And somewhere deeper still—beneath even the drifting fragments of temples and the broken rings of chanting worlds—the cathedral moved.
Not with grace. Not with sound.
It simply existed in a way that made space tilt around it. Reality bent, not because it wanted to, but because it had no choice.
Like an old servant who had bowed so many times, it no longer remembered how to stand.
The cathedral wasn't built. It had grown. Its shape wasn't planned. It was felt. And it hadn't stopped growing.
Columns wider than canyon mouths reached upward into nothing. There was no ceiling. Only that ever-shifting canopy of warped light and oily color, like something between liquid and fire, swirling across a surface that didn't exist.
The walls breathed. Not always in rhythm. Not always softly. Sometimes they cracked like bones under pressure.
Other times, they whispered. Not with mouths, but with impressions—echoes from voices that had long since forgotten what their bodies looked like.
