Chapter 14:
DIVINVM
(The surroundings have frozen into a palette without color. Not white, not gray: drained of meaning. Each step Kael takes sounds like a repressed thought.)
Elyah slowly circles him. He doesn’t look at him—he examines him. Like a shepherd judging whether the sheep still remembers its name.
> Elyah: — How much of you still belongs to your Creator… and how much has unraveled among your doubts?
> Kael: — I do not seek salvation. — I seek truth.
(A bookshelf appears without warning, in the middle of nothingness. The books are sealed. All of them. Bound with rusted chains.)
> Kael (confused): — What is this?
> Elyah: — I did not come to give you answers, Kael. I came to return to you the questions your faith abandoned out of convenience.
(The ground opens, without breaking. It does not fall into the abyss; it floats upon it. Elyah stops. For the first time, he looks directly at Kael. His eyes are not eyes: they are commandments carved into flesh.)
> Elyah: — And if I am what you always pleaded for? If I am the voice that descended when no one else came down?
> Elyah: — Then you acknowledge your own judgment. — For everyone who prays without understanding… has already been condemned.
(Behind Elyah a living mural takes shape: thousands of people kneeling, praying. Their faces twisted with desperation. None are heard. None receive an answer.)
> Kael (whispering): — Who are you… truly?
The faces in the mural dissolve. Not in blood. In absolute silence.
> Elyah: — I am the echo of the first Law. — The image of the One who no longer needs to descend.
(The scene closes like a seamless curtain. Only the two of them remain, beneath a light that casts no shadow.)
> Elyah: — I do not wish to defeat you, Kael. — I wish for you to be converted. — To repent. — Or to be erased like the voices that doubted too long.
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