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myojinn · 15 days

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Unveil Me - Sukuna Ryomen

☁︎ Unveil Me ... Multi-chapter fanfic Secret Agent!Sukuna Ryomen (JJK) x Secret Agent!AFAB Reader ☁︎ Tags: enemies to lovers, slow burn, secret agent! au, fluff, action : tw - lots of swearing and mentions of violence

☁︎ Summary: It’s basic Agent 101 not to trust anyone else. You know that and that’s why you always work alone. But what happens when another agent proposes a truce? You agree… but only if there are no strings attached. Can you both keep a promise? ☁︎ a/n: I’ve had this fic idea for a long time already and I finally got to do it. If this series flops then…oh well. Gonna stick to the one shots then T-T : 4k+ words // minors do not interact plz

Chapter 01 ; Words of Trust

Words went in one ear and out the other.

Do they ever just… shut the fuck up?

You thought this meeting would go along without a hitch. But, oh, you were so wrong. You can’t have nice things in this fucking place. These morons made sure of that. Said morons were your fellow agents—people who should be supporting you. But rather than lifting you up, it’s like their life’s purpose to shit on you, especially in front of your boss.

Truth be told, you expected it anyway. After all, you’re a woman in a male dominated field. Espionage? C’mon. You walked right into that one. But you were determined nonetheless. You knew you were capable. You were smart, adaptable, skilled—pretty much everything a secret agent should be. But most of all, you had no connections—nothing else to hold you down. You could live your life as a spy without any restrictions.

You grew up with the familiar feeling of loneliness. The changing of the seasons were marked by a new orphanage after the other. Eventually, you didn’t bother with making friends anymore. What’s the point? They’ll be replaced in a few months anyway. Being cooped up to the side with a book was much better, so that’s what you did. It paid off in the end because when an uptight-looking man came to your orphanage looking for the brightest of the bunch—he chose you.

You figured he was a regular ol’ family man seeking out to help a child in need. Once the papers were all signed and everything was said and done—he brought you home. You had never been to a house as huge as this one. But despite the glamor of the life ahead of you, everything else was normal… at first. The man and his wife welcomed you with open arms. The three of you went out on picnics, ate dinner together, had family game nights in the living room—you know… the normal things normal families do.

But normalcy went right the fuck outta the window when one night he sat you down in the living room with a serious expression. This is it, you thought. They’re gonna get rid of me aren’t they? But I was such a good kid and I—

“Wanna be a spy, kid?”

Huh?

HUUUUUH?

Back then you thought he was messing with you like it was some sort of game. But then you realized everything that wasn’t normal about the family. He would always come home late at night or sometimes he’d have scary looking men over for brunch. His wife would pay no mind to any of it. She’d go about her life like her husband wasn’t doing anything suspicious. Sure, you were young, but that didn’t mean you were stupid.

Reality was that he was the boss of a hotshot spy agency. Now he wants this child that he adopted to be his little project. The idea of becoming an agent was alluring to a child. And, in hindsight, the old geezer definitely used that to his advantage. The way you practically shouted ‘yes’ almost immediately was proof of that.

You say ‘project’ because after you agreed to it—the sense of having a family vanished. He programmed you into thinking that he simply recruited you. Under the law, you were his child. But in your heart, you were just another pawn in his collection. Rather than developing a loving father-child relationship, you had what any boss and employee had. You respected each other, that much is true. And you even admire the man for his abilities. And that was that.

Regardless if you were tricked or not, you’ve come to love your job. The thrill of a good fight would never fail to captivate you. Even though some missions were considerably difficult, you loved your work for all its challenges.

You love it… sooo much.

You repeated that thought at least 20 times in the last minute. You truly needed some convincing right now ‘cuz some fuckers here are really testing your resolve.

I love my job and my job includes respecting my colleagues and not pulling their windpipe out with my bare hands… you thought.

“With all due respect, Mr. Nanami, I can’t just accept you sending her out for this important mission just because she’s the former boss’ kid.”

Alright, that’s it. He can consider his windpipe gone. No one brings up your relationship with the old boss and thinks they can get away with it. You grip the armrests of the chair tightly, preparing to stand up and beat this guy up. But Nanami gestured for you to stay put. You huffed out and leaned back, letting him take care of things again.

After a certain tragedy, the agency had to seek new leadership. As his adopted kid, the one he trained since childhood, you should’ve been the one next in line, right?

LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER SOUND. Wrong. Absolutely wrong.

The agency would lose credibility if a woman ran it apparently. And it would just be worse because then people would think it’s another case of nepotism. Oh well. Not like it mattered that much to you. Nanami did a hell of a good job running the place anyway. And it made you feel amazing that he did a way better job than your old man could ever do.

As you can tell—you have a strange relationship with the man who used to run this place, the same man you’re supposed to call dad.

Nanami sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Her being assigned this mission has nothing to do with her being related to the former boss. How many times must I reiterate this?” But everytime Nanami tries to quell their (unvalidated) thoughts. Another wave of (awful) discussion happens about how you’ll fuck everything up and yada yada.

“Just because she did a couple of jobs doesn’t mean she can do this one.” “Exactly! This is extremely important. What will happen to the agency if she fails?” “Just make her do some shitty honeypot mission. That’s all she’s good for.”

This time you were sure that you’d knock the living shit outta this bastard. Even Nanami won’t stop you now. But alas, a booming voice from the back of the room made his presence known. You grumbled and sat back down as Toji spoke up.

“All you shitheads ever do is complan, don’t ya? Do any of you even have the balls to do this mission? I’m sure as hell none of ya have it.”

All of them suddenly fell quiet. Nanami was the boss, but Toji surely had an aura to him. He was the top agent of the firm. Any mission assigned to him was as good as done—he was just that good. Normally, you’d be pissed that someone is outdoing you, but not him. You respected him and he respected you back… somewhat.

