Lord Alistair Blackwood discovered the truth on a Tuesday in November. It was hidden in a mineral sample he had purchased from a dealer in Cornwall, a dark stone that looked like nothing special until he exposed it to ultraviolet light, at which point it began to glow with a light that was not quite color and not quite sound.

Alistair was forty, a peer of the realm with a laboratory in his Mayfair townhouse and a reputation for eccentricity that he wore like a tailored suit. He was also a scientist of considerable ability, trained at Oxford and Munich, with a mind that moved through problems the way a knife moves through butter.

The mineral—whom he named Veritas after the Roman goddess of truth—did not behave like any mineral he had ever studied. When exposed to electromagnetic radiation, it emitted a frequency that Alistair could not measure but could feel. It was a sensation that lived behind his eyes, like the hum of a power line you cannot quite locate.

He took the first dose on a Thursday.

He had ground the mineral into a fine powder and mixed it with honey. The taste was bitter and metallic, like licking a battery. He swallowed it and waited.

The effects were immediate. Knowledge flooded into his mind—not the slow accumulation of learning, but a sudden, complete understanding of things he had never studied. He knew the structure of DNA before he had ever seen a model of it. He knew the equations that governed quantum mechanics before he had opened a textbook. He knew, with a certainty that felt like faith, that the universe was not random but ordered, and that order was beautiful.

He sat in his laboratory chair and wept.

Dr. Evelyn Hart was his private physician, and she noticed the changes immediately. Alistair's appetite increased dramatically. He ate three times his normal amount, but he lost weight. His skin grew pale and tight against his bones. But his eyes—his eyes were different. They were brighter, more intense, like two small stars burning behind his eyelids.

"My lord," she said during their weekly examination. "You are losing weight. Your heart rate is elevated. Your blood pressure is—"

"I am fine, Dr. Hart."

"You are not fine. You are changing."

"I am evolving."

Evelyn did not argue. She had learned that arguing with Alistair was like arguing with a man who has seen the other side of a mirror and knows the reflection is more real than the face.

But Thomas, his servant, was not so convinced. Thomas was twenty-five, a working-class boy from Bethnal Green who had taken the position because the pay was good and the hours were reasonable. He had noticed things that Evelyn did not.

"My lord eats at night," he told Evelyn one evening, catching her in the hallway. "Not dinner. Something else. He goes to his laboratory and comes back with his mouth full of something dark and crumbly."

"What do you mean, full of something?"

"He is eating the stones, miss. The black stones from his collection."

Evelyn felt a coldness in her stomach. "That is impossible."

"Ask him. Or follow him. I saw him last night. He was standing in the laboratory, eating the stone with his hands like an animal. And his eyes—miss, his eyes were not human."

Evelyn waited until midnight, then followed him.

She found Alistair in his laboratory, standing before a shelf of mineral samples. He had selected one—a large piece of Veritas, dark and heavy—and was breaking off pieces with his teeth. He ate them slowly, methodically, like a man savoring a fine meal. But his expression was not one of pleasure. It was hunger. A hunger that went deeper than food, deeper than desire. It was the hunger of a man who is trying to fill a void that cannot be filled.

"Alistair," she said.

He turned. His face was covered in dark dust, and his eyes were glowing with that terrible, beautiful light. "Evelyn," he said. His voice was different—deeper, resonant, like a bell tolling in an empty cathedral. "You have come to see the truth."

"What are you doing?"

"Eating truth." He held up the stone. "This is not a mineral, Evelyn. It is the physical manifestation of cosmic order. Every atom contains information. Every molecule holds a piece of the universe's secret. And when I consume it—I consume knowledge. I consume reality itself."

"That is madness."

"Is it?" He took another bite of the stone. Dust fell from his lips like black snow. "I know things now, Evelyn. Things that no human being has ever known. I know why the universe exists. I know what happens after death. I know the answer to the question that has plagued philosophers for ten thousand years."

"What is the answer?"

He smiled. It was not a kind smile. "The answer is that there is no answer. The universe is a machine, and we are the gears. And the truth is not beautiful. It is terrible. And I cannot stop eating it."

Evelyn stepped back. She wanted to run, but her feet would not move. She wanted to speak, but her voice had abandoned her. All she could do was watch as Alistair Blackwood—nobleman, scientist, friend—bent over the stone and ate until there was nothing left.

When he finished, he sat down on the floor and stared at the wall. His body was thinner now, almost skeletal, but his eyes burned with a light that filled the room.

"I have consumed seven stones," he said quietly. "Each one gives me more knowledge. Each one takes more of me. I am becoming something else, Evelyn. Something that is not human."

"Stop," she whispered.

"I cannot. The truth calls to me. It promises more. And I am too weak to refuse."

He looked at her with those terrible, beautiful eyes. "Do you want to know the answer, Evelyn? The answer to everything?"

She shook her head.

"Too bad," he said. "It is beautiful. And it is terrible. And I would give anything to know it."

He stood up, unsteady, and walked to the shelf. His hand reached for the eighth stone.

Evelyn turned and ran. She ran through the halls of the townhouse, down the stairs, out the door, into the London night. She did not stop running until she reached the Thames, where she stood on the bank and watched the black water flow past, carrying the reflections of gas lamps like broken stars.

She knew she should return. She knew she should call for help. But she also knew that help would not come in time. Alistair had crossed a threshold, and there was no going back.

The next morning, Thomas found the laboratory empty. Alistair was gone. The stones were gone. All that remained was a pile of dark dust on the floor and the smell of ozone, like the air after a lightning strike.

Evelyn never saw Alistair again. But sometimes, late at night, she would look at the stars and feel a hunger in her chest—a hunger for knowledge, for truth, for something she could not name. And she would wonder if Alistair was out there somewhere, eating the truth one stone at a time, becoming less human with every bite.