When I entered the hall, everyone fell silent. My entrance was silent, but the effect was greater than the echo; conversations stopped, gazes turned. No one was looking directly at me, but I knew I had everyone's attention. This hall was built for the gods - vast, cold, grand but stifling. The dome was too high to be seen, light seeped through the seals in the floor, not from above. Everything was calculated; even the thrones they sat on were arranged in order of dominion: Greek to the west, Egyptian to the east, Norse to the north, Turkish and Asian pantheons to the south.
As I walked on the stone floor, the seals under my feet did not heat up but vibrated. None of them belonged to me. There was no room for me among those seals. My name was not engraved on those stones because I was supposed to be part of this system. That was the lie they told. The truth was that even the stone remembered my name.
I chose the central, empty stone circle in the hall. It belonged neither to the pantheon nor to a god. I stood away from everyone, but in plain sight. I lowered my scythe - Vel Sceptrum - from my shoulder and leaned it against the floor. When the tip touched the stone floor, there was no sound, but there was a visible tension in some faces. Ares' representative stood up. He was always the first to move.
"It is absurd to tolerate a stain like you even standing here," he said. "What is a shadow-bearing wretch doing in the Assembly of the Gods?"
I didn't answer him. I looked into his eyes. It wasn't just anger. Behind the anger was a suppressed panic. They don't know this, but I do. The ones who shout the loudest on the battlefield are the first to see blood.
Chang'e's Shadow moved. No one saw him, but those who recognized him shuddered. He passed between the pillars and left a scroll in front of me. There was no breeze, no hand. The paper fell to the ground by itself. I didn't pick it up. I recognized the marks on it, because they recognized me.
"You can't be here," said Ares' representative.
"Then why am I here?" I didn't raise my voice but everyone heard that question.
"I was not summoned, yes. I wasn't invited but I came, and that's an answer."
There was someone shining among the seals. Isira. She did not get up from her seat but turned her head towards me. Her voice was as clear as ever:
"This coven is for the gods. It is where those who serve the gods find a voice. Not for the likes of you."
"I am not a god," I said, "but I speak when the gods are silent. That's why you don't want me."
Vel Sceptrum did not move from the ground, but his shadow was spreading. Some of the seals on the floor began to fade. Everyone was watching him, but no one moved to stop him. Because some of them had sensed what was coming. Others just didn't want to remember what they had forgotten.
The Mask of Tezcatlipoca appeared with his voice from behind the pillar. "The gods don't like order, they like control," he said. "That's why someone like you is a threat because you don't belong to one of the gods. They cannot silence you."
I kept quiet. Because everything had been said.
The stone will not shut up, but where they are silent, I will continue to speak.
Vel Sceptrum was still on the floor, when I stopped talking the silence didn't settle - it grew. For the first time the seals seemed to react not to me but to each other. Their lights did not stay steady, as if they were competing to drown out each other's presence. The Assembly had begun to fracture from within. Chang'e's Shadow had stopped drifting between the pillars—now it stood motionless behind the veil and when it doesn't move, something has already fallen out of balance.
Ares' representative stepped forward again. He spread his hands wide and leaned on his knees. This time his voice sounded louder, more uncontrolled: "How can we allow a shadow like you to speak here? What's this bullshit game? Tell me before you fuck off, what the fuck is wrong with you?"
I didn't turn to him, I just pressed the inside of my right hand against the handle of the Vel Sceptrum. The scythe was still lying, but it drew the vibration of the floor to me. "This is not a game," I said, "this is the cracking of the stage you have set up." As I said this, one of the seals faded - the Egyptian one. Isira noticed it with her eyes but said nothing.
Chang'e's Shadow left something unseen in front of me. An old brown papyrus roll. I didn't bend down to pick it up, but Odin's proxy spoke: "What is this? A new forged document? Are you writing your own story, Seraphia?" There was no needle in his voice, just a tired suspicion. I don't want to fight her because he is one of the few who still tries to think.
"This is the text of an oath," I said. "A forgotten covenant. When the gods made promises to each other, they left something out. Then they thought they had sealed the void but no oath silences what it excludes." When he finished, there was silence in the hall. Isira turned her head slightly to the right. It was slow and calculated. She did not think of it as a threat, but as a duty.
"To reveal this here and now," he said, "would be provocation. The structure of this assembly is not your personal arena for personal reckoning." His gaze was steady, his voice measured but the tension in him was pulling like a taut wire . I turned to him. "There is nothing personal here. This is a confrontation with the stone of what you are hiding."
At that moment Ares' representative took a sudden step forward. He reached for the handle of his sword. "One more step and I will make you regret you were born here!" he shouted. I was watching his eyes. It was not his words that mattered, but his startled muscles, his cracking gaze. It was not my words that triggered him, but the weakness of his own faith.
"You sound like a threat of war," I said. "But I won't fight as long as this place is still standing. Because then your system is broken." I lifted the handle of Vel Sceptrum off the ground again, held the scythe upright, its shadow flowing not towards me but towards the seals. The stone shook silently. There was a change of air in the hall, no wind, but like a pulse.
At that moment, the seal on the stone pillar in the northeast wing cracked. No one spoke. The cracked symbol was unrecognizable. It just fell silent, and the moment it fell silent, everyone knew that something had broken inside them. I began to walk in the silence, the scythe slung over my back. My footsteps were inaudible, but when my feet stepped on the seals, each one seemed to blow as if it were exhaling air.
Isira stepped forward. "Are you looking for someone?" she said. Her voice was a little hoarse. It was the first time she asked a question, not an order. I didn't stop and I answered, "Yes." Then Odin's proxy: "Who?" There was no answer. Because that answer would not be given here. I just waited for them to reveal themselves.
Ares lunged again. "Have you come here to pit us against each other? Cheater!" he shouted. I turned to him. "No, you've already turned against each other. I only lifted the curtain." There was another thin cracking sound. This time it was not the pillar, but the foot of the throne. If the stone creaked, something bigger was stuck inside.
Just then Inari no Yaiba appeared between the pillars. Without raising his hand, his voice came: "When the shadow comes, everyone is displaced and some get used to the darkness, not the light." Everyone in the hall heard it and didn't understand it. But it was enough for me. Our eyes met — I recognized which side he stood on, and that alone was enough for me to trust her.
The scythe was still on my back. No one stood in front of me as I left the assembly, but I didn't let any of them fall off my back. The moment I turned my back, someone out of everyone started to collapse inside, and I knew it, because they didn't build this place. This place was the petrification of their fear, and now it was starting to crack.