and time froze. My mind went through all my memories in a moment, stretching beyond what I knew and then some more. The tannins in the wine had expanded my mind, and madness was inches away. I looked at the chandelier and the light filled my eyes, and in that moment, I saw.. I saw it all. I saw the past, the future of the manor, I saw my heirs and their fates, I saw my death and my birth, and the slumbering madness that thrived at the bottom of the manor, awaiting its herald.

  I saw the manor, the cosmic epicenter of its origin, the thing beneath it, a terrifying behemoth of cosmic, indescribable scale, spreading its influence deeper and deeper.

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  I had a sudden moment of realisation. I had to reach it and become its herald. Everything in my life suddenly made sense. The last puzzle piece had clicked into place, the last move had been made. It felt relieving and exhilarating to know my life’s purpose, to study and reach this eldritch horror that ignored the core tenets of biology and physics.

  It was some miraculous being that reached out to me for help, and in that moment, all my lust and fervor were gone, replaced with a thirst that could not be quenched. All my desires and knowledge focused toward a singular, unending goal. All my treasures, I would melt to see that being once more, I would sacrifice myself if it meant that I could be of some use to the great elder being once more.

  The cults and the kingdom were mere facades of realness before the true realization that the eldritch god lying below held. It was truer than truth and realer than reality itself. Words fail, languages shatter, and human epistemology breaks before it can comprehend the interdimensional nature of this cosmic being.

  Then the court drank the wine.