The addendum's disclosure circulated via routes. For the CSD it represented a cul-de-sac—a collapse of their objective, into simple psychology, a phantom they could no longer pursue. To the surviving Aesthetes those who endured Paris and the following suppression it was not a conclusion. A rallying cry.
They were creators of emptiness keepers of the experienced. They crafted gaps. Planted hiatuses.. The blood-stained script of the neglected writer changed the perspective entirely. Their efforts had been figurative. They had indicated the cathedral sketched its silhouette narrated its soundscape.
At this point they ventured to imagine constructing the porch.
The murmurs started again not about a "Final Piece,". A "First Foundation." The venture had a title, shared in bits among the reliable quiet channels: The Temple of the Interlude.
It wouldn't serve as a church for Belphegor. It wouldn't function as a gallery displaying pieces. It wouldn't act as a Stillness Zone. Its role was architectural, than ideological: to exist as a lasting tangible environment crafted to enable what the scribe detailed. A space intended not for worship, work or even deliberate reflection. A space meant for the encounter of the un-selved.
The site sparked a intense discussion. Not Venice—there was much history and too much decay, on display. Not the Faroes— isolated too pristine; their silence stood as a sanctuary itself. It had to be reachable, yet distinct. Somewhere one could deliberately exit the flow without escaping society.
The selected location was a geodesic domed botanical research facility situated in the Jura Mountains along the Swiss-French boundary. Constructed during a period of futurism it had since been neglected. The building remained intact its position, in a frigid valley forming a natural chamber of quiet and its initial function—to sustain life within a regulated setting—carried a poignant striking irony.
The designer was Fronie Felicity. Her instruments shifted from etchers and pigments to dampeners, non-reflective surfaces and subsonic resonance calibrators. Her creation was no longer symbolic; it became structural. She crafted areas without angles, where the eye couldn't find a place to start building its narrative. She chose materials that absorbed vibration and light thoroughly that they appeared to devour time. The main room was not a corridor. A "Vessel"—a sleek egg-shaped area where air pressure, temperature and sound quality could be adjusted to the limits of human awareness right, at the point where the feeling of an individual self starts to fade.
The source of the funding was enigmatic. Whispers mentioned inherited wealth from heirs of the Somnum elite compassionate tech magnates worn out by their own inventions and secret small contributions, from countless subtly fatigued individuals. It was established not amid celebration. Through the careful quietude of a monastic community.
Its teachings, engraved on a stone, at the gateway represented the scribe's annotation, accompanied by an extra line:
"This instrument is intended for touring the cathedral. It does not represent the cathedral itself. You do. Entering requires a pledge of silence. Remain long as necessary. Depart once you recall your name."
When the CSD ultimately identified the irregularity—a structure lacking an energy signature, devoid of data transmission and possessing a absorptive material characteristic—it was already finished. Deploying a team was considered dangerous following Paris. A drone was sent instead.
The video revealed a silver-gray dome situated within a pine-filled valley. There were no trails leading to it. No illumination. No indicators. As the drone drew closer its sensors started malfunctioning. The audio stream reduced to a whisper. The video quality became fuzzy as though the light itself was weary. At a distance of 50 meters, from the building every signal vanished. The drone lost power. Plummeted out of the air.
The Temple offered no resistance. It merely took in. Questioning, purpose, sound. It stood as the expression of the engulfing arc.
Pamela Pauline during her task before stepping down from the CSD examined the drone recordings and the schematic conclusions. She did not perceive any danger. Instead she recognized a response to a question that no one in authority had ever genuinely posed: What if the necessity, for void's not a defect but an attribute?
She prepared a concluding memo categorizing the Temple not as a Cognitive Hazard. Rather, as an "Autonomous Introspective Zone." It was a triumph making the location legally undetectable. It belonged to a class needing no supervision asking for no engagement metrics. Its sole directive was its own: silence.
The conflict over compositions concluded not with an explosion but with a door opening in a remote mountain hollow. The Aesthetes had reached their goal. They had constructed a porch for the soul's own cathedral. They created a realm where the aesthetics of giving in held no meaning because surrender was no longer to a concept but, to the horrifying and exquisite reality of one's own internal quietude.
Devon Duncan, moving northward at a pilgrim's tempo received the news from a wanderer, in a Highland bothy. He glimpsed an image of the dome. He experienced no urge to visit. The Temple was meant for those requiring a structure to grant them approval.
He was heading for a place with no architecture at all. The glen, the Chapel, the listening silence. He was going to visit the cathedral not through a temple's door, but by lying down in its nave, which was the earth itself, and letting the sky be its only dome. The war was over. The right to silence had been declared, not in a court, but in stone and absorbed light. Now, the only task left was the personal, quiet journey home.