Chapter 11:

Requiem of a Heretic

DIVINVM


[Scene I – The Fall]


(The darkness is not black. It is gray. Dirty. Like ash suspended in stagnant water.)


Kael did not fall. He was absorbed.The ground vanished beneath his feet without warning. There was no scream. Only silence.

When he opened his eyes, he could not feel his body. Only the pressure. As if something invisible were squeezing his soul with cold hands.


The first voice was his own.But younger. More broken.

> — If the gods exist… why does no one answer?




(The fog opens slowly, like living flesh under a scalpel.)


[Scene II – Room 214]



A hospital. Exactly as he remembered it. The metallic smell. The intermittent flicker of the damaged fluorescent light.

The bed.His mother.

The fragile body under sheets far too white for so much suffering.


Kael, 14 years old, is kneeling beside the bed.His lips move. He says nothing audible.Until he screams.


> — Answer me! Please, God, answer me!




No one answers. No divine light. No vision.Only the heart monitor.Beep.Beep.Beep.

Silence.



> “When one prays to the void… the echo is the only miracle.”




(His mother fades away. But the monitor keeps beeping. Beep. Beep. Until it dies in a flat tone.)


[Scene III – The Classroom of Exile]



(The setting changes. Fast. Violent. Kael falls to his knees in a classroom transformed into a courtroom.)


The walls are covered with broken sacred books. Crucifixes, Qur’anic texts, Vedic scrolls. All burning with black fire.A figure stands at the back: the teacher he admired most.The one who denounced him.
Teacher (calm voice, yet devastating):— Knowledge was your sin, Kael.— You asked when you should have remained silent. You doubted when everyone believed.

(A blackboard lights up on its own. On it, the words appear: HERESY – HERESY – HERESY.)



(Kael steps back. An invisible crowd surrounds him. Voices can be heard, but no bodies are seen.)


> — “Traitor to the faith…”— “Ingrate…”— “Blasphemer…”



(Salt stones materialize, suspended in the air. They slowly begin to fly toward him. They do not strike his flesh, but his consciousness.)



Each stone that touches him shows a fragmented memory:


His father looking away.


A fellow student tearing up his thesis.
A cross marked with red.
An expulsion certificate.

> — “We gave you the sky… and you spat on it.”




Kael does not respond. But a tear —the first in years— escapes.


[Scene IV – Fragments in Ruins]


(He is no longer in the classroom.Now he walks through an endless corridor made of shattered scenes. Like stained glass windows splintered from his past.)
To the left: a memory.To the right: another.

Him hugging his mother at a festival.



Him alone on his 17th birthday, eating stale bread.



Him signing the forced resignation.



Him looking at the corpse of his best friend.



(From each fragment, a voice emerges. And they all address him.)


> — “You failed.”— “Why didn’t you say anything?”— “You left when we needed you most.”— “Didn’t you want answers? Here they are.”



(Kael falls to his knees. The floor is glass. Below… is himself. A child. Praying. Begging.)


> Kael (in a whisper):— All of that… I lived it.— All of that… is me.



(Kael rises with his head lowered and his gaze slightly sad.)



Codex Gnosis Dei – Fragment X


> Whoever faces their own reflection without blinkingbecomes a god or turns to dust.


The soul is not tested with miracles,

but with ruins.
The true chosen onescarry neither swords nor heavenly flames.They walk naked into judgment,and still… they do not break.


Ramen-sensei
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