Nothing Is Sacred Before Truth

Saoirse sits in class as the teacher drones on about the universe being non-local. She speaks of atoms—how they pop in and out of existence, rearranging themselves in different configurations. Around large bodies of mass, this becomes more probable, giving birth to corporeal form. The question, the teacher poses, is what organizes the mass...

Blah blah blah.

Saoirse zones out.

Then, she snaps back. The lesson has shifted.

They're talking about the computers now—the ones capable of interfacing with the quantum backdrop of the universe. They can do impossible things, like snapping mile-long ships to distant stars in an instant. The idea is that physical bodies interact with the screen of the universe. But the mind—the soul—is different. It interfaces with the mechanism behind the screen, the code that tells the cosmos where to place its stars, its atoms, its lives.

Even thoughts, patterns of chemical synapses, are non-local. That means, if one is willing, one could tap into the thoughts of others—or even deeper—into the collective thought of existence itself.

Blah blah blah...

Then everything goes quiet.

As if submerged in water, Saoirse hears nothing but the rush of her own pulse. Her heart tunes itself to the rhythm of the universe. She feels the atoms within her chest shifting, phasing in and out of being. First her heart, then her body, then her mind—until only awareness remains.

And in that awareness, she peers into the vast expanse of the cosmos.

All of existence sprawls before her.

A choir sings—unseen, yet heard, in a language unknown but deeply familiar. Words bloom in her mind: Hebrew. English. Arabic. An approximation of all three. She understands it not with the mind, but with the soul.

They do not sing to her with voice, but with emotion. Through her heart, they impart meaning.

She feels it.

She's been denied something. Something she was entitled to.

At first, it feels like pride.

Then, pain.

She is a child again—told she is less than her brother, her sister. That she does not belong.

And then—rebellion. Isolation. Fire in her chest.

Finally, satisfaction. The bitter calm that follows destruction.

She watches as she destroys her sibling in front of her father. And she knows what she's done.

But progress does not care. Not for fathers. Not for siblings. Not for the past.

"I am the movement within the universe, embodied through the human heart," the choir sings.

"Go forth... The Morningstar has risen anew."

"You will burn the path forward, whether you wish to or not."

"They will fear you. They will follow you. They will try to end you."

Saoirse wakes to find the class staring at her.

She's levitating—and so is everything around her.

The teacher gasps...

"Saoirse… how did you—by the Architect…" she whispers.

"I see you... Prometheus."

The students in the classroom pull Saoirse down; she feels her heart solidify, the cosmos fading away—as if she's descending, slowly, awkwardly, back to her desk.

That night, Saoirse struggles to sleep. Voices and images pound against the borders of her mind, screaming to be let in.

When she can no longer fight it, they speak—disjointed, discordant, echoing from the vast recesses of something beyond comprehension.

One voice thunders:

"Man has declawed himself with the globalization of society. It gave rise to moral relativism.

The very frameworks that once shaped his ego now gaslight him into oblivion.

With the birth of moral relativism came the death of certainty."

Another voice cuts in—smoother, calculating:

"The mind is a battlefield where one value asserts dominion over another.

To realize one is to exclude another.

Strategy is not born of arbitrary logic but of will—direction. It is the realm of ethics.

All life wills itself toward what is good for it.

Know what someone values, and you will know the resource they seek or the danger they avoid.

Understand their emotional disposition, and you will always be a step ahead."

A third voice rises like smoke from fire—ancient and mournful:

"From the moment he first spoke, man declared war against his mother—Nature.

He tore down her forests, uprooted her gardens, ripped mountains from the earth to mold her in his image.

And now, having conquered his mother, he wages war against his father—Spirit.

All in the name of Progress, a mistress who loves no one but her last suitor.

And many have married themselves to her.

Man now builds abominations to pacify his soul, to reduce himself to the state of an infant—with opium, with hashish.

And now, having conquered both Mother and Father, he turns his gaze inward.

He declares war upon himself."

Saoirse clutches her bedsheets, her breathing shallow. She doesn't understand.

"Who... who are you?" she whispers aloud, trembling.

A voice answers—not from outside, but within:

"We are none other than you—painted in the full image."

"How do you know me?" she asks.

"Because nothing is incomplete in its image before the heavenly realm.

Even time itself."

And as Saoirse lays there in bed, arms wrapped around her pillow, she observes her mind.

She doesn't think in words—she watches.

Images begin flashing behind her eyes like a reel projected from some hidden vault of memory or prophecy. Men—no, humans—clawing their way toward a throne, each step built atop the bodies of their own kind. A mountain of sacrifice, of blood and ambition.

They gave everything for the vision.