He never attended meetings, but for some reason he was here today. He swaggered over to where everyone else was gathered. His big hand gripped the back of the chair you were sitting on and he lowered himself to face you. His scent was strong, but pleasant. He had a lazy smirk on his face and it irked you. “You can do it though, right, princess?”

You scowled at him. You hated it when he called you ‘princess’. It always felt condescending, but you couldn’t do anything because he decided this is what he’d call you ever since the first time he met you.

“Of course I can,” you spat back. He pulls away and flashes his shit-eating grin to everyone in the room. “Well, ya heard the lady. She says she can do it. Why not let her have it?”

This is why you think he somewhat respected you. Well, respect was a bold term to describe it, but hey, you were thankful he stood up for you.

The men grumbled. Now that both Nanami and Toji were against them, their balls just magically shriveled up. There was no way they could argue with you now.

So, case closed. You win. You get the mission and you can rub that fact in their sorry ass faces. You start to love doing your job again.

And that only lasted for a while.

Suddenly you hated this piece of shit life and this piece of shit job when you found yourself seeking shelter from the rain in an old telephone booth miles and miles away from home. You angrily held your burner phone to your ear, trying to make sense of the choppy audio of some random fucker from the intel division.

“Don’t you fucking hang up on me! I don’t care if the signal is shit—you’re gonna fucking talk to me right now!”

No matter how loud you mouthed off this guy’s ear through the phone, you still couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. You just hung up out of frustration and started slamming your fist against the musty wall of the booth.

FUCK.

Everything just went wrong. So so wrong.

First, they made you fly economy. Not that you minded economy… that is if you were on a trip to the fucking Bahamas. But this isn’t Bahamas and you’re not here to fuck around. You’re here on an important mission so you expect to get to borrow the agency’s jet at least. But noooo, the execs think you’ll do just fine.

Second, the airline decided it was a good day to lose your luggage. You waited for an hour at the carousel, praying that the next boring gray travel bag would be yours. But it never came. You saw red when one of the attendants told you they MIGHT have lost it.

At that point, what you were really losing was your will to live.

Lastly, since everything else blew up in your face, you lost track of time and now communications is shit. You missed the car that was supposed to pick you up and bring you to where you’d be staying for the duration of the mission. You had even managed to get caught up in the heaviest fucking rain you’ve ever experienced in what you swear is the world’s grimiest telephone booth.

Fuck this. Fuck life.

You slowly slumped against the wall and slid down, not caring if this ancient piece of shit had bacteria that could eat your skin off. Actually, the damn bacteria can go ahead and eat you. Nothing matters anymore. All you wanted to do was wither and let the rain wash you away. Forever gone… forever lost.

...

NO. SHUT UP. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.

You slapped yourself with both of your hands, making sure it would leave a mark on your face. This isn’t how you should be acting right now. You’re an agent for crying out loud. Things are supposed to be hard and it’s your job to overcome it.

You felt a little embarrassed from that mini meltdown, but you now have a newfound resolve to move on and prove those idiots back at the agency wrong. You had to succeed. Even if your life depended on it.

You soldiered on through the rain and found a taxi. You thought you had a good grasp of the local language, but you were dead wrong when the taxi driver started speaking in what sounded like moon runes. So he dropped you off in God knows where and left you to your own devices. Like literally. You had to use the shitty burner phone they gave you and the shitty maps app that it had on it.

Somehow you managed to arrive at the inn you’d be staying at. You looked like a wet piece of cardboard limping through the entrance and into your room, but at least you were alive. Now that you had a steady signal, you tried contacting the agency again. Not the dumbasses at intel though—you called Nanami instead. You explained to him what happened with your luggage and how you were lagging behind schedule.

“Look… I know it’s been fuck up after another, but I promise I’ll get back on track.”

You hear him sigh on the other end of the call. And you completely understand if he was disappointed. He did fight for you to be on this mission and this is what he got in return. “It’s alright,” he reassured, “I know you’ll bounce back. You always do.”

His voice was gruff, but comforting. You breathed a little easier.

“I’ll have them bring you some stuff by tomorrow. Just let me know if you need anything else. Is the inn okay?”

You told him that it was fine. It was no 5-star experience, but this was better than any musty telephone booth. You two talked for a while about your experiences for today. You earned a chuckle or two from him. And maybe a conversation with Nanami was enough to ignite your spirit again.

Nanami’s one hell of a drug—considering that his pep talk gave you the strength to venture out of your inn at 2 in the morning to scope out the scene. The scene being the grand mansion of the man you were tasked to spy on. This should've been on day 2 of your itinerary, but you had enough disappointments in this mission already.

Better to take initiative now than later, you thought.

Essentially, all you had to do was keep tabs on this particular man. The man in question hides under the alias, Kenny. Putting it like that makes the task sound easy, but unfortunately for you—Kenny is excellent at covering up his tracks. Not much is known about him even in the underground.

So... what's so important about Kenny?

It's because he has a MAJOR vendetta against your agency. Major as in... he'd probably do just about anything to see it crash and burn. There was a mission in the past which your agency carried out (successfully) which effectively wiped out one of his illegal operations and almost got him in the slammer. Suffice to say he wasn't happy.

Oh... and he may have also killed your former boss... A.K.A your dad.

So, yeeeah. Pretty fucking important mission.

You needed the intel to finally put him away for good. After reading up on all suspected crimes, you wanted nothing more than to make this man face the consequences of his actions.

You may not have loved your father the way you should have, but at the very least, you wanted revenge for him. Up to this day, it still brings a stinging sensation to your heart when you think about how easily they dismissed his murder case just because it was all 'circumstantial evidence'.

REVENGE—was painted in big, bold, red letters on the back of your mind. But at the same time, a part of you knew that there was no way you could kill another man. Sure, you've had your fair share of 'forceful' interrogations, but you've never really gone so far as to take a life of another.

