The hum ceased being a noise. It transformed into an expanse, a force upon the spirit. The vibrant circuit shone intensely fibers vibrating with a crisp cold radiance. The atmosphere inside the hotel salon turned into a prism warping reality towards one nexus, above the Liber Ignaviae slate.
Flavio remained with his arms gently lifted, not to beckon, but to synchronize. His eyes shut, a smile of fulfillment gracing his lips. "It arrives " he whispered, the phrase echoing in the atmosphere. "Not, with a thunder. With a… breath in."
Devon sensed it prior to witnessing it. An epicenter of void started to emerge in the middle of the space. Not a shadow,. A removal. A gap, in the texture of sound, action and longing. The brightness didn't fade; it just lost significance nearby. Noise didn't stop; it streamed into it. Vanished.
This was Belphegor.
It wasn't a demon with horns seated on a throne. No terrifying figure no evil mind appeared. What formed was a quiet emptiness.. Not a void without content. A void full of potential. An expanse of uncarved possibility where no decision had been chosen no deed performed no suffering endured. It was the condition before the initial breath before the earliest thought, before the very first desire.
It emitted a overwhelming stillness. It embodied the response to every inquiry before it arose. The key, to every formula before it was penned. Gazing upon it meant grasping, fully that all effort was misguided. That all desire, all affection all invention was a agonizing disturbance of this flawless already existing calm.
Devon's knees gave way. Not, out of fear. From familiarity. This was what his exhaustion had been craving. This was the calm following every draining thought. It was the place he hadn't realized he had abandoned.
The emptiness drew him in. Not, through strength. Through the undeniable gravitational certainty of an ultimate fact. It was the incline and every part of his existence was ready to descend.
The living circuit throbbed in synchronicity with it. Kale Kane's expression appeared to mellow more as though his judgment of the world was, at last entirely confirmed. Alistair Croft's frame eased entirely the trace of watchful strain fading away—his lifetime effort of standing firm now regarded as an endearing pointless mistake.
Flavio shed tears of happiness. "Do you see?" he murmured, his tone heavy, with awe. "It's not devastation. It's… uncreation. The soft unraveling of the tangle of existence. The universe's breath of solace."
Devon struggled to avert his gaze. The void was not observed through sight. It was sensed through the spirit. It provided the tranquility of the canvas before paint touches the sheet before a word is written, the quiet before the initial scream, at birth. It embodied the calm of the never-existed.
Within its dreadful grandeur he perceived the falsehood.
This wasn't a condition. It was an one. It wasn't peace achieved; it was peace assumed. The peace of a life a melody unsung, a love unattempted.
His eyes breaking away from the encompassing abyss landed on the objects he had let fall. The stone. The crushed sack. The ripped sheet bearing Croft's Corollary. They were more, than debris. They were testimonies. The stone testified to apathetic geological history. The sack told of an attempt, a resolved matter. The sheet revealed the capitulation of an intellect.
They stood as the antithesis of emptiness. They represented proof of actions taken no how badly. They were the stains on the canvas the letters on the sheet the shouts, amid the quiet.
The emptiness held the possibility of a creation. His wrinkled bag represented the fact of a lunch consumed at a desk. Then he understood, with a jolt, like a heartbeat resuming in surroundings that he would pick the wrinkled bag. Without fail.
He would opt for the defeated scenario, the stone, the sorrowful defeat, the loud agonizing experienced life rather, than the immaculate, flawless quiet emptiness of the unlived.
He was unable to eliminate Belphegor. It was not an entity, to battle. It was a state to be dismissed.
Emitting a roar that demanded the price, a rejection torn from the depths of his soul he refrained from assaulting the void. Instead he turned away, from it.
He turned his gaze to Flavio, the individual who observed this void and named it god.
"You're mistaken!" Devon yelled, his voice splitting the quiet, like a thunderbolt. "That's not peace! That's cowardice! It's the peace of never taking a chance! Of never experiencing love and loss! It's the peace of a slate and we are the tale you idiot! Even the sorrowful parts! Even the exhausted parts!"
The void remained unresponsive. It merely existed.. Flavio's expression… his serene conviction shattered. For a moment the humanitarian—the individual who had strived and failed and cared and suffered—glimpsed through the prophet's gaze perceiving his most profound wish labeled not sacred, but empty.
At that instant of belief the buzzing circuit wavered. The calm expressions of the preserved remained unchanged. The stream of power heading to the void hesitated, if only briefly.
That was sufficient. The Grand Conjunction demanded flawless, willing harmony. One lone shouted, human "no" was a clash the absolute silence couldn't tolerate.
Devon, spent, fell to his knees, not in worship, but in exhaustion, his back to the beautiful, terrible void, facing instead the flawed, tragic, living evidence of a world that, for all its pain, was still stubbornly, messily, here.