A Novel
This is a work of fiction set in a parallel universe — one that feels, at times, uncomfortably close to our own. The worlds here are invented. The truth inside them is not.
The Question
What if the only way to remember what you are — is to completely forget?
Somewhere in the ancient world, a healer climbed a forbidden mountain alone, carrying more love than he knew what to do with. Somewhere in Oakland, a woman in sweatpants sits in a therapist's chair she has avoided her entire life. And somewhere beyond the stars, a being drinks a darkness so foul it erases everything he ever was — so that he might one day remember everything he is.
We live in an age of endless revelation. The rabbit holes go deeper than any one mind can follow. And for many who are searching, the search itself becomes the trap. The darkness whispers — I matter more because I know something you don't.
This is a story about that seeker. About the costs of descent. About a universe that set the whole unraveling in motion because there was no other path to the only truth that has ever mattered.
Not hidden knowledge. Not a deeper revelation.
That the love being sought was always the love within.
A Shrewd Unraveling of Eternity is a novel about the oldest question consciousness has ever asked itself: what am I, beneath the masks I was programmed to wear?
The Chapters
Released chapter by chapter on Substack as they arrive.
In a gossamer world, it was a privilege to hold your tiny hand in mine.
Three threads begin simultaneously across impossible distances. On Terra, a woman in Uruguay walks a country road and locks eyes with a great horned owl — and feels, for one suspended moment, that she belongs somewhere. Beyond the stars, two beings grieve in the dark before one drinks a darkness so foul it erases everything he ever was. And in the ancient world, Ântolin moves through a cave system in silence, his only companion the crystal consciousness fused to the end of his staff, closing in on something that has never been found before. The sacrifice is made. The forgetting begins. The unraveling is set in motion.
Read the Prologue on Substack
she sits in boundless vibration
sequestering stillness bubbled up from a past
Jennica is in a seat she has avoided her entire life. Surprisingly plush. Non-threatening. Cold. In a therapist's office in Oakland she has been circling for years, she begins to tap on her knees and let the memories come — a frog, a fish, a brother slapping, a pool. And then something surfaces that stops everything cold: a memory of pulling her drowning brother from the water at age six without getting wet. Before the thread can be followed, something enters the room that doesn't belong. Something that changes everything. And somewhere across town, a chess move is made.
Read Chapter One on Substack
it is eternally now
that place a dream come and gone
in the belly of this beast
can I be the mountain is all I think
Ântolin was to become a god. Today he is waking up on frozen ground with icicles in his beard, perilously close to his limits, climbing toward a sacred mountain that will kill him if he is discovered. He is a traitor to his people, an exile among the Elluvians, a being who rejected the machine-soul fusion of his civilization and paid for it with everything. What drives him is not prophecy. It is simpler than that. He wants to be held. Inside the crystal heart of Elløriam, something ancient and playful is waiting — and it already knows his name.
Read Chapter Two on Substack
life continues along all the same
and right now
is always today
The narrator arrives. Ancient, curious, uncontainable — a consciousness that has always loved water, because it became it. Âang speaks directly to the reader across time, watching humans move through their days unaware of what waits. Then, in a memory from a younger Terra, a woman is found singing alone by a swamp at twilight. The fireflies gather around her. She can see him. And she already knows he is a stranger.
Read Chapter Three on SubstackAbout the Author
Ryan Wilson is an American writer currently living nomadically across Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and beyond. He writes fiction, poetry, and personal essays — all of them trying, in different ways, to answer the same question.
This novel arrived not from planning but from listening. The characters revealed themselves through the writing. The cosmology emerged from years of studying consciousness, Taoist philosophy, shamanic tradition, Human Design, and the Gene Keys — not as intellectual frameworks but as lived experience.
He also coaches people preparing for Goenka vipassana retreats through his program GMTV, and publishes poetry and essays under the banner Art Is Surrender.
On This Work
This is a story about the oldest seeker's trap — the one where the search for light becomes its own kind of darkness. Where knowledge becomes armor. Where revelation becomes a destination rather than a return.
It is also a love story. Between souls who keep finding each other across galaxies and forgetting and beginning again. Between a being who has too much love and nowhere to put it. Between a universe and the consciousness it can't quite hold.
Released chapter by chapter on Substack as they arrive — which is the only honest way to write something like this. Subscription required after the free preview.
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