Noah had decided that the Womb of Creation was the world's most deceptively scenic prison.
The light was still wrong—too warm, too golden, too real. It soaked into everything, from the ribcage arches to the thick-sinewed floor, giving the illusion of life. But it never changed. No sunrise. No sunset. Just endless, unwavering brightness.
It felt like living inside a painting that refused to dry.
If the sun above ground ever rose or fell, Noah wouldn't know. Time here wasn't marked by stars or clocks—it was measured in chanting, firelight, and how many times Cassian had appeared with something ridiculous to say.
The first day passed in strange calm.
The Saint summoned him again—cordial, still curious. He asked strange questions. Not about the world Noah found himself in, but the one he left behind.
"What was your world like?" the Saint had asked, voice silk-soft, like a question carved in stone.
Noah had shrugged. "Louder. Colder. Faster. You wouldn't have liked it."
The Saint didn't smile, but there was a stillness in him that felt like amusement—something ancient observing something young.
The second day was harder.
More questions. Too specific. Too personal.
"What did you worship there?" the Saint asked.
Noah had blinked. "Nothing. We don't really do that anymore."
Another long silence. The kind that made the air feel thicker.
Then: "What did you love most?"
Noah didn't answer.
He left early. Claimed a headache. The Saint had only nodded. But that silence followed him all the way back.
Today—Day Three—the questions shifted.
Not about Earth. But about here. About his time since awakening in this bleeding, ruined world. About his divine spark. About the castle beneath the bones.
He spoke vaguely, offering half-truths and carefully trimmed memories like they were offerings.
He told the Saint about the castle, the ghosts, the cold halls and clawed walls—but he did not mention the tarot. Nor the deck. Nor the Draws.
He did mention Abel.
"He found me," Noah said. "Kept me alive."
The Saint listened too closely to that part. The kind of attention that sank claws deep without breaking the skin.
When he left the chamber that afternoon, the air had felt warmer than usual. The fake sun a little too bright. The walls a little too still.
Back in their room, Noah lay sprawled on the furs, arm flung over his eyes.
"I feel like a goldfish in a teacup," he muttered.
Abel sat sharpening a bone-dagger near the wall, the scrape rhythmic and grounding. "You don't sound dead."
"That's because I'm waiting for the dramatic twist," Noah said. "The Saint's playing nice. He's asking polite cult-leader questions. But there's something under it. Like he's waiting for something to... bloom."
Abel didn't speak for a moment. Then, without looking up: "You think he wants you to ascend."
Noah moved his arm and stared at the ceiling. The warm light above didn't flicker. It never did.
"I think," he said softly, "he wants to make me into something."
Neither of them said what they were thinking. That whatever the Saint wanted him to become—it wasn't for Noah's sake.
And it probably wouldn't end well.
The days passed in strange, slow gradients—each one soft-edged and sun-drenched, as if time itself had forgotten how to move properly in the Womb.
Noah's routine blurred into something dreamlike.
Mornings belonged to the Saint.
Afternoons to Abel.
Evenings, somehow, to Cassian.
After each audience, Noah would return from the Saint's palace with the weight of questions he hadn't asked and answers he'd refused to give. Abel would be waiting—sometimes sharpening weapons, sometimes watching the horizonless light through the bone windows, always alert.
They didn't talk about the meetings. Not directly. But the air between them carried every unspoken word.
Cassian, on the other hand, had no such restraint.
He had a gift for appearing with a smirk and zero regard for personal space. On Day Two, he dragged Noah to a narrow alley flooded with bioluminescent root-vines that glowed a soft cyan in the heat.
"You're too pretty to sulk," he said, pushing a half-rotted curtain of moss aside. "Come on. I'll show you the scent-lantern well. It's not romantic, but it's mildly explosive."
Noah raised an eyebrow. "You had me at 'mildly explosive.'"
Cassian laughed. It was stupid and infectious.
He kept doing that—finding Noah, dragging him into strange corners of the Womb, talking about things no one else mentioned. Tunnels that led to nowhere. Forgotten altars. Empty rooms with fire-scorched symbols on the floor.
One day, he crouched beside a fracture in the wall that pulsed like a sleeping heart. "Used to hide here," he said, not looking at Noah. "Back when I was small. Before the Saint found me."
Noah tilted his head. "You were small?"
"Tiny," Cassian grinned. "Loud. Curious. Like a mosquito with too many opinions."
Noah barked a laugh.