An image of the former boss would sometimes pop in your head. "Don't bite off more than you can chew, kid," he'd remind you—almost constantly. And maybe that applies to your situation now. You know you can't kill him. You know that all you can do by yourself is to collect information—typical espionage things that you were used to.

But, man, it sure would feel great to get the revenge you really want.

You saunter around the estate with your binoculars, hidden behind the rose bushes. You peered through the many windows from afar, trying to find any kind of activity going on. You can’t find the man, but you do see his henchmen all over the place. You made sure to keep mental notes like how many exits there are, how many men are stationed in each place, and how fucking insane this mansion is. You think one infinity pool is enough, but 4? That’s just absurd—definitely compensating for something.

You were so caught up in your recon that you were taken aback when you heard the slightest rustle of leaves behind you. But before you could completely react, a large palm covered your mouth and a strong arm snaked around your body to keep you in place. You thrashed around like a fish out of water, but the assailant’s grip was strong—too fucking strong.

You continued to struggle and gained enough leverage to lift your leg and slam it back right in his family jewels. He stumbled backwards a bit with a groan. You swiftly turned to face the unknown person, ready to retaliate. But upon facing each other, you were both put to a halt.

The assailant in question was a tall man of muscular build. He had a messy undercut, pink spiky tufts with black hair beneath it. He had an intimidating look on his face. Add to that the bold black tattooed lines around his arms. You just knew… he was trouble.

You pulled out your gun and pointed it at his chest.

“Woah woah, slow down, lady,” he says in a low voice. “You a cop or somethin’?”

You were on the good side, of course. You were taking down a detestable man, after all. But it annoyed you to be compared to a cop. You were a fucking secret agent. Emphasis on secret and agent. “A cop?” you asked, eyebrow raised, gun still pointed at him. Even though you wanted so badly to tell him that you’re not just some cop, it was basic agent 101 to not talk about your identity to anyone AT ALL.

“Jeez, you look so offended. I take it you’re not a cop then?” He laughs. The laughter comes deep from within his chest. He seemed oddly calm with a loaded gun pointed at him. He calms down and fixes his gaze on you again. “Well, whatever you are—I won’t let you stop me from killing that man.” Your eyes widen at his declaration. You slowly lowered your gun and as you did, his smile widened. “You’re here for the same reason, aren't you? You’re quite easy to read.”

Now you regret ever lowering your gun on this cocky dipshit. “Who are you?”

He took a few steps closer to you, but you didn’t fall back. You stood your ground and looked up into his red burning eyes. If he thinks he can scare you off, well, he’s dead wrong.

“Name’s Sukuna. And you?” “I don’t care about your name. I’m asking who the hell you are.”

He knew what you were implying, but clearly, he found it funny to toy with you. “Let’s just say we have the same goal, yeah? To get that little jerk living happily down in that mansion?” He says while pointing over at the mansion in the distance. The way your sight followed his finger with a look of contempt practically confirmed his suspicions.

“So I told you my name—what’s yours?”

You gave him an uninterested look. Does he really just give out information this easily? If so, he chose the wrong line of work. “I don’t owe you anything.” He grins and imitates the sound of a fire going out to feign hurt. “After I made myself vulnerable like that? How cruel of you…” He laughed a bit through his nose and backed off a step. “How about I make a proposition?”

“Like hell I’d make a deal with y—”

He placed a stubby finger on your lips to shut you up. “Trust me. You’ll want to hear this,” he says with bravado. You slap his hand away and stare daggers at him. “Seeing as how we might become potential competition for each other and potentially derail each other’s jobs… how about we work together instead?”

“You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m gon—”

This time he flicked your forehead. “You don’t shut up, do you?”

First of all, ouch. Second, THE AUDACITY? He could care less about what you had to say. He stared at you for an uncomfortable amount of time. It was like he was studying you, taking in every feature so that he may ingrain into his brain. You instinctively look away—now's not the time for some rando to memorize what you look like. That's just dangerous.

A wide grin spread across his face. "You don't look like someone who kills."

You glared at him. He was right, of course. But he made it seem as if it was something to look down upon. "Who said I killed people anyway?"

"Definitely not that gun your holding," he muses. "You pulled it out so quickly like you wanted to hurt me," he says, getting closer to you again.

"But you never thought to remove the safety hm?"

That got you quiet. True. The gun was mostly an intimidation tactic. You would've resorted to other measures before shooting him dead if needed be. God. You hated how he was so right about you.

He chuckles at your silence. "I guess we're not here for the same reason then?"

You could only turn to look away to the side. Somehow, this felt incredibly embarrassing—like an older bully taunting a small kid.

“So, you’re faced with a dilemma, aren’t you? Am I right or am I right?" He asked, practically shoving his face into your personal space. Though, you didn't budge an inch.

You hated that he was right. Maybe he was good at his job. That or he should've considered fortune telling at those shitty carnivals.

“Let’s say that you are, but what exactly does us ‘working together’ bring to the table?”

“Good question,” he says before flashing a menacing grin. "You see, you have something I don't and I have something that you don't," he explains. Your jaw falls slack at the vague explanation. He notices this and takes it as a sign to continue.

"Since it seems like you're from a fancy agency—I take it that you have the necessary equipment to gather intel on this guy, yeah? Where I'm from... let's just say we're not as blessed." He pauses and sighs, still with a slight smile remaining on his face. "Though, I am blessed with the power to kill this guy. No high-tech bullshit needed." This cocky piece of…

“What makes you think that you could even get anywhere near the guy?”

He laughed again. This time not out of amusement, but definitely out of arrogance. “Baby, I’m just that strong.”

You continued to give him that uninterested look. But you gave it some thought. It really did seem like a win-win situation, except for the fact that you will have to put some insane amount of trust into this guy. Even you don’t trust yourself THAT much.

