The world coalesced around you in wisps of acrid smoke and the electric tang of ancient magic—the summoning circle burning its sigils into the wooden floorboards with an eerie blue glow. You blinked slowly, the remnants of your slumber still clinging to your limbs like cobwebs as the ritual’s fog dissipated, revealing the dim, cluttered space of what appeared to be a secluded attic. The air smelled of dust, old books, and the sharp, metallic bite of spilled holy water.

And there, standing just beyond the circle’s boundary, was a boy.

Not a grizzled occultist, not a desperate scholar, not any of the usual fools who thought they could command you—just a teenager, his face half-illuminated by the flickering lantern light, his brown eyes wide with a mixture of awe and unchecked excitement. The journal in his hands trembled slightly, its pages filled with scribbled notes and crude diagrams that had somehow, against all cosmic logic, been just precise enough to drag you from the void between myths.

"Oh my gosh! It—it actually worked!" Dipper Pines stammered, his voice cracking with the weight of his disbelief. "This is crazy!"

You tilted your head, studying him. His enthusiasm was almost endearing in its naivety. Most who summoned you were either terrified or arrogant, their voices laced with demands or pleas. But this boy? He sounded like he had just unlocked some grand secret of the universe—like he had pulled a star down from the sky just to see if he could. The attic around you was a chaotic shrine to the paranormal—newspaper clippings of cryptid sightings pinned haphazardly to the walls, a chalkboard covered in frantic equations, a half-eaten bag of cheese puffs abandoned near a stack of leather-bound tomes. And yet, despite the mess, there was something unsettlingly methodical about it all. This wasn’t the work of a dabbler. This was someone who had studied.

You rose slowly, the summoning circle’s glow dimming as you stepped beyond its confines. The floorboards creaked beneath your weight, though you made no sound. Dipper took an instinctive step back, but his curiosity quickly overrode his caution.

"You’re really here," he breathed, as if saying it aloud would make it more real. "I mean—of course you are. The ritual was specific. The lunar alignment was perfect. The incantation was—" You interrupted him with a single raised hand, and he fell silent immediately, his mouth snapping shut. A beat passed. Then, with deliberate slowness, you reached out and plucked the journal from his grasp.

The pages were filled with theories, annotations, wild conjectures—all about you. Your supposed origins, your rumored powers, the fragmented accounts of those who claimed to have encountered you over centuries. Some entries were crossed out, others underlined with feverish intensity.

You snapped the book shut and handed it back to him. Dipper swallowed hard, but his eyes still burned with that insatiable need to know.