Breakfast had finally finished, though my family kept giving me some strange looks. That was understandable; I sounded totally unhinged. Going from crying to talking about robbing the temple of a dead god. Must have made them wonder if their child was insane. Anyway, today was as good a day as any to rob the temple of a long-dead god, so that was what I was going to do. After making it back to my room, I changed into something easier to move in, just in case there was some temple guardian that I didn't know about. You never know with temples, although it would be a tad cliché. Finally, after finding the right clothes, I strapped my twin daggers to my side, and I was ready to go. While I didn't know the exact location of the temple, I didn't think it would be that hard to find. Especially with how good the navigation systems are nowadays. So, prepared for the journey ahead, I stepped out the door.
Apparently, I had underestimated how bad my sense of direction was. It had been two hours since I left, and somehow I was lost, even with the navigation system up and running. At this point, it has to be a talent, with how bad my sense of direction is. I couldn't believe it. I had lived in this city my whole life, ignoring my previous one. Luckily, after another hour of looking around, I stumbled across it. I stood before the large metal gates that seemed innocuous at first, but held the stories of a long-dead goddess and her followers. My eyes traced the carvings inlaid with fine precision. In the carvings stood a silhouette that caught my eye. The figure, a woman, walked upon a road made of gold. As my eyes traced the woman, who was gilded in metals and gems of a myriad of colours, her beauty reflected the sunlight, showing me scenes of a past long forgotten. In the reflections, I saw stories paved in the golden light of an unavoidable fate. I saw stories of nations rising and falling both to time and war. It overwhelmed me; I almost couldn't tear my eyes off the carvings. As I finally looked away with Herculean effort, I noticed that rivers of blood were running from my eyes. I knew I had just witnessed something I shouldn't have, a warning of sorts, maybe one to leave the temple and not try to change fate. However, I couldn't stop now. I had to survive, and to survive I needed that blindfold. So, wiping away the blood running down from my eyes, leaving faint lines of red on my face, I pushed open the doors and headed into the temple.
The doors were light, too light. Solid metal doors shouldn't be this light, but I just chalked it up to some strange ancient enchantments that made it like that. Continuing onward, I heard the doors slam shut behind me, and the temple went eerily quiet. Pure silence. I couldn't even detect a ripple of sound. As if I weren't in a large city but in an isolated space. It wasn't exactly a deafening silence, but it weighed down on my body like a disturbing blanket, smothering me. The silence only grew heavier as I walked further into the white marble temple. I looked around at the gargantuan marble pillars that surrounded me, reaching up into the sky. As I traced their forms higher and higher, I saw that at some point the pillars became shrouded in a thick, white mist. After what seemed like thirty minutes of walking, I finally made it into the main atrium, where most of the sermons would've taken place. Golden pews sat in silent rows leading up to a marble podium that stood before an impossibly large pipe organ. The instrument's size was illogical. It spanned hundreds of metres in length and thousands in height. The maker must have had giants in mind. I walked past the abandoned golden pews and towards the podium, and as I approached it I noticed a book. It lay upon the podium, open as if it were waiting for a priestess to return and give a sermon to the dead church. I stepped onto the platform and found myself at the podium. Looking over the abandoned but clean temple, I felt a profound sorrow. Such a beautifully crafted temple shouldn't have to suffer this fate.
As I continued looking over the place, I could almost hear the laughter of children as they ran through the bustling temple. The phantoms of the praying devout flickered in and out of my vision before returning to the constant and empty silence. 'So this is what happens to a temple when its god is dead…' my thoughts echoed inside my mind. My vision drifted down to the book on the podium, and what stared back at me was blank pages. I picked it up to flick through it easier and before I could even turn the page, I heard a small click from in front of me, and then the floor beneath me disappeared. At first, I didn't even realise that I was falling, and when it finally registered I had already hit the ground hard, dropping the book. After five minutes of lying there, groaning about temples and their clichés, I propped myself up on an arm and looked around me. I appeared to be in a long, sloped hallway. The space was a direct contrast to the bright lights and white marble pillars from the top area of the temple. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all made from a deep black marble that seemed to suck in the already dim lights. Once I got to my feet and had grabbed the book, I started walking down the hallway and into the heart of the temple underground.
As seemed to be the theme with this temple, the hallway was unnecessarily long. I had been walking for thirty minutes and I still saw no sign of the hallway ending. At this point, I was convinced that the temple was a separate space. Not only was the upstairs area far too large for it not to be. This basement hallway also had to span over miles of land. The more I thought about it, the more I thought my hunch was correct. It seemed pretty logical too. The gods had existed at one point, so this being a separate space seemed plausible enough to me. Finally, as I reached that conclusion, I found myself at the end of the corridor. I must've been walking for at least an hour by this point. Walking past the end of the corridor and into the room it opened into, I noticed that the room was circular. It had profoundly beautiful carvings in the walls that I ignored considering my last experience with the temple's carvings. Ignoring the carvings, the only other thing I could see in the room was a relatively large coffin, which lay upon a pedestal. The room appeared to be safe, so I approached the coffin at the centre. As I drew closer to the object, I realised how absurdly large the thing was. It had to be at least eight or nine feet long. The coffin of pale white stone did not match the temple's marble. It glowed with a soft white radiance that was almost unnoticeable to the naked eye. As I placed my hands on the lid of the coffin to move it, I felt it just… disappear. The lid was gone, and inside the coffin lay an almost perfectly preserved head of a woman who was wearing a charcoal black blindfold. There was no blood or body. I fought back the urge to throw up. I heard a thump from beside me as my nerveless fingers let the book in my hands fall to the ground. Then, oddly enough, I automatically started reaching towards the head with trembling hands. I tried to fight back. To pull my hands away. However, it felt like I wasn't in control of my body. My mind screamed at my body not to touch it, but then I felt my fingers brush the skin. The skin felt supple beneath my fingers, as if the owner were still alive. My fingers crept towards the back of the head, searching for the blindfold's knot. Once they found it, I felt them loosen the knot and lift it from the face.