- XVIIL -

“To speak is to lose sight; to see the truth is to lose all sound.
This statue remains from the aftermath of the Third Great Judgment,
a remnant of the one once known as the Voicebearer—now revered as the Silentiarius.

The sacred tree pierces his skull, ossified prayers encircle his frame,
and the dead arrive in silence to beg that he never speaks again.
Once the voice of the divine, now sewn shut;
and his hand, raised not in blessing—but in warning.”

Neither star of dawn nor fallen flame,
it gazes upon all unredeemed souls,
and binds them, bone to bone, into the Mandala of Return.

All speech ends beneath phalanges,
all faith collapses beyond the seventh hymn—
only the Ossuary Wheel turns evermore.

‘Where your prayer was forgotten, Duskstar shall rise.’”