The boy knelt in the center of the broken chapel, the ruined altar rising before him like the spine of a corpse.
The stone beneath his knees was slick with centuries of forgotten prayers, their residue seeping into his skin like oil into cloth.
Above him, the shattered vault of the cathedral yawned open to a sky smeared with bruised stars.
The air was thick — not with dust alone, but with something watching.
And within him, Lazhar smiled.
"They built this place with devotion," Lazhar murmured, his voice coiling through the boy's mind like smoke through hollow bones.
"Brick by brick, stone by stone. Every prayer, every hope, stacked upon lies they dared call faith."
The boy's chest heaved — not in breath, but in resistance. His body was a vessel, yes, but it was not an empty one.
The remnants of his humanity trembled against the vastness rising inside him.
"You feel it," Lazhar whispered. "The weight. The hunger."
The boy—no, the Tongueless One—pressed his palms against the floor. The stone, cracked and crumbling, pulsed faintly under his touch.
Listening.
Yielding.
He could almost hear the prayers still trapped in the rock—pleas for mercy, for miracles, for salvation that never came.
A thousand desperate voices woven into the very architecture of Cael'Belen, now little more than echoes.
"They trusted the heavens," Lazhar hissed, each word laced with venomous amusement. "And the heavens spat upon them."
The boy shuddered.
Not from fear.
But from something far older.
Something that tasted like betrayal.
Deep inside his hollowed chest, the two forces warred without clashing—two rivers flowing in opposite directions.
The first: the silent, inexorable will of the void—the Presence that had marked him, chosen him, broken him.
The second: Lazhar, the coiling laughter that refused to bow even before the stars.
They did not fight each other.
They completed each other.
And somewhere within the slender space between them, the boy's soul tried desperately to survive.
---
He rose slowly, joints cracking, movements deliberate.
Dust curled around him in tiny whirlwinds, pulled by the gravity of his presence.
Around him, the chapel shivered.
Fissures spread through the marble floor, spiderwebbing outward from where he had knelt.
Above, a stone effigy of a forgotten angel crumbled into powder.
"Good," Lazhar crooned, his tone thick with satisfaction. "The world already knows you. It just doesn't remember yet."
The boy turned his gaze to the ruined altar.
It was not mere stone.
Once, it had been the fulcrum of this city's faith—the axis around which the hopes of generations had spun.
Now it stood abandoned, hollowed, stripped of meaning.
He approached it, slow as the drawing of a blade.
With every step, memories not his own brushed against his mind:
The wail of mothers praying for dying children.
The blood of sacrifices staining sacred stone.
The screams of heretics burned for daring to question.
The altar bled memory.
And the boy… drank it in.
---
When he reached it, he did not bow.
He laid one hand flat against the cracked surface.
It was cold at first.
But beneath that coldness was a heat—a slow, patient burn like embers buried deep in ash.
"Do you feel it?" Lazhar asked, almost gently. "This is not merely stone. It is a wound. And you, little vessel... you are its reckoning."
The boy closed his eyes.
The darkness behind his lids was not empty.
It was alive.
Within it, forms took shape:
Cities burning under black suns.
Angels weeping golden blood.
Mortals raising shrines to gods already dead.
He saw himself standing atop the ruins of all things—not as a conqueror, but as a witness.
The one who would hold up the broken world like a mirror and force it to look at itself.
"They will call you a monster," Lazhar purred.
"A blasphemer. A herald of ending. And they will not be wrong."
The boy's fingers dug into the stone, the tips splitting, blood smearing against the marble.
The chapel responded with a low, shuddering groan.
The earth itself shifted.
Cracks raced up the remaining walls.
Pillars bowed inward.
The entire cathedral seemed to inhale—preparing either to collapse or to scream.
But it did neither.
It waited.
For him.
For them.
---
In the heart of the silence, Lazhar spoke again—no longer playful, but solemn, almost reverent:
"The world is a song out of tune," he said.
"And you, Tongueless One, are the hand that will pluck out the false notes until only truth remains."
The boy opened his mouth.
No words came.
Only a pulse—a shockwave of silent force—that rippled outward from him.
Windows shattered.
Stone shrieked.
The sky itself seemed to flinch.
But the boy did not falter.
He stood atop the ruins of a dying faith and became its grave marker.
A witness.
A warning.
A herald.
---
Beneath his skin, Lazhar moved—coiling tighter, binding deeper, threading his essence through the marrow of the boy's bones.
It was not possession.
It was not corruption.
It was evolution.
"Together," Lazhar whispered, as the world trembled. "We will show them what they have forgotten."
And far beyond the wreckage of Cael'Belen, across deserts and oceans, across mountains and heavens,
those who still dreamed of balance
those who still prayed to silent gods
those who thought themselves untouchable
felt a shiver pass through their souls.
Something had awakened.
Something that would not be appeased.
Something that no prayer, no blade, no miracle could unmake.