They all climbed into the carriage, the fae among them, as behind them the palace collapsed like a final corpse offered to the fire. Not a word was spoken—as if Silence itself were watching, afraid to be shattered by sound.
Then—without warning—a blade's edge split the quiet.
"I wonder… should I call what you did mercy? Or just the absence of pity?"
Simon turned slowly. The voice was soft, yet thick with something unspoken. He saw the fae watching him and smirked with half his mouth.
"Faster than I expected. I'd prepared such elegant tortures to loosen your tongue… yet you broke the game before it began."
The fae laughed, a sound like rustling leaves.
"I'd never risk that… my hair might suffer. Besides, you bought me. I'm your slave now. Why resist?"
Simon stared at her, unmoved by her words, then burst into laughter.
"Then why call it mercy?"
Her reply came low, as if recounting a myth scrubbed from memory:
"At first glance, that family seemed ordinary. A man, a woman, a child. But the truth? The woman was Athqalis's slave—you saw that. He didn't love her; she was just a vessel for his hunger. And from that hollow union… the child was born. The irony? He loved the girl as his own, though he'd never name her his heir, while her mother… remained nothing. A thing he owned. Yet that mother loved her child wildly. So when Athqalis decided to sell her, the world cracked. She couldn't bear the parting—wanted to flee… into death. Herself and the child. But the chains, the laws—they stopped her. So when I killed them… I gave her the only freedom left."
Simon said nothing. Something dark swam in his eyes. Then:
"You were captured two months ago. That girl was years old. How do you know all this? I doubt Athqalis whispered secrets to you."
The fae smiled softly. That smile that heralds ruin.
"I don't need whispers. I… know everything."
He gripped the cage, lifting it until their faces nearly touched. His voice was a spell, low and deliberate:
"Then, O Knowing One… tell me: where do I find the Clonmacnoise?"
She held his gaze and smiled again.
"Seek your first grandfather's grave."
Simon nodded at Butler, a silent, weighted command. No words were needed.
Butler approached the driver and muttered a terse order: "To the family cemetery."
He turned, settled into his seat, and rubbed his hands slowly—as if stirring something dormant within. His gaze drifted to the fae trapped in her narrow metal cage, then he spoke in a graveled voice:
"Athqalis… heir to the Burgin family. One of the Seven—those who don't merely own the world, but hold the right to redefine it."
A pause. Then:
"What is greed? A hand clawing at gold? No. True greed is a parasite lodged in the marrow of identity. It's seeing all existence as a shattered mirror, one that never reflects you whole—so you slaughter anyone who fails to show you what you crave to see."
The fae smiled, as if amused by his words:
"Greed doesn't stem from desire, Butler, but from the certainty that one deserves nothing they possess. It's a desperate bid to fix an identity crumbling with every glance, every silence, every moment eyes fail to acknowledge you."
Butler stiffened—she'd guessed his name. She shifted in her cage, adding in a softer yet eerily charged tone:
"Athqalis didn't want slaves. He wanted his voice echoed back by a body with no choice. He needed to hear himself say, 'I exist,' through a scream that couldn't defy him. That child wasn't his daughter… just a broken memento of his delusion that he was loved."
Butler bowed his head slightly, murmuring:
"Those of the Seven fear not death, but dying unnoticed."
The fae laughed.
"How strange you humans are. You dig your graves with your own hands, then weep when no one lays flowers on the soil."
Simon watched her—a long, silent stare laden with unspoken questions. He didn't speak, but his smile was a tacit admission: she was no mere captive… but a mirror he loathed to face.
Then, as if whispering to the void:
"Curse every mirror that won't shatter before I see it."
The silence held until Simon broke it again:
"You claim to know everything… but do you know of the Eternal Girl?"
The fae didn't turn. Her voice was calm:
"And you? What do you think? Do I know?"
Simon's lips quirked:
"I think you know far more than you say."
The fae exhaled.
"Perhaps. After all… I was aboard the Clonmacnoise."
His brows rose—this, he hadn't expected:
"You were on the ship?"
"Indeed."
Simon's mind reeled between belief and doubt:
"What does that have to do with the girl?"
She met his eyes.
"Who do you think designed that ship?"
His voice faltered, as if something within him feared the answer:
"Stories abound—too many. No one truly knows the ship's origin, not even how my grandfather found it. Some claim forgotten gods forged it; others say it's the work of sacred priests. There are even those who insist it predates the universe itself. All conjecture… and I'm certain most is nonsense. Are you suggesting that girl created it?"
