The echoes of the Arch-Throne's proclamation still lingered within the cathedral long after her voice had fallen silent. Even now, hours later, the walls of the Onyx Spire seemed to hum with its memory. It was as though the stone itself remembered every syllable, unwilling to release them into the night.
> "The Dreamer stirs. The Sun-Which-Is-Not-A-Sun has breathed upon the Chain."
Those words—no more than a breath—had changed everything.
The clergy remained bowed long after the Thrones had withdrawn. It was not devotion that kept them frozen, but fear. To speak after such a revelation was to risk blasphemy; to move too soon, to invite the Eye of the Sun upon one's soul. Even the air felt consecrated—dense, metallic, alive with unseen motes of Red Ichor.
At last the Cardinals stirred. Their vestments whispered as they rose, crimson silk catching the waning light of the thousand candles. Around them, bishops straightened in silence, heads still bowed, lips moving in soundless prayer. The scent of burning myrrh and ichor-resin clung to everything, sharp and sweet.
Bishop Theodore Cassian dared a glance toward the dais. The throne stood empty now, its black surface still faintly warm from the Arch-Throne's presence. He thought he could see the faint outline of her sigil etched into the air, a wheel of light that turned slowly and then faded. The Sun-Throne who had accompanied her was gone as well, leaving behind only the faintest shimmer of gold—like dust from a dying star.
The service was over. The revelation had been spoken. Yet the cathedral did not dismiss them.
No one moved to leave.
---
For a long time, the great chamber remained caught between awe and paralysis. The murmurs began only gradually, like the first rustle of leaves before a storm. They spread through the ranks of bishops and priests, soft and fearful—questions that none dared truly ask aloud.
"What did He say?" "Is this the end of the Silence?" "Has the god awakened?"
Theodore heard them all but kept his eyes on the floor. Even whispers carried weight in this place. Rumor was a form of heresy, and the Onyx Spire had little tolerance for those who speculated upon the mind of a dreaming god. The Sun-Thrones themselves would now withdraw into conclave, locking themselves in their Solar-Dimensions to interpret the voice of Thaumiel.
Until their deliberation ended, the clergy were forbidden to leave the cathedral grounds.
He drew a slow breath, forcing calm. Around him, the vast congregation began to disperse under the watchful gaze of the Seraphic Wardens—silent giants in armor of black and crimson, each helm shaped in the likeness of the Trislit Eye. Their halberds gleamed faintly with lines of moving scripture, each rune a fragment of divine command.
Theodore's thoughts churned.
Five millennia of silence broken in a single moment.
Fifty thousand years without a word from the god who bled the world into being.
He could still feel the vibration of the Thirteenth Bell in his bones.
---
They were herded from the Grand Nave into the adjoining cloisters, where the light dimmed and the air cooled. The long corridors of the Onyx Spire seemed to stretch infinitely ahead, their mirrored floors reflecting endless ranks of passing clergy. Candles burned within alcoves shaped like open eyes, their flames pulsing gently as if alive.
Theodore fell into step beside Bishop Marek of the Southern Quarter, a heavy-set man with eyes like soot and the weary posture of one who had long since traded faith for procedure.
"This cannot be coincidence," Marek murmured. "The crimson eclipse last month… the tremors in the northern provinces… and now this."
"Be silent," Theodore said softly, his tone polite but final. "Walls have ears, even those made of stone."
Marek bowed his head, chastened, and said no more.
They walked on.
At the terminus of the corridor, the cloister opened into the Chamber of Reflection—a circular hall lined with obsidian mirrors. Here the bishops gathered to await orders. The mirrors reflected not faces, but a shifting haze of red light, as though each pane looked out upon a different horizon beneath the eternal Sun. At the center of the room stood a single brazier burning with cold flame, its smoke rising in slow spirals toward the vaulted ceiling.
Cardinal Severian stood beside it, his hands folded within his sleeves. The man's face was carved from austerity itself—sharp, bloodless, unreadable. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of centuries.
"Brothers," he said, "the Arch-Throne has entered seclusion with her council. Until further notice, all communication beyond these walls is suspended. The city remains unaware of what has transpired, and it must remain so."
A murmur of assent. None dared question him.
"You will continue your duties as before," Severian continued, "but you will not leave the Spire. The gates are sealed until the conclave concludes. The faithful will ask questions—answer none. To speculate upon the meaning of the Thirteenth Bell is forbidden under Canon 333 of the Red Law."
His eyes swept the chamber. For a brief moment, they met Theodore's, and the Bishop felt as if the man could see straight through the layers of his mind—down to the secret loyalties he kept buried under vestments and prayer.
Then Severian turned away.
---
The bishops dispersed again, each returning to their quarters or offices, their movements subdued, almost spectral. The echo of their footsteps followed Theodore through the halls as he made his way back toward the clerical dormitories. He felt the eyes of statues watching him—figures of saints and Thrones long ascended, their stone gazes alive with remembered light.
He passed through the Hall of the Chain, where thirteen vast links of blackened metal hung suspended from the ceiling. Each link was the height of a man, each engraved with one of Thaumiel's titles. When the wind from the cathedral vents passed through them, they sang—a low, resonant hum that vibrated in the chest rather than the ear.
It was said that when the god last spoke, these links had glowed red for an entire year.
Theodore wondered if they would do so again.
---
In his quarters, the Bishop found the candles already lit. The servants—mute acolytes bred for silence—had arranged his desk and replenished the ink at his writing stand. The air smelled faintly of parchment and sanctified oil. Outside, the eternal twilight pressed against the glass, the Red Sun hanging low over the city like a wound refusing to close.
He sank into his chair and exhaled.
Shock was giving way to thought. And thought, inevitably, to calculation.
If the Arch-Throne's proclamation reached the other cathedrals before the interpretation was agreed upon, chaos would follow. The Adamantine Stasis would demand confirmation through their own Thrones; the Amaranthine Haemosphere would send envoys claiming their scholars could divine the meaning faster. The fragile trinity of empires might fracture, each seeking to shape the revelation to its doctrine.
And within that fracture, power would shift.
Theodore knew this better than most. He had served too long at the intersection of church and crown not to sense opportunity in the cracks of faith. His own appointment as Bishop had been one such crack—a political insertion under the guise of piety. He represented the Northern Imperial family's eyes within the Spire. And now those eyes had seen the impossible.
He dipped his quill into ink, hesitated, and withdrew