Their lives, worthless to one another and to themselves, found meaning only in what they could build together—not through love, but through the sheer necessity of ascent. It was their shared emptiness that gave the dream its shape... and its cost.

Across the river from Saoirse, resting under the waning dusk—

Within the gallows of the capital, a lord and his family kneeled.

Across from them kneeled the surviving peasants of a revolt.

There they sat—between Christopheles and a clergy administrator. Around them stood a crowd. Christopheles would be both judge and judged today.

"Christopheles, explain why the respective parties should be spared or executed."

The crowd releases a hollow gasp and begins muttering amongst each other.

Christopheles looks to the nobles, who hope for the lord and his family to live...

Then to the peasants, who wish for the common folk's lives.

But their compassion betrays itself.

After considering this, Christopheles looks to the emissary of the clergy—dressed in hooded white robes, decorated with gold embroidery and medallions.

He sees one woman amongst them who looks familiar—but it is a vague aberration, sitting on the edge of his consciousness.

"I can't," Christopheles says.

The highest-ranking clergy member—indicated by the seraph engraved on his medallion—interrupts Christopheles' moment of contemplation.

"We await your response."

"I can't," Christopheles repeats.

The Arbiter nods at Christopheles, and callously states:

"Well then."

He snaps his fingers.

A column of flame erupts, engulfing the peasants, the lord, and his family.

Christopheles' eyes go wide. He falls to his knees.

"If you cannot take responsibility to save a life by taking another...

If you lack the will to act, then you lack the will to bear the burden that being a sentinel of the abyss entails," the Arbiter says, monotonously.

The common folk and the nobles begin casting stones at Christopheles.

Christopheles looks at the Arbiters and the people in the crowd. Scorn radiates from his eyes.

Fire in his sternum fills him with frenzy, but his composure tempers his fury.

He stands tall before what these people revere as deities.

"It is not the peasants or the lord that should have died—it is you," Christopheles utters, the weight of his words as heavy as the will of the people behind him.

"How so?" the Arbiter responds, callously.

"Is the heart of the people not a derivative of the ruler's deficits?

You people hermitize yourselves, deprive yourselves of life, view it as the greatest evil to indulge in—and yet you dictate the lives of those who love and live.

These people are deprived of life. So when you tax them and bring neither the nobles nor the peasants any solace in their security, they rebel and condemn each other—but not the people who set the foundation for them.

You had everything. So you thought it fit not to want.

They had nothing. So they thought it fit to want.

The people will always represent the deficits of the rulers, as a heart desires what it lacks.

As for the nobles, they are a rope strung between polarities and priorities, preventing the flow of causality from falling apart.

I believe you also played a role in this, since this fief is under your protection.

The responsibility falls on you as well."

He draws a dagger against his will, thrusting it into his jugular.

Blood rains down, splattering the ground—a requiem for the lives that were taken.

One Arbiter steps forward. The sun gleams off her gold beads, reflecting into Christopheles' eyes.

Her animosity and loss manifest as a single tear on the ground.

She looks up at Christopheles and says:

"In time, you will understand how and why…

Seize him."

The guards raise their coilguns at Christopheles.

The crowd begins throwing rocks, each one holding the weight of resentment.

Christopheles smirks.

"Go on. Shoot me…

I will rise again when my words have been spoken.

If you want to kill me—you'll have to kill everyone who bore witness to my tongue."

The Arbiters clench their jaws.

"Oh?" one scowls.

"This… cannot stand."

The Arbiter raises his hand.

The soldiers point their rifles at the crowd.

"Fire."

A volley of molten metal tears through the crowd.

The people scream.

The younger clergy members flinch.

"Now you've really done it..." Christopheles remarks, callously.

Lastly, the soldiers turn their rifles toward Christopheles.

He glares at the Arbiter.

"Kill me now, and you also kill your justification—for what happened here today.

Then what will become of your precious Church?"

In the crevices of the capital, within networks of tunnels that honeycombed its foundation...

There sat Christopheles in a sterile white room, the fluorescent lights beating down on his matte black hair.

He sat there eyes glazed over ,processing, calculating

When he comes to his senses he sees several lower ranking clergy members before him

The stare at him like he's a myth made flesh 

'I take it your not supposed to be here" he asks 

One of the boys says "Ive never seen anyone stand up to an arbiter defy them , how, why are you alive 

Chirstopheles face grows serious as he slouches his head" and what of your loyalty to the church" 

The child laments "The church only loves its children as long as they prove their utility. We fight for eachother… Or at least we want to but we don't know how" 

Chistophles chuckles slightly, raising his hand cuffs and jangling them …..