They didn't talk about belief. Not much. But when Cassian spoke of the Saint, it was always with reverence—like a boy describing a father he didn't want to disappoint.
Noah listened. And worried.
When he wasn't dodging sermons or compliments, Noah spent time with Abel. Those moments were slower. Denser.
One afternoon, he found Abel sitting under the main sunshaft, shirt off, oiling a long spear. His body glowed golden from the light, and the air shimmered faintly around him. A statue of war and patience.
Noah flopped down beside him, kicking a puff of dust into the air. "You must know what you look like right now."
Abel didn't look over. "Hot?"
Noah squinted. "Tragic. Like a myth. Makes me want to recite poetry and then jump off something."
A huff. Almost a laugh.
They sat like that for a while. The heat wrapping around them like a blanket they didn't ask for.
Then Noah leaned close, shoulder brushing bare skin. "You think he'd kill me if I ghosted tomorrow's meeting?"
"Yes."
"Fair."
Abel didn't move away.
No declarations. No confessions.
Just quiet.
And in that quiet, Noah pretended this was peace.
The third audience had just ended. The Saint's words still echoed in the chambers of Noah's skull as he walked, alone, back toward their quarters.
He didn't say much when he arrived. Didn't need to. Abel gave him a look—a silent question—and Noah just shrugged and dropped onto the nearest bed.
Now, later that night, with the faint flicker of scent-lantern light casting slow shadows across the wall, Noah lay awake, one arm behind his head.
He started replaying the conversations.
The Saint had asked strange questions.
Not about divinity. Not about the castle. Not even about this world.
But his world.
"What colors ruled your skies?" he'd asked, voice soft and far too knowing.
"Grey," Noah had answered. "And blue, if you were lucky."
The Saint hadn't reacted. Just listened.
Then came weirder questions.
"What did you build your cities on? What dreams did they bury? Did your people believe in rebirth or in extinction?"
Noah had joked his way around most of it. Made vague references. Nothing specific.
The Saint didn't push. Not that day.
He had pushed later.
"What did you worship there?"
Noah blinked. "Nothing."
The Saint had paused. "Everyone worships something. Even if they don't call it that."
Noah had said nothing.
Then: "What did you love most, Noah?"
That made him flinch.
He lied. He said freedom. He didn't mean it.
The Saint knew. But he let him leave early.
On the next day, the Saint changed his tone.
He asked about here.
"What did you see first, when you arrived?"
Noah spoke of the cave. The rot. The cold.
He described the cursed halls, the blood-slick corridors, the ghosts.
He didn't talk about the tarot deck. He didn't mention the blessing. Or the Draws.
He did mention Abel.
"He found me," Noah said. "Kept me alive."
The Saint had been quiet a long time after that.
Then: "The ones who tether us to life are often the ones who become our altars."
Noah hadn't liked that sentence.
Not one bit.
And now, as he lay in the soft silence of their shared quarters, he realized something worse:
The Saint wanted him to grow.
Not just live. Not just survive.
Ascend.
He was watching Noah like a gardener watches a seedling. Waiting. Testing the light. Prodding the soil.
But why?
To manipulate him?
To mold him into a successor?
To devour what he couldn't become himself?
Noah didn't know.
And that made it worse.
The light never changed.
That was the part that got to him the most, Noah thought. Even in the quiet hours, when the world should have dimmed and darkened, the golden sun above the Womb stayed constant. Eternal. Unblinking.
He turned his head slightly.
Abel was already asleep in the other bed—on his side, one arm curled under his head, his back rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. Even in sleep, he looked guarded. Ready to wake.
Noah rolled onto his side, facing him, but didn't speak. Didn't move.
Instead, he reached for the satchel near his bed.
The tarot deck was warm in his fingers. Not hot. Not glowing. Just... present. Like it was waiting.
He didn't draw a card.
Didn't dare.
He stared at it for a while in the flickering lantern glow. Then tucked it back.
There was something in him he couldn't name. A pressure. A burn beneath the ribs. Not fear. Not quite.
Purpose, maybe.
Or inevitability.
He lay back, eyes fixed on the smooth ceiling above. The light drifted through the veins of the stone like sunlight moving through thin flesh.
The Saint wanted him to ascend.
But Noah had no intention of becoming someone else's creation.
He would grow. Yes.
But on his terms.
Not as a seed.
As a wildfire.
At the end, he still didn't understand how it all worked.
A gust of breath escaped him—part laugh, part sigh.
He closed his eyes.