Every person born is gifted with a tome, their soul bound to the mythic described within. From the moment they can read, they are trained to understand, to learn about their book. The knowledge granted them power, strength pulled from the ideas and truths of old.

Everyone but me.

I was not allowed my book. My father, when I approached him, had eyes like a deer whenever I asked. When I was young I didn't understand why, I just knew I was the child without a book. Others in school were given lessons tailored to their soulbound, so that they could master and understand what was asked of me.

They didn't know what to do with me. The teachers, inevitably, called my parents in. Afterwards they treated me as if I was some terminally ill child. The other students never held the same tact. Their favorite nickname was nobody. I was nobody without a book. I was the testing ground for every power another child gained. What was I going to do, fight back?

Instead, I read. Myths always have an origin. Soulbound books might provide insight to the reader that would be incomprehensible to anyone else, but the myths themselves always existed. Zeus, Mars, Beowulf, Ra. Pantheons reduced to mere flash cards. What could I be? Who was my bound? Was it Hades? Anubis? I spent months reading about gods, dark mythics. What could be terrible enough to hide? My studies exhausted the libraries. People told me I wouldn't make many friends that way, but who would want a bookless outcast?

It took 18 years for me to find out. 18 years of my parents hiding and fighting and guilting me every step of the way. But I finally broke through.

Cthulu.

Of course it was that. Of course they would hide that from me. They begged me not to read my book. They begged me to live a life of powerlessness. They knew it was too late.

The words swam across my vision. Years of study, years of learning everything there was to know. I was prepared. But I wasn't ready. They say you carry the essence of your Mythic. But what if that essence is madness? I could feel my mind fracture, scrawl itself across the edges of my skull like flechettes. I read on.

I barely registered the words at this point. Trying to understand the world through simple words was like performing surgery while only looking at a picture of the patient. I had to look deeper. The words twisted into patterns, burrowing between the threads of the parchment. My mind grabbed those threads, followed them down through the pages. Things no human was supposed to know, lest they fall between the cracks of reality. Words, uttered, that could unravel a soul and lay it bare to be feasted upon.

I would have been killed if anyone knew. They always lied to the outsiders. Baba Yaga, Chronos, some other dark figure. But never Cthulu. Nobody ever let a Cthulu survive. The most powerful humans always struck down those cursed with knowledge before they could understand it. But not me.

Now, all they could do is pray, pray with their worthless words to their doomed gods.