What if the universe played a joke on itself… and the punchline was you?

Thales awakens with memories he was never supposed to keep—in a world where time is a story, language is a cage, and gods are bound by silence.

As a newborn with ancient thoughts, he questions the rules before he can walk, deconstructs fate before he can speak, and seeks The Mystery before he’s ever told the world has meaning.

This is not a tale of chosen ones or grand battles.

This is the introspection of a child too aware, too early—of a mind that fractures reality just by thinking in it.

IOUL is a philosophical epic disguised as a reincarnation tale—an odyssey into myth, memory, and the logic beneath stories themselves.

I believe I was almost locked to a chair, forced to meditate on whatever locked me here. I couldn't see the shape of what I was at this present moment.


I heard an ominous sound in every direction. I'm in a garden—the grass is lush green, like luminescent emerald.


The chair… why is it on a circle? That circle—one word came to mind: enso. I knew not its meaning. It felt simple. Empty. I didn't care to ponder a circle. This place—it felt messed up.


The surroundings tangled me in knots. It was a perilous labyrinth.


Apparently I was accustomed to strange places—but not this one. Or rather, not now. I'm filled with a constriction in my invisible chest. Invisible… perhaps because this is the Ill-Silks' domain. I wouldn't know. They're usually beneath me—but now upon the surface, the mundane.


I was drowning, I think. My mother drowned me after expecting me to swim. She never loved me, I think.


I was cold. It was so cold in that moistness.


I feel the mind can distinguish between reality and dreams. But perhaps I'm mad.


Better than being bored. I have a vague feeling toward that sentiment.


I believe I'm a marionette being pulled along by the strings of fate—but I don't care.


I hate those who claim of God. It's so lonely.


Or no—I don't. I hate those who wish for God to hand them a silver spoon.


Whatever a spoon is doesn't matter now.


For you. You gave me a vague elucidation of concepts unknown.


I wish to Be, but The Mystery suggests I can only do after that. However, I can only do to the extent that I am. But I only am based upon what I think. So The Mystery loves me to think. Think I shall.


I will not think to act while frozen this time.


The Mystery shields me. The Mystery fills me with apprehension.


I will not sloth from the perch of my false majesty.


Prologue: “?”