As you pondered about it, your gaze never left him. You took in every little detail of this man called ‘Sukuna’. He probably realized your doubts as he made his way back into your proximity. His large hand came dangerously close to your face and his fingers gently held your chin. He forced you to look at him and his stupid smirk.

“What do I have to do to earn your trust? Hm? Tell me.” His voice was smooth… tempting. You’d be lying if you said it didn’t make you weak in the knees.

You gulped. The solution to your internal conflict has appeared. It was right here, in the form of an aggravating man. All you had to do was say yes. You reasoned that—you didn’t necessarily have to work WITH him. You could use him instead. Set your boundaries, play the game, and reap your earnings. And above all, there was no need to put yourself at more risk.

Doesn’t sound so bad, right?

You gripped the wrist of the hand that held your chin and looked him dead in the eye. “Fine. I’ll work with you under one condition…”

...

“Everything is purely just work—absolutely no strings attached.”

Neither of you had to know things about each other and neither of you had the obligation to save each other's asses if it wasn't a threat to your shared goal. Work will just be work. Strictly.

Then you saw that wicked smile again. The same smile that tempted you, bewitched you.

“Consider it a done deal, baby.”

Likes, reblogs, and feedback would be appreciated <3

Interested in part 2? T_T

#sukuna x reader #sukuna x you #jjk sukuna #jjk x you #jjk x reader #sukuna ryomen #sukuna fluff #sukuna au #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen fluff #Unveil Me #myoji writes

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thefirstknife · 11 months

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The Witness and the Unveiling

I've been processing the new cutscene for days now and had a lot of good conversations with other people. A lot of people are interested in figuring out what this cutscene means for the lore book Unveiling, which is also my big interest. I'll talk about the lore book itself and how it related to the cutscene and what that possibly means for our understanding of the setting.

A LOT of the text will be super speculative, very long, often abstract and ultimately not conclusive. I'll drop absolutely everything I can think of to discuss about this to try and gather every possible question and possible answers in one place. But the truth is that we don't know the answers to these questions and maybe we never will.

What is the Unveiling lore book?

First things first. The Unveiling is a lore book that we started uncovering at the end of Shadowkeep. Shadowkeep campaign ends with us acquiring a strange artifact: an orb that we recover from the Lunar Pyramid, in front of the statue of a veiled figure. As soon as we touch it, we are transported into the Black Garden and the cutscene with our clone plays.

After this cutscene, we return to the Moon and we give the orb we collected to Eris. At the time of Shadowkeep's original release, Eris worked on the orb for weeks to come, revealing 1 lore tab per week. Every page of this lore book is narrated by an unknown entity who told us about the time before the universe existed and then about the creation of the universe. It also told us about the Gardener and the Winnower, their struggle, their philosophies, what we (Guardians) mean to them and ultimately what might be coming in the future. It's one of the fundamental texts for Destiny.

Is the Unveiling now retconned with the new cutscene?

This is a question that gets both asked and claimed a lot. The answer is no. First and foremost, if we're talking about a hard retcon (Bungie saying that this lore book is no longer considered canon or Bungie simply ignoring to mention it ever again), that is literally impossible. Unveiling is the culmination of a non-vaulted campaign that's considered a big part of the Light and Darkness saga and it will never be removed from canon. This text is not only the ending of a campaign, it is referenced in-game; characters have canonically read it and commented on it, most notably in Witch Queen Collector's Edition and it's directly referenced in the lore book Inspiral from the newest raid which I'll touch on later. But the point is, if they wanted to quickly push Unveiling under the rug, they wouldn't have told us "hey remember Unveiling?" with the Lightfall's raid lore.

If people are talking about a retcon in the sense of "we believed that certain things from this text are true, but now new information is challenging that, does that mean that the original text is being retroactively changed or rendered pointless?" The answer is also no, though with a big caveat. (super long post under)

The thing is that the Unveiling was never 100% proven true. We have always known this. We've received this text from a Darkness artifact and the narrator of it is very clearly both biased and unreliable. The Unveiling is not telling us objective truth, it's telling us a biased interpretation of something that may or may not be truth. There is probably some truth to the Unveiling, which I'll get into a bit later, but it is largely a propaganda piece, meant to sway us to the side of the Darkness and reject the Traveler (Gardener). It uses a familiar and casual language to make it more relatable while it talks about how the Gardener made a fundamental mistake by wanting to introduce complexity and unpredictability to life.

So if new information comes out and says "Unveiling was all a lie or wrong or simply a myth with little connection to reality" it would be perfectly in line with what we know about Unveiling right now. I expected that at some point we should learn directly if Unveiling was just a biased tale filled about something incomprehensible that may never be fully true. The new cutscene does nothing to Unveiling outside of simply giving it a new context and a new way to interpret it. This is not new for the Destiny setting which is actually filled with unreliable narrators, characters who lie and characters who are wrong. As a matter of fact, that's what any setting should be like if it strives for realistic storytelling.

The fact that the Unveiling is directly referenced in the newest lore from the newest raid means that Bungie didn't magically forget about this lore book. They literally basically added two extra pages of it with Root of Nightmares. But we never knew the true meaning of the Unveiling so any new information that confirms or denies certain parts of it makes full sense in the story.

Unveiling and the Witness cutscene

So, what are the issues and contention between these two things? Well, there's a lot. A lot of little details from the Witness cutscene are now putting a lot of original interpretations of Unveiling into question. Did we blindly believe in this origin of the universe myth that the Unveiling told? Is it a complete fabrication? Is there at least a kernel of truth to it? Who wrote the Unveiling?

The biggest divergence comes from the fact that Unveiling claims there are incomprehensible entities that created the universe called Gardener and Winnower; the Gardener becoming the Traveler and the Winnower being completely unknown. The cutscene explicitly calls the Traveler "Gardener" but it's revealed that was a name given to it by the Witness' species when they stumbled upon it on their planet, covered in dirt. How can this be the entity that created the universe?

