The Haunted Eye

Number Two entered the temple grounds in a cautious manner, navigating through mazes of bookshelves while glancing around at the surroundings. The ceiling of the main hall was very high above his head, painted in murals of blurry figures dancing, drinking, and laughing which all melted and converged into an eye of pitch, pure darkness in the center.

From the back of his ear, a weak voice sounded, "You better not stare at that central eye for long. It's not good to know the purest truths."

Number Two turned his head around defensively and saw the pale face of the witch doctor Tong. He was dressed in robes of stale gray and in his old age, he grew a long white beard that trailed the ground.

"You? How is it you...Why did you have the Book of Supreme Chants? Wait, no. How did you get it? Tell me!", begged Number Two in a fervid passion.

The witch doctor stroked his beard and asserted, "Remember the legend about the Monk and Prince that I told to your master, the Duke of the Everchanging Mountains? The lack of a world anchor is the reason why you cannot understand Mother Sky, the eternity and provider of all immortality."

Number Two looked up at the swirling eye of darkness in the center of the temple's ceiling. He pointed to it and asked Tong, "No one can walk to the edge of the world. Even Mother Sky cannot reach it because there is no cutoff where all reality ends in a physical plane. Every word I speak fills me with indescribable power. All places have limitations, every house, every palace, and every country."

"Where is the border of our world? If it does not exist, are not we stuck in an infinite loop with no possible end. How does one reach the border of the world? What is a border? Is it but a construct of the mind?

I seek wrong answers and baseless responses because I am tired of traveling and toiling for the Duke. Who will be the one of virtuous capacities and faculties that breaks off the world and declares all knowledge to be completed?

I wished for Mother Sky to take one look at the invincible ambition of Heaven and Earth, and feel the resentment that broke the world anchor. I proved to be an incapable messenger because I am a pawn, a minion tricked into believing the narrative of free will only to be in a game controlled by Mother Sky.

Perhaps I must impart to you the reason for my lengthy quest for this meeting. I once had omnipotence before the twilight of my conception. Knowing nothing and having no consciousness is the highest state of having all knowledge.

Yet, Mother Sky approached me with a white hat and gown and told me in a raging sea of golden light that the world anchor needs me. I feel a special connection to these hallowed, sacred grounds and the paintings on the ceiling of grotesque aliens offering the heaviest dirt and herbs to Mother Sky.

It must be a spell of some sort. That's it! The unparalleled sagacity of Mother Sky once again has shown me a way forward in the murky mists of overthinking. So, tell me. Where does this vortex lead?"

The witch doctor hesitatingly replied, "Do not go there. I cannot tell you for I am bound by an oath."

Number Two countered, "But I insist!"

The doctor sighed, "Then I have no choice but to point you in the correct direction."

Raising up both of his palms, he effortlessly lifted up the air, separated reality into tiny lethal shards, and launched them toward the other.

Number Two's eyes widened in excitement as he got sucked in by the black hole and he mocked, "Just in time. You're too late."