❝ Journal Entry: 247/002 – August 21, 1296AS 

Subject: Dr. Asimov Samford, regarding my prior statement on my predecessor, as well as some new things I have discovered whilst cleaning up the archives. 

It has been just over a week since I made my first statement on this subject, yet it only feels like yesterday when I uncovered the strange box left behind by Madame Crowley. I still cannot figure out what it contains; however, any attempts to use magick to study it have quite literally…Blown up in my face. It seems to be protected by a highly complex Anti-Magick Field with her signature. Expected of her, and I am frankly unsure if I will manage to uncover its mysteries before the shepherd takes me to the Porled gates for my more than welcomed judgment.   

But I digress – I just need more time to figure out a general idea of what the specimen could be whilst I scour the archives for any possible logs or links to what it may be. Crowley was always the sort to find strange things and hide them, so this isn’t the first time I have encountered something strange. But it is the first time I, a man who does not fall unto his intuition before analysis, have a bad feeling about this.  

I have witnessed countless artefacts and peculiar things that Crowley has either made or found on her ventures, but I am dumbfounded about what this thing is. Is it alien, perhaps? Some fragment of eldritch abominations that she had somehow procured? Lest I ramble on about what it could be, I lose time finding out what it is. Part of me wants to approach Sir Elias about this; however, I feel that would be a bad move, perhaps due to madame’s disdain for the man – It would be akin to backstabbing her.  

Alas, after the surge of rumours spreading about her conducting horrendous experiments and dabbling in the taboo, I do not know where my loyalties lie. Part of me thinks they are asinine because Sir Elias was more than vocal about her abominations. That is the main reason why he must not find out about this, despite his unquestionable knowledge of the esoteric and arcane.  

On the note of cleaning up the study, the findings of hidden passages and nooks full of strange and wonderful things are not something that seems to lessen no matter how much time I spend here. I sometimes wonder if this place is endless in its ability to form its labyrinth of knowledge, which wouldn’t be a surprise considering Madame Crowley was the type to use her powers in such ways. I am currently the only man on this godforsaken planet that best knows her tact, and I’ll be damned if my age tries to get the best of me.  

Though it does help using some of her old toys to help me out, she always loved tampering with dolls and, as she would call them, ‘Homunculi’, which in her words are artificial life forms, and that she was the first of her kind. I never so much believed her, as such things were only rooted in myth and pipe dreams of scholars and alchemists alike. But possibly, she may have been telling the truth.  

Aside from the generic ramblings of this old man, I will also note a few other things that I will endeavour to follow up on in my next instalments. The first is the more than welcomed letters and notes hidden all over the archives, possibly written by hers truly; however, the handwriting seems foreign—that, as well as a strange door that was located beneath her desk. I cannot open it, as it, too, is sealed shut with an even more complicated array of barriers — strange and more than unnerving.  

One thing that plays in my mind is why she did not place the seal on the box itself rather than the object, which is beyond me. Perhaps it was as if she wanted me to find this, or she was simply messing with me to the bitter end. I do not know. But I know that this is something that I, and I alone, must figure out.   

But the note of “The Quiet” still speaks to me. I do not know why, but it is unsettling. 

Signed, 

Dr. Asimov Samford - Head Magicks Archivist of the Imperial Library, Candria ❞