When the Witness was officially introduced at the end of the Witch Queen, the immediate assumption of many was that the Witness was the Winnower. This is now categorically untrue, at least on some level (will get to it eventually later); the Witness is not an entity that fought the Gardener in the allegorical garden that predates the existence of the universe. So does the Winnower still exist as that entity that fought in the garden?

Let's summarise the Unveiling piece by piece first. First page is an introduction with a lot of grand claims about the nature of existence. It immediately makes it clear that the narrator is selling us a worldview:

But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective. Imagine a world without me.

Pages two, three, four and five claim to detail a time from before the universe existed presented in an allegorical tale about a Gardener and Winnower that live in a garden and play a game. The allegorical language is not subtextual, it's very much explicitly told that this is an allegory.

Once upon a time,* a gardener and a winnower lived** together in a garden.*** * It was once before a time, because time had not yet begun. ** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes. *** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence.

The story goes: before the universe existed, Gardener and Winnower played a game of life. They were able to configure the game board with starting set pieces and then let it play out and see what comes out of it. The end of the game was always the same; the same pattern would always win and the game's ending would always be predictable. This bothered the Gardener who wanted complexity and freedom. It didn't bother the Winnower; the Winnower prefered the clean and clear cut outcome that always follows the same principles and always leads to the same conclusion.

Page six is an interjection with a philosophical question about the nature of a specific protein. The page explains it to us and asks if this protein is an agent of Darkness or the Light. This is not entirely relevant to the topic at hand, but it's important for the understanding of how Unveiling is trying to exert its bias onto the reader by presenting some sort of a gotcha. It wants us to come to the conclusions that benefits the narrator.

After that, page seven resumes the origin story of the universe. They fought together in the garden about their differences and about the Gardener's decision to make a new rule for the game. Their fight was so fundamental that it led to the creation of the universe. The chapter title is "T=0" which means "time equals zero" and is a part of understanding how the universe was made out of nothing.

The garden had given birth to creation, the rules were in place, and there would never be a second chance. We played in the cosmos now. We played for everything.

Page eight returns to trying to sway us to its side by telling us that the concept of predation is what made all of life possible and that it is the narrator who is responsible for our existence.

It was the first defector—the first predator. It changed everything. Now the oozeballs needed sensors to watch for danger, and brains to integrate those senses and generate plans of survival, and swift neurons and muscles to enact that plan. This was the Cambrian Explosion, the great birth of complex life on your world. I caused it. I, the defector, the destroyer, the one who takes.

It's selling us a worldview again. It wants us to believe that the reason we have everything we do is because of the sword logic; everyone fighting for the right to exist. When everyone fights, everyone has to evolve to defend and survive, therefore the reason we've evolved is because we had to fight. This is a huge contrast with how the Gardener works. The Gardener jumpstarts and uplifts species by gardening, terraforming, evolving them without the need to struggle. The Gardener also doesn't pick and choose when it comes to terraforming; everyone is equally important and you don't have to justify or prove your right to exist. An ant's value is the same as a human's. To the narrator, that simply cannot be. If the ant can't prove the right to exist by being stronger, then it should not exist. This always showed bias and the way this ideology works on the misinterpretation of the "survival of the fittest" phrase; survival of the fittest isn't "survival of the strong" it's "survival of those who are best adapted to their environment."

Page nine is very important and is one of the things that makes Unveiling possibly true in some aspects. Namely, this page called Patternfall, is about the Vex. The narrator describes the Vex and how they existed in the allegorical garden from which they escaped into the universe with the Big Bang. Before the battle between Gardener and Winnower, the Vex, this pattern, always won the game. The Vex were the winning outcome of every game played, the source of Gardener's frustration and Winnower's elation.

Given that we know that the Vex are real and that they have a... tenuous relationship with time, this part of the story feels correct. It would make sense that the Vex predate time itself, which would explain why they are able to navigate it and manipulate it as easily as we manipulate any other force; the Vex already existed when all of time was a singularity before the Big Bang, this is known to them. Not only that, but the Vex can't understand paracausality, which was added to the game as a new rule, a rule they've never seen before. The description of the Vex in this chapter is also on point so it's has to be correct or close to correct.

They propagated in the saline meltwater of comets orbiting the first stars. That broth of chemicals became their substrate, and they learned to catalyze impossible chemistry with quantum tricks. Then, they rained from the sky into the steaming seas of fallow worlds, and there they built their first housings from geometry and silica.

We know that they are linked to first stars because of Clovis Bray's expedition to 2082 Volantis, an impossibly old star dating back to the beginning of the universe that the Vex have kept artificially alive ever since by refuelling it.

In all their transformations, they retained that kernel of ultimate self-sufficiency that had made them victors in the flower game. But they are not incontrovertibly destined to rule this cosmos. They were made before Light and Darkness, but the rules are different now, and even this pattern must adapt.

Patternfall also makes a note about the Vex that are alligned with Darkness: Sol Divisive of the Black Garden.

They are not all mine, not in the way that admirers such as my man Oryx are mine: utterly devoted to the practice of my principle. But some of them have, nonetheless, found their way home.

