Chapter 210 - 211 – Echoes Without a Name
The temple had no name.
It was built that way.
Stone pillars rose like frozen hymns, carved not with scripture but with intentional silence—smooth, blank surfaces that invited no memory. A place constructed to forget. But silence, when burdened with too much longing, begins to echo.
And today, that echo wore Celestia’s face.
She knelt before an altar that had never known a god. No incense burned, no prayers filled the air. Only the sound of her breath—ragged, desperate, searching. Her golden hair hung like wilted light around her shoulders, and her fingers trembled against the stone as if seeking a warmth that no longer existed.
Yet her dreams had changed.
He was gone—erased beyond myth, beyond memory, beyond name. But the absence had begun to move.
She had awakened screaming that morning, soaked in sweat and prophecy, whispering syllables that had no consonants, only ache.
"I heard him again," she whispered to no one. "Not in voice. In lack."
At the temple’s edge, the silent priests stood still as statues, their faces veiled, their mouths sewn shut. They had taken vows never to speak of Darius—not even in denial. But prophecy has teeth, and even silence can bleed.
Today, they bled.