Kael always woke before the bell. Not out of devotion. But from a sense of dread. The dreams came damp, as if made of rotting flesh and the sound of torn iron. He never remembered them fully. But he always woke with the taste of copper in his mouth, and a certainty he couldn't name. Something was going to break.
He rose from the stone slab that served as a bed and wrapped himself in the gray mantle of the aspirants. It was shallow, rough, and sacred—like everything in that place. The Convent of Belchiour didn't teach divine love. It taught resistance to absence.
The walls sweated prayers no one answered. The voices of the masters sounded like thunder with no lightning.And the air… the air seemed to pray for you before every step.
Kael walked the corridor with heavy, measured steps. Other youths followed, heads bowed, eyes too dry to cry. Some were already marked: burned arms, lips sewn shut with ritual thread. They all had Bonds.All but him.
At the center of the inner courtyard stood a stone cross where nothing was ever hung — only silence. Above it, the sky looked like bleached cloth, and the sun seemed sick. The line for the day's host twisted around the altar. Kael took his piece of cold bread, soaked in clotted sacrificial blood. He chewed slowly. He could taste the ones who had died to keep balance.
Someone nudged him lightly.
"If you chew any slower, the bread'll start praying for you,"
Said Arua, with a half-smile. She was a mistake in that sacred architecture. A laugh carved into a tombstone. Her hair was short and rebellious like the questions she asked — and her eyes, too dark for someone raised surrounded by light.
Kael wanted to answer with sarcasm but couldn't. Her gaze was both kind and cruel. Like she could see what he was hiding.
"You still haven't been touched, huh?"
She murmured, pointing subtly at his chest.
"Neither by It, nor by God,"
He replied, flatly.Arua sighed. Then smiled.
"Then you're the freest of us all."
That day, the bells didn't ring. A scribe lost his eyes trying to write a new verse in the Codex of Inertia. They said the book bled whenever reality trembled. They said some symbols were never meant to be named.
That afternoon hung heavy. Three nuns fasted until their bones creaked. A master shattered a novice's knee for crying during sermon. Kael watched. Always watched. But said nothing.
Until nightfall, when Arua pulled him aside. They left the dormitory in silence, crossed the courtyard, and descended through the ruins. There, at the end of a forgotten corridor, there was a pit of ashes. They said it was where they burned the bodies of those who failed their Bond.
Arua sat on the edge, legs dangling over the void.Kael remained standing, still.
"You know… I think they're lying. About everything."
"The angels?" He asked, already knowing.
"The angels. The Throne. The Order,"
She said, ticking off her fingers like she was teasing the gods.
"They say we're fragile. But what's more fragile than a dogma that can't bear questions?"
Kael didn't answer. Because he thought the same. But still didn't have the courage to say it aloud.
Arua laughed. Then looked at him, her eyes glinting with something strange.
"Today, I saw a bird flying. Here."
"Impossible," Kael said. "There are no animals on this plateau."
"Exactly. But it came. And then it fell."
She pulled something from her pocket — a feather, its tips burned.
"If God is in Heaven, Kael… then why do all the screams come from below?"
The next morning, a new scribe was appointed. And a new Order was issued.
District 6 will be purified.
Date: Immediate.
Executing Agent: Uriel.
The sealed ones began preparing the cerulean chants. And Kael… knew. He knew something inside was tearing. He wasn't just a child in training. He was a body being emptied of faith.
That night, Kael dreamed of flames. But not the ones from Heaven. These were alive. Too hot. They had shape. Human shape.
A feminine figure floated at the center of the fire. Eyes like spirals of darkness. A double voice, yet soundless. He woke trembling. With the taste of burnt flower in his mouth.
The next day, Arua didn't show for breakfast. They said she was "in reflection." But Kael knew what that meant. Those who doubted too much...Were sent to trials. Trials that didn't involve prayer.
Slowly, the convent folded its wings. And Kael began to understand:
The voice of Heaven did not speak. It commanded silence.