The boy had no name.
Not anymore.
The world had stripped it from him—scrubbed it from the temple rolls, burned it from public memory, and replaced it with silence. To the devout, he was simply The Blasphemer. To the streets, a ghost story. To the Church, a sin made flesh.
And to himself?
He was still searching for what remained.
He'd been born in the gutters of Cael'Belen, far beneath the shimmering spires of the Basilica of Ascension. His mother died during a winter purge, another nameless body in a ditch. His father—if one existed—was just a shadow cast by violence. By age six, he had learned to survive on crusts and rainwater, to speak softly and quickly, and to never look a priest in the eye.
But he read.
Gods curse him, he read.
Scraps of scripture. Broken tablets. Graffiti etched into alley walls. Sermons shouted by madmen. And he questioned it all.
Why did Heaven reward silence?
Why did the gods demand so much blood and offer so little peace?
At ten, he argued with a priest in the open market. His words were gentle but insistent: "Shouldn't divinity offer hope, not fear?"
He had expected a slap.
He received surveillance.
By eleven, he had written a collection of heretical poems, passed hand to hand by secret readers. By thirteen, the rumors reached the White Inquisition.
By sixteen, they came for him.
The square was packed. Not with mourners, but spectators.
Children clutched by nervous parents. Traders forced to close shop and attend. The devout lined the perimeter, singing hymns and murmuring blessings. All of them watched as he was dragged to the Pillar of Purification.
His arms were thin, ribs visible through a torn tunic—but his eyes still burned. That, more than anything, enraged them.
The Ritual of Silence was only reserved for the dangerous. Heretics who inspired not hatred, but doubt.
The chanting began. Cloaked figures entered from each corner of the square, swinging censers that bled smoke like poison. The Archflame stood at the base of the pillar, holding a blade blackened with centuries of sacred blood.
The boy did not resist. His limbs were too broken, his spirit too weathered. But his gaze never wavered.
He looked into the eyes of every priest that surrounded him and whispered with his heart, I am not afraid.
"By the Word made Flame, let the voice of doubt be extinguished," intoned the Archflame. "Let silence be the song of repentance."
The blade entered his mouth.
Not in one motion, but many.
It was a sawing, shaking, searing kind of pain. One that ruptured the senses and left nothing but red fog and the taste of iron. He gurgled and thrashed as his tongue was carved out from the root. Not a quick execution—but a message. A demonstration.
They held his tongue up before the crowd. Some cheered. Some vomited. Some turned away.
None helped.
He was cast down into the ossuary beneath the Grand Basilica, chained and bleeding, to die among the bones of a thousand forgotten heretics.
But death did not come.
Time warped in the dark.
At first, it was hunger. Then hallucinations. Then silence. Real silence—not just the absence of sound, but the absence of meaning. The absence of self.
That's when it came.
Not a god. Not a demon. Not even a spirit.
A presence.
It did not speak in words. It brought no warmth, no visions. It was simply there. Watching. Waiting. Judging.
And choosing.
When it moved, reality bent. The bones around him crumbled to dust. The stone floor wept condensation from some unknowable pressure. His blood dried—not from heat, but from awareness.
And within that awareness, it whispered—not into his ears, but into the void that had once been his identity:
"You are broken. Good. The world is, too."
"You have no name. Good. Then you may become something greater."
"You have no tongue. Good. Then truth shall use your silence."
His body convulsed. He saw memories that weren't his. Civilizations devoured by celestial fire. Thrones made from bone. Angels weeping at the edge of infinity. A crack in a golden throne that bled starlight.
That crack had appeared just days ago.
Far above, in the Celestial Dominion, during the trial of a mortal girl named Anira.
That was the moment the world tipped.
And the Balance could wait no longer.
"You will be my echo," the Presence said. "My vessel. My vengeance. My balance."
He awoke to screaming.
Not his own. He could not scream.
The sound came from the air, trembling like a struck drum. It vibrated through stone and shattered the rusted chains that bound his limbs. Nearby, a rat exploded into mist. A distant priest dropped dead, mouth foaming, eyes wide with incomprehension.
He rose.
He did not breathe, yet his chest moved.
He did not blink, yet his vision was clearer than it had ever been.
The wound where his tongue once was had healed—imperfectly, hideously, as though cauterized by something not quite fire.
He walked, and shadows recoiled.
He looked into torchlight, and it bent away from his gaze.
The boy did not know where he was going. Only that he had to leave the Basilica. The Presence within him—calm, immense, unrelenting—guided each step.
Word spread fast.
The guards of the Grand Basilica whispered of a tongueless corpse walking through stone halls. Of priests who clutched their throats and died without marks. Of holy relics cracking when he passed. They called him many things: The Void's Tongue. The Balance's Echo. The Tongueless One.
And still… he walked.
He found himself before a crumbling chapel wall, eyes burning with unseen light. He opened his mouth—not to scream, not to cry—but to speak.
And though no tongue moved, the world listened.
The wall trembled.
Dust rained down. The ground quivered.
A dozen priests fell to their knees without knowing why.
And the air itself spoke:
"Truth will not be silenced."
.....
Far away, high in the Ashmount Monastery, the blind monk Telvar awoke from his decade-long trance. His sightless eyes wept as he reached for his cracked prayer beads.
"The Spokesman has awakened…" he whispered. "The Balance has found its voice."
.....
And deep within the boy… something stirred.
A second presence.
It called itself Lazhar.
It had no shape, no name, no purpose but mockery and chaos. Born from suffering, it laughed at divinity and danced in darkness. Where the boy trembled, Lazhar howled. Where the boy sought justice, Lazhar whispered irony.
He had not been possessed.
He had fractured.
And the Balance had chosen him anyway.