This specific page tells us that at least in some way, some sections of the Unveiling must be telling an objective truth, or at least be as close to the truth as possible. Barring any new reveals about the Vex, this seems to fit with what we know about them so it must be correct. The Vex are the way they are because they predate the universe and their existence in the universe right now is the only remnant of a time before time. They used to be the final shape, always, until paracausality was introduced and now they must fight with the rest of us to reclaim their position. This means that the allegorical garden where the Gardener and Winnower lived and fought must be in some way real. Remember, we are talking about a time from before the universe. The word "real" is a very loose description of that place, but the Vex must've come from there and possibly have a memory of being there so it there must be a "there" before the Big Bang. Mind boggling stuff going on. (As an aside, the Vex HAVE to be the core of The Final Shape expansion. They gotta. Also note that there is a weird metaphysical space on the other side of the portal)

Speaking of aspects that have to be true or at least reflect truth; there is the Tree of Silver Wings. This is mentioned throughout Unveiling as a tree that existed in the garden that was toppled when the Gardener and Winnower fought. The Tree is clearly real because we've seen iterations of it several times now. A completely new Tree was grown in the cradle on Io and now we can also see the Tree in Root of Nightmares, growing at the cradle on the Witness' Pyramid. The seeds of the Tree are also real; Osiris had one and so did Calus and we've seen both. How does the allegorical Tree from an allegorical garden from before the universe existed relate to the real Trees in a very real universe is completely unknown.

Page ten is a lot more attempts to convince us that the narrator is the correct choice to follow and that its philosophy is the winning one and that we should abandon the Gardener and join them. The narrator also tells us that we don't have rush with our answer because it is coming over to meet us anyway. This was the end of Shadowkeep so it was quite an ominous message. The Shadowkeep year ended with the arrival of the Black Fleet to our system and then was further expanded in Beyond Light where we gained a more direct contact with them and their gifts of stasis.

The final page, eleven, is Eris' message to us about hope and resistance to the allure of Darkness. Mind you that she's not talking about using aspects of Darkness as tools, but more about the philosophy of it as it's presented in Unveiling; you can use the Darkness without entertaining the Darkness and the philosophy of the extreme version of the sword logic.

Okay, so what's the issue between this and the Witness cutscene? Well, before the reveal of the Witness in general, we believed that the narrator of the Unveiling, the Winnower, is the big bad. The entity that is the origin of Darkness, the entity that made the Black Fleet, the entity that controls our enemies. This was never confirmed, but it was a reasonable conclusion to Unveiling, until further notice. Now we know that some parts of this aren't true. The Witness is the big bad and the Pyramids are just the remains of its species' technology. And while the Witness does fulfil some of the roles of the Winnower, we now know that the Witness is not the origin of Darkness so it cannot be the Winnower that's spoken of in Unveiling, not the Winnower that existed before the universe.

The Witch Queen and some hints here and there before that (mostly in the Presage mission where Savathun more or less explicitly told us that the Darkness is not the same as the entity that we're fighting against) introduced the Witness directly without any metaphors or vague language. We finally saw this being, in full glory, as it emerged, moved and spoke. From then until now, we've tried to understand the Witness but we really knew nothing substantial.

A lot of conversations were about the nature of the Witness and the Winnower, the narrator of Unveiling. Were they the same thing? Or are they separate entities? Is the Winnower even real or is it literally just a metaphor for a philosophy, an idea, that the Witness represents? There's always people who will immediately clamor about "retcons" but once again, the Unveiling was never an objective truth. We made assumptions about the Unveiling and its narrator, but none of those assumptions were ever confirmed in any way. This is also reflected in-game with characters discussing the meaning of the Unveiling in many different ways. Unveiling being unreliable and unclear was intended. The Witness existing does not contradict or remove Unveiling's significance. It just recontextualises and already unreliable text that was never objective to begin with.

And it continues to do so. The Witness cutscene first and foremost shows us the Traveler, curiously covered in dirt and depicted almost as if it's rising from the ground. The Witness' people are described as discovering it and naming it "Gardener." It then uplifted them, terraformed their world and gave them a golden age which is familiar to us.

But wait. If the Gardener is from a time before the universe, how is it now suddenly a dirt covered orb on a random planet? This is where the Unveiling being interpreted literally becomes a problem. If the Gardener (and Winnower) aren't from a time before the Big Bang and that whole allegory of a garden that existed before the universe is a lie, then what is the Unveiling and who wrote it and for what purpose?

I've seen a lot of good discussions on it that I'd like to highlight here. This post discusses things in a similar way to what I'm writing here, for example. Just a little while ago, I reblogged this interpretation of it which I really like which differs from this. There's been a lot of various similar theories in which the Witness has simply created this idea of the Winnower and the associated philosophy after it went through an existential crisis of catastrophic proportions; the Unveiling is simply entirely a lie, an attempt to make people believe the winnowing philosophy.

It's a good question to ask what of the story of the Vex and the Gardener if Unveiling is fully a lie. A really important note here is that we've known from other sources that the Traveler is the Gardener. Both from other characters, most notably in Lightfall from Osiris, but also from the Traveler itself and the Unveiling. So if Unveiling is bullshit, what about the Vex and the Gardener? Why did the Gardener even appear on the random planet from the dirt?

My theory is that Unveiling is partially correct. Something incomprehensible WAS happening before the universe existed; it involved forces that would end up becoming the Light and Darkness, the Gardener, the Vex and probably the Veil. This period of time is so abstract and unfathomable that we cannot physically understand it through anything but allegory. Some believe that the Veil now fulfils the role of the Winnower which is possible, but I'm not sure how likely; we will need even more information on the Veil to make that judgement call. Either way, Unveiling's myth about the origins of everything could still hold true in some regard. If that's true, we know that the Gardener made the new rule for the game (paracausality), caused the Big Bang and inserted itself into the new game (aka into the universe). The Gardener thus became the Traveler which it has refered to as being its body.

It feels like lead and neutronium and electroweak matter fashioned into a moon-sized ball that you must carry as you move.

The time before the universe wasn't physical, but the universe is. This body, the Traveler, had to have been made and it's possible that it was made on the Witness' planet. Perhaps that was one of the first planets in existence, a place where the Gardener forged its body and emerged into the existence as a physical being capable of terraforming. The Light is the domain of the physical so it makes sense that the Gardener has to utilise this physicality to be able to do its thing.

