Page 194 of The Blood Rites
The pressure speaks again.
Not in sentences, but in fragments, each older than the last.
The world was... was... once alive.
The world was whole once... balanced.
Godhood was not divinity, but a vessel—a machine, a clock.
Every Dominion was a pulse, a vein, a promise.
The world failed as the Crowns tried to become the heart.
A Crown should not last.
A Crown should be cast off, again and again, like old skin.
Mortals cheat.
They keep their crowns to make time stop.
Before the...
Before...
The world fractured, and the god did too.
Pieces in the ocean, pieces in the land.
Creation, order, change.
The cycle corrupts itself.
The Mother starves, and the world starves with her.
She eats her children, to maintain the world.
Only for herself.
The Rites are a perversion.
I do not remember...
The word...
Defile... Defilement.
They devour.
I want to ask why I’m here. I want to ask if I’m dead.
The water around me crackles with the cold, and the chains in the deep rattle, as if my thoughts are too much even for the voice to hold.
You are the last.
Bound no longer.
Your mother was not cruel.
