Heresy of Truth, Chapter 1.1
That night’s events were preluded by weather: a torrential curtain of rain, whipped back and forth by tempestuous winds. Dirt, foliage, stone, glass, metal—it struck uncountable targets with uncountable impacts and wove the sounds together into opaque acoustic totality. Abandoned trams still waited at their stops. Trains were bound to their stations, some scattered clusters of vans and carts braced against the curbs, and cabins of the gondolas struggled helplessly against their cables. That highest campus of the Temple of Eternity sprawled across the boreal valley floor, exsanguinated and abandoned to its fate, its humbled clerics huddling en masse in the same gilded shelters as their congregants.
That rain had the strength of winter, wielded the same frigidity. It was, unmistakably, winter weather, the type of rain that the temple almost celebrated when winter unleashed its uncountable ways to inflict snow and ice. But, that night, it had brought no relief: it was well into summer, and rain was not so much as wanted for months. The weather had been manifested regardless, fully formed, suspended above Eternity; not permitted to abate, to intensify, to rot.
That ceaselessly-growing storm perched over Eternity showed no signs of discharging. Every passing second further impressed upon the residents the gravity of its insinuated threat: the weather is only the opening act, and the audience expects a show.
Just three hours before, Eternity’s myazhun rose from their posts and their beds in silent, uncanny synchronicity, troubled by a heightened awareness of the frailty of existence which was now-boundlessly amplified by their networks. Humans followed suit. Why wait? They were doomed to fall to the same primal instincts. They made increasingly awkward conversation on their way to the shelters; with the myazhun rendered mute and the animals already hiding, anything was better than the cacophony of their disorganized footsteps. They’d take any distraction from the pinpricks they felt in their gut, their heart, anywhere that held emotions—early portents of vehemence, growing.
The persistent silence of the warning sirens had fallen on ears not yet undeafened.
Read more:
Kiortain Tleirn seals his fate.
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