I did not climb out of the desert.
It was the sand that receded from me — like a tide ashamed of its own barrenness.
Above, the sky bled grey. Not cloud. Not storm. Just... the smothering breath of a world that had long stopped dreaming. My body ached from the descent that never truly ended, even after my feet touched the sand again. The Scythe of Death pulsed faintly on my back. Not in warning. In remembrance.
I was no longer alone in the desert.
And that was worse.
The horizon cracked, not with thunder, but with silence unraveling. Shapes emerged. Not creatures — not yet — but suggestions of form. Thin, half-born outlines crawling across the dunes like shadows learning to walk. They carried banners. Symbols I did not recognize, etched in bone-dust and prayer.
A procession.
Not toward me.
But around me.
They never looked directly. Never paused. Yet I could feel them acknowledging something in me — or fearing it. Their mouths moved in unison. I heard nothing. But my heartbeat tried to echo their rhythm.
They were the Silents — remnants of a fallen faith that worshiped only the absence of voice.
And they were heading toward a ruin I had not seen before.
---
The ruin was not old.
It was timeless.
Not built. Not weathered. But grown — like a tumor of architecture festering beneath the world's skin. A cathedral shaped from ribs, stained glass veins, and spires of coiled teeth. And at its center: a monolith that bent the light around it, shaped like a throne and a wound simultaneously.
I did not walk toward it.
It pulled me.
And I let myself be pulled.
Inside, there was no congregation.
Only statues of worshippers kneeling in agony — flesh turned to salt, eyes hollowed by awe. Some had tongues offered like coins on altars. Others were still breathing, but only barely — kept alive by cords of divine regret stitched into their backs.
The altar bore no name.
But it bore a throne.
And on that throne, sat no one.
Yet I saw someone.
A figure wrapped in mirrors. Each reflection showing a different moment of me: weeping, laughing, killing, kneeling — all without memory. The figure raised no hand, spoke no word, but I knew:
This place had waited for me.
And hated me for taking so long.
---
A voice spoke, not aloud, but through the marrow of the air.
> "You carry the silence of a fallen god. But silence is not absence. It is oath."
I turned. One of the mirror-reflections had stepped forward, moving independently. It was me — younger, perhaps, or simply less ruined. He wore no Scythe. Only chains of bone across his chest, marked with a sun that bled black.
The Black Sun — the first symbol of allegiance.
> "You are not the first to carry the weapon," he said. "But you may be the last to choose to."
> "Choose what?" I asked.
The reflection smiled with lips not mine.
> "To remain Elías. Or become what comes after names."
Then he stepped into the altar.
And vanished.
---
The cathedral collapsed silently. No dust. No debris. Just a quiet folding of space — as if it had never been.
And I stood, once more, in the desert.
But it had changed.
Cities loomed in the far distance now — spires like claws, domes like bleeding hearts. Fires of belief burned in the sky, visible even in day. I could feel them. Religions. Faiths. Entire civilizations built on the bones of forgotten gods.
And I knew now:
Each one would see me as either salvation or threat.
Because I had entered where none should.
And returned with something in my soul that did not belong.
---
Far above, carved across the blank heavens, a sentence appeared — like writing on cracked parchment:
> "The ones who return from beneath do not return unchanged."
The Scythe gleamed briefly.
Then quieted.
I began to walk toward the nearest city, knowing nothing of its name or laws — only that its towers wept, and its bells had not rung in centuries.
But something whispered behind me still.
A presence that had not stayed in the ruin.
A watcher.
A witness.
---
And I could not help but wonder:
If divinity can be earned through suffering — does that mean every wound is a prayer?