I want to make one thing clear. France is being erased. The French people are being exterminated.

There is so little news coming from France I’ve had to dedicate every waking hour of my life to finding it, and this isn’t enough. I have no tears left to cry.

Paris stands, occupied by Germans as a military central command. The ones around Paris suffer the greatest. Not all people could leave on boats, some - most - had to stay.

The Germans told us Lyon was a safe haven, where even they wouldn’t attack, so millions fled there, set up tents in the streets, lived on scraps or less. Men, women, and children, the old, the sick, the infirm, the very young, all crowded Lyon with their piles of nothing, hoping only to find survival.

Not peace, not justice, not even water, but survival.

The Germans have saturated the ground water with chemicals so that no crop will grow, thrown poison to the wind so the air is unsafe to breathe, then they trampled, bombed every building so that there would be no shelter. They shepherded us, locked us all in the smallest box they could think of and burned it. Lyon doesn’t exist. Two thousand years Lyon had stood, since the Romans, and now it is gone, reduced to rubble and entrails.

They have no honor. They have no logic. They will invade the United States to eradicate the French in New York, and they will do it soon. The time for subtlety is over. This cult, this curse Charles speaks of, they control the world.

This is the only conclusion. The group he found under the school was but a branch of a wider tree and the bough still stands. The bough is this book. I will cut it from its roots.

What a mess. What a terrible, beautiful mess. Long have I been resigned to frank imitation of the true artists of beauty and order at the heart of French society, but now I stand alone as master among none, so I shall bear the torch. I must declutter what information now stands, if only so I can get my bearings.

First of all the fact remains that Ashcroft maintains control over the new German empire and does so with the increasingly integral assistance of the curse written in this book.

There is at least one harpy loose in the world, whose loyalties, as far as I am aware, lie with monsieur Charles Duval of Tulle. The chances some of Abraham’s embryos survived their botched poisoning are above zero and so the chance others may exist without my knowledge are also zero.

Ashcroft’s men have successfully infiltrated the United States and no doubt intend to act as inside men in the coming invasion.

The deity Isha has some form of unnatural control over the world and intends to end it using Ashcroft and I as vessels.

Lastly, and most pressingly, I must end the curse by breaking the chain of bearers. To do this I will have to die with the diary in my possession and use absolutely no means whatsoever to destroy it. I will die somewhere secluded enough as to never be found, or at the least to be found far after the Germans have failed for lack of occult power and, importantly, not by anyone named Otto.

These, dear readers, are the facts.

I see one solution. I, Otto Marcel Launois, will construct a forest cabin away from any prying eyes and live there until I die.

I am no outdoorsman. I know not how to hunt or trap, to fish or farm; I have no clue as to the specifics of chopping and building with wood. Herein lies my first challenge: constructing a cabin without raising suspicion.

Buying lumber seems altogether out of the question, whether already prepared for construction or not. I’ll have to learn to lumberjack myself. I’ll need to find a suitable spot far away, deep in the forest. The mountain stretches south of here and the land between is largely uninhabited. Mount Hood is the name of the mountain, I’ve just remembered. I’ll set out today for a day trek into the forest to find a clearing.

Tomorrow I’ll write with the results.