She smiled serenely:
"Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Truth isn't what's spoken—it's what's realized when all else falls silent."
He hesitated, then confessed in a near-whisper:
"Lately, I've wondered if all I thought true were just tales the mind spins to keep fear at bay. Maybe truth isn't what convinces us… but what seems so impossible, we can't ignore it."
She nodded in silence... a long silence, then spoke:
Before existence first stirred from its slumber, before light was cleaved from its shadow, there existed a silence beyond silence—a primordial void. Not the cold, defined nothingness we recognize today, but something beyond definition: skinless, featureless. The void we now know is but a fragile shell encasing that eternal abyss—a vacuum untouched by time, unaware even of time's absence.
From this un-definition emerged a paradox: a Thought. Not as thoughts are commonly understood, but as a strained whiteness, a flicker of consciousness unable to persist or perish. It was not born—it *manifested*. It existed in non-place, like a mass of light groping toward a will not yet conceived. The primordial void should have consumed it, folded it away as it had all potential before... yet this did not come to pass.
What followed was the first dance: an endless debate without beginning or victor, a cosmic tension between the primordial void and the eternal Thought. Moments where Thought dominated the void, others where its light was smothered, folded, torn asunder. But these were transient. In an immeasurable instant, Thought prevailed. With silent violence, it consumed the primordial void entirely. Thus fell the first veil, revealing the blank page: the apparent void, a stage soon to be claimed by creation's splendor.
Then, as though recognizing its new boundaries, the eternal Thought divided itself into four aspects—four emanations of its absolute nature:
The Fire: A thought imbued with color, consciousness distilled. Laden with the flame of beginnings, it is the detonation of meaning, the heat of interpretation. A fire that burns not matter but shatters semantics, birthing reality as dreams emerge from the tremor of sleep. It is wakeful awareness, preserved in the universe's depths, dwelling in abyssal realms where thoughts take form.
Clonmacnoise: The absolute vessel—not a mere ship, but the embodiment of pre-unity, the architectural framework of primal intent. Forged by incomprehensible means, it alters itself, reshapes its boundaries to accommodate its pilot, yet never wavers from its ultimate purpose: to reach the fated place unknown even to "place" itself. Clonmacnoise is the Thought's corporeal form, the living hull propelled by unspoken will.
The Book: Creation's hidden memory. Its pages are boundless, its words not read but felt. Each inscription alters the Girl, or the cosmos, or both. It holds the answer to mystery itself—which is why mystery fears it, loathes it as it loathes all endings. The Book is no mere tool but an entity: it teaches, mimics, guides. Concealed where logic falters, accessible only to the Thought that has forgotten itself.
The Girl: The deepest enigma. Unknown whether she is the Thought itself or its reflection. The primordial void was sown within her, etched into the marrow of her identity until she bore no name save what others bestowed. She inhabits the blank page, a voiceless presence. At times she laughs, at times she weeps, but always she waits. And whenever she moves, she moves by what is written in the Book, or etched in the Fire's consciousness, or dreamed by Clonmacnoise.
From the convergence of these four hypostases, creation began. The remnants of the void dissolved in the Fire's blaze; concepts erupted like newborn stars. That was the first event, the first sound, the first moment of time. And from that instant, repetition commenced. Cosmic cycles unfurled, each not erasing the last but consuming it—just as the Thought had consumed its origin.
And so, all continues to spiral in the maelstrom of Fire, Vessel, Book, and Girl.
Yet none have answered: What was the Thought? And why?
Simon remained silent for a moment, as though attempting to extract meaning from the smoke that drifted between the syllables.
Then he spoke, his voice poised precariously between conviction and rejection:
"You speak of the Idea as if it were an entity... a deity. But even deities require causality. Why? Why did it contemplate? Why did it wage war?"
The fae raised her gaze and replied with a calm that seemed to echo through the void:
"Not all thought is born of cause. Some thoughts are metaphysically inevitable—ordained before even the fabric of being was conceived."
Simon's brow furrowed, and he responded:
"So you believe in determinism. In the primacy of sequence. But I argue this: if there is cause, then there is malleability. It can be resisted. It can be undone. It can be... defied."
The fae laughed—not with derision, but with something almost mournful, something that hovered close to pity:
"And that, Simon, is the essence of your humanity."
Simon did not return the smile. He only said:
"And you... are not human."
"…What is your name? I haven't asked you yet."
The fae laughed, a sound like wind over forgotten ruins, and replied:
"Where are my manners…? It is Fayet, my lord."