Sacred and Terrible Air is a 2013 novel written by Estonian author Robert Kurvitz, the creator of Disco Elysium, which is set in the same universe.
In the summer of the year '52, the four Lund sisters Maj (4), Anni (12), Målin (13) and Charlotte (14) go missing after going to the beach. The book’s main characters, Jesper, Khan and Tereesz, have been friends with the girls for some time now, and Khan in particular is infatuated with Målin. Their disappearance becomes a huge story in the press and the three boys start looking for them. Some time later their parents receive a letter apparently written by Målin which states that they are fine and they are with some “Man”.
20 years later the boys meet during a class reunion, and while most seem to have forgotten about the girls, the three protagonists are still thinking about their vanishing. Khan is now an unsuccessful private investigator who specialises in missing people, Jesper is a wealthy interior designer and Tereesz is a police officer.
As of late 2023, the book is out of print and was never officially translated into English. However, fans translated the original book into English in mid-2023 and links to download it can be found here
. A second translation, by the fans of Group Ibex, and including many linguistic and worldbuilding annotations, is available here.
This book provides examples of:
- Alternate Calendar: Zigzagged like with Disco Elysium. Centuries aren't numbered, but individual years within a century are. Months and days of the week are still named like in our world.
- Apocalypse Cult: It is revealed that Mesque has embraced the nihilist ideology of Ambrosius Saint-Miro and is trying to intentionally bring about the end of the world.
- Basement-Dweller: Khan is one at the start of the book, still living with his mother. At the end of the book, he is out of the basement, but now homeless and going insane.
- Cessation of Existence: The Pale not only made the girls disappear, but also starts to erase their existence completely, as people's memories of them start getting warped and erased, and even the pictures Trentmöller took of the girls get corrupted. Zigi himself also wants to disappear, possibly hoping to reunite with the girls, and eventually drives into the Pale. As the war at the end of the novel ramps up, the Pale starts rapidly spreading around the around, eventually consuming the city where most of the plot takes place.
- Downer Ending: By the end of the story Revachol has been nuked, the Pale is rapidly spreading, and the three main characters are in far worse places than where they started.
- Ironic Echo: During an interview, Vidkun Hird brags to the documentarian Konrad Gessle about his supposed rape of Charlotte, gloating "You have no idea, Konrad, how hard I fucked her. You can’t imagine…’" Later when Tereesz uses ZA/UM to Mind Rape Hird, he taunts "It's a mincing machine. You can't imagine how hard I'm going to fuck you with it."
- Missing Child: The foundation of the plot, although it is later revealed that they are actually The Runaway.