The Darkness is psychic; it's emotion, consciousness, the mind. It doesn't have to be physical. Perhaps the Winnower IS real, but it's simply a metaphysical idea that exists in the universe, but cannot be seen. It can influence others; everyone who ponders on the nature of existence runs the risk of being exposed to the idea of winnowing. It's inevitable. Every conscious being can be influenced by Darkness and it's many possibilities; some perfectly neutral or even good and some bad.

And the Witness' people went highly in-depth in their research of the Gardener and then later the Veil. If they were looking for answers to meaning and purpose, they would've likely come close to understanding the origin of the universe. Perhaps from the Gardener (who was there, before the Big Bang) or perhaps by exploring the Veil (which is, as of now, still fairly unknown as an entity) or maybe even the combination of their investigation into both of those. There's some credence to this in particular, given the memory from Ahsa in week 3, mainly this part:

Two halves of a whole... long divided. A... schism between them. Reunited. [exhales in joy] A glimpse beyond... to the beginning...

This most certainly refers to the Traveler and the Veil being reunited and connected as the Witness' people attempted the connection for the first time. And it offered them "a glimpse beyond to the beginning." Beginning of what if not the universe? The connection was never fully realised and the two were never fully reunited. But they were in Lightfall and in Lightfall, this created a portal to an incomprehensible realm into which nobody but the Witness can enter (for now). This realm acts as if it exists somewhere outside of normal spacetime, somewhere beyond, and it resembles... well, a garden world, like a garden from the allegory of existence before the universe.

If the Witness' people saw how the universe began as explored in the Unveiling, they would've absolutely come to the conclusion that everything is meaningless and that the Gardener did something that led to untold suffering, basically on a whim to seek more complex, but ultimately pointless life. Instead of this perfectly ordered garden world where every outcome is known and there is no deviation from the rules, we received a universe that is seemingly random, chaotic and meaningless. At least that would be the interpretation of it in their mind.

The Gardener could've just let things play out infinitely in the game with the same outcome, with the same pattern, but it didn't. It made the universe instead, filled with infinite mysteries and infinite possibilities and you will never know which one of those possibilities are "correct" and which choices are better than others. You will never know where to go and who to follow and what to do and there is no inherent value to any specific choice you make. Countless species will live and die "without meaning and purpose."

This was terrfying to the Witness' people, possibly exactly because they've seen how things were before. Before the Gardener's actions, everyone would have a specific purpose to fulfil in service of reaching the final shape which is always the same. Now, there is no goal, nothing to work towards, nothing to specific to strive for. So they decided to follow the philosophy of an entity that fought the Gardener and take up its job; to winnow in search for the final shape. To reshape reality, reset existence, "free" the Gardener from its own creation.

In that way, Unveiling is still very much true and it's the same as ever; it's a subjective interpretation of the origins of the universe told in a biased nature by a being that learned to despise the chaos of existence and would want to return to the way things were before.

So who wrote the Unveiling then? Again, many theories. Since the Witness' reveal in WQ, a lot of people speculated that the Witness wrote it and that the Witness is same as the Winnower. That could be true now, in a way; the Witness took up the mantle of the Winnower so it might as well be it. The Unveiling is written with a tone and voice that differs from how we know the Witness, but now we also know that the Witness is a being of billions; perhaps there is a voice in there who writes text and who speaks that way. It could also be just a ruse; the Witness is a manipulator who lies constantly. It could've written this text in this way to deliberately confuse, manipulate and coerce us; the Unveiling "tone" is fake and it was also fake when it spoke to Oryx.

Another option is that Unveiling was still written by the entity we know as the Winnower. If the Winnower is the origin of Darkness, coming from the garden from before the universe, then it is metaphysical; it's in the mind and consciousness. It doesn't need a body or to be fully physical. It can influence and talk and BE simply by being the origin of consciousness. Every conscious being can access the Winnower. The Winnower is every idea that leads to predation and killing and death. It's every thought and dream and memory and pain. It could've touched the Witness' people and pushed them to adopt its philosophy when they went too far with their research and especially when they connected to the Veil. It could've tried doing the same to us, when we connected to the Darkness artifact in a Pyramid at the end of Shadowkeep.

There is also the angle that the tale from Unveiling is literally entirely untrue. There was nothing before the universe existed. The description of the Vex was the Witness' attempt to understand how they function, or a piece of truth added to make the rest of the text seem correct to those that read it. The myth of the garden and the two entities fighting could be an attempt to give meaning to how everything started, giving a reason to pursue the Traveler and feel justified doing it.

The main point here is that we don't know and we might never know given the incredibly allegorical and mythologised way that Unveiling is talking about something that is incredibly hard to conceptualise in the first place. An interesting bit to add here is the concept of egregore:

Egregore (also spelled egregor; from French égrégore, from Ancient Greek ἐγρήγορος, egrēgoros 'wakeful') is an esoteric concept representing a non-physical entity that arises from the collective thoughts of a distinct group of people.

It's not an accident that egregore in Destiny is a physical manifestation of psychic connections that links points of Darkness together. It comes from this originally; basically if enough people think about the same thing or believe in the same thing, they will create an "egregore" = their thought or belief will spawn a non-physical entity associated with that thought or belief. In that sense, the Witness' people may have created the Winnower when they all united in thinking about how the universe is meaningless without a Winnower. The Winnower is an egregore created by the Witness' people and the belief in this egregore manifests physically as the egregore fungus which infests and links everyone who believes in the Winnower. Perhaps, even, if the Winnower is that egregore, something created by the first beings that ventured that far into metaphysics and then it retroactively became tied to the universe. Once the Winnower was created, the Witness' people tried explaining where it fits into the universe, constructing an origin myth around it. Perhaps they weren't aware that they manifested the Winnower, and believed that they simply discovered it and that the origin myth they constructed was them learning some bigger truth.

There are issues and questions with any of these explanations and they all go into super abstract possibilities and options. If the garden before the universe is entirely a myth, then what of the Gardener and the Vex and the Tree of Silver Wings? If there's truth to how the universe began, what about the Witness being simply a species that got uplifted and went mad with horrors of knowledge? Was the Winnower real in the garden before time or is it merely something conjured from the minds of a people who wanted purpose and meaning?

Furthermore, what about Inspiral, the raid lore book whose last two pages are very reminiscent of the Unveiling, reference it and function almost like extra two pages for it? Inspiral is particularly strange because each page starts with a description of a being that left its memories in the book. First of the final two pages, Meaning, describes its narrator as:

A dream of a metaphor made starkly, an allegory discussed in study of ontology, in Darkness not unkind. It leaves behind a warped, barely-real data fragment to mark its passing.

And the second, Winnowing:

A dream of a friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows. It leaves behind an impossible data fragment to mark its passing.

Neither of these descriptions fit the Witness. The Witness is not a metaphor or an allegory, nor is it "barely-real." It is also not "impossible to see" nor does it leave behind "impossible data." The Witness is very much real, though clearly ascended into a state of being beyond our comprehension, but we can very much hear it and see it. The cutscene very clearly explains that the Witness began as just another species and achieved a higher existence; it's not some weird mystical energy that originated before the universe began. Most of all, the Witness is neither kind nor friendly.

The only metaphor and allegory is the garden from before the universe and the Gardener and the Winnower that fought in it. The Gardener manifested as the Traveler, but the Winnower is unknown to us. These two pages read, again, almost exactly the same as Unveiling and they bear no resemblance to the Witness, neither in tone nor in the description of their narrator(s). Obviously, it could be lies and manipulations on purpose which is something to keep in mind in general.

But the page Meaning very clearly makes a distinction between two entities:

There is a voice that echoes across the Darkness, and it asks this question: what is the purpose of it all? And there is another voice that calls back and says: listen, I will tell you a purpose. I will tell you of a Final Shape.

After seeing the cutscene, the first sentence could obviously refer to the Witness' people. They sought purpose and meaning. The second specifies that something answered, something else, when they dug deep into the Veil. Did that something exist on its own, predating the Witness, or did the Witness create it, like an egregore? Either way, the Witness inquired and something returned the call OR the text is referring to a generalised idea of anyone exploring the Darkness, asking that question and then getting a reply from the Winnower, which is a creation of the Witness.

On the other hand, there's the issue of the Darkness being a much more complex phenomenon than we've previously believed. If the Winnower is the origin of Darkness, then would it not represent ALL of Darkness? As of right now, both Unveiling and Inspiral pages that we might be able to attribute to the Winnower are distinctly focused only on the sword logic aspect which fits more with the Witness. The Witness and its pawns have extermined species that also used the Darkness, in different ways. Would the Winnower not acknowledge the entirety of Darkness? This issue can be better solved if we insist that the Witness is what invented or manifested the Winnower and its ideology. Darkness is more than winnowing, that's for sure, but the Witness and its manifestation of the Winnower are focused only on winnowing.

Some more concrete answers may lay in our understanding of the Veil. We're beginning to gather more information about this entity and the cutscene itself shed some light on it as well. The Veil was connected to the Traveler, always, even before the Witness' people found it. It was not near the Traveler, but instead somewhere far away where the Witness' people had to fly to in order to bring it back. Some already believe that the Veil is the Winnower or a product of it; that the Winnower and the Gardener were these abstract entities in the garden before the universe and then became the Veil and the Traveler post-Big Bang, but still connected.

The truth is that this is a highly complicated concept to think about, explore and explain. The Unveiling could be one being's attempt to explain how the universe began and it could be true or it could be false. Nothing in the cutscene explicitly tells us either way, nor does it render the Unveiling useless (and it also doesn't render it a word of god).

The science and philosophy about the origin of the universe are unknown in real life and will probably remain unknown in Destiny. To expect a fictional story to accurately and unambiguously tell us how the universe began is to expect A LOT. The only ones that could truly maybe tell us are the Traveler (Gardener) and the Veil. The question is, would we be able to withstand knowing something like that. Many who peered into the Veil have lost their minds and the Traveler does not speak of things like that because divulging such information would inevitably put someone on a set path. To know everything is to lose choice. You know exactly where to go, how, when and why, as well as what will happen when you get there. The Gardener wants us to make our own fate and it wants the universe to not lead into any specific outcome.

This is some of the most bizarre and wild high concept scifi stuff we've ever had in Destiny. I don't expect us to solve it so quickly after major new information has been revealed and there's still a lot more to find out. This is a really exceptionally long dive into some of the theories and options. A lot of people don't like this type of unreliable philosophical conundrums and would much rather just prefer to be told the facts. And I don't think we'll ever know facts about these topics in a way that would make them easy to digest. Unveiling might one day be fully explained in a way that will allow us to construct the true history of the universe and its origins, but it might also not be. Perhaps it will remain a perpetual mystery to force to wonder about these concepts.

I'd personally prefer a little bit of mystery to remain; for both us and the Witness to forever wonder what was the meaning of it all, what was our purpose, have we chosen it "correctly" and what our choices could've led to if we've done things differently.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #season of the deep #season of the deep spoilers #witness #unveiling #lore vibing #long post #i did say this cutscene made me insane #and then also it brought up questions about the unveiling and unveiling makes me super insane #long rambling post be upon ye #i really enjoy reading thoughts on this so if anyone would interpret something differently or has better evidence feel free to share #also btw don't feel bad if this is all super confusing #i believe the story around it very much intended to give us a headache and require like 4 degrees in philosophy #i myself am also confused by a lot of the points raised by this whole thing #being confused is not a inherently a bad thing. we are moved to learn by confusion #it pushes us to want to explore and understand #i love this incomprehensible eldritch scifi shit that makes me question existence and reality #no wonder people go insane when they start unraveling the knowledge about the universe

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