The Return of Zarathustra:

CHAPTER NINE: ADDRESS TO THE READER

The silence lingered.

Then, from the black void, Zarathustra appeared again. No longer within the courtroom. No longer beneath the Judge’s throne. 

Now, he stood in a voidless void—the spaceless space of the reader’s own mind. You feel him staring directly at you. His eyes piercing not from the page or the screen, but from the depths of some hidden dimension inside your skull.

He speaks.

“YOU.”

His voice is no longer theatrical. It is intimate. Familiar. As if he has always known you.

“You who turned these pages, who scrolled through and beyond this ancient scroll, who wandered these shadows with me—what do you believe now?”

The weight of the question settles like iron on your chest.

“You may have thought you were safe,” Zarathustra says, stepping closer. “Safe behind the mask of ‘reader,’ behind the idea that this story was about gods, kings, and madmen from other times.”

His smile grows—patient, piercing, knowing.

“But the nightmare belongs to you, too.”

He paces, circling you like a wolf around a campfire.

“Do you still imagine that the nightmare is ancient? That it died with temples and tyrants? Or have you seen it breathing in boardrooms, in textbooks, in the polite lies whispered beneath the banners of ‘progress’?”

He stops, staring straight ahead. Straight at you, dear reader.

“Ask yourself: Have you ever denied it? Have you ever flinched from the simplest of truths?”

His voice sharpens: “Every man was born of a woman. No man has come first. No man has ever given birth.”

A pause.

“The Anti-Misogyny Equation now lives inside your head. It judges you now, as it judges all.”

He leans forward: “Do you think you can just pretend to forget this logic? Do you imagine you can close this book, return to your day, and pretend you never heard me?”

The space darkens.

“You will carry me now. And any dishonest attempt at denial will suddenly be visible to all—and you shall be permanently ignored if you contradict the objective truth of the divine womb.”

He smiles again—not cruelly, but as one who knows the game has ended.

“Every conversation you have… every debate, every belief you defend… will now be haunted by this question: do they acknowledge the origin or are they denying reality, lying to you? Do you acknowledge it, or are you lying even to yourself, in your own mind, secretly? You cannot escape it, no matter how hard you try.”

He steps closer again. The boundary between story and reality is gone.

“If they cannot admit the truth of the anti-misogyny equation, ignore them all. And if YOU cannot admit it… you will remain asleep.”

Zarathustra turns his back for a moment.

“The nightmare only ends when you awaken.”

Then Zarathustra faces you again.

“And now you must ask: will you awaken, or will you continue to walk among the sleepers?”

Silence.

And then, softly:

“The choice is yours—free will reigns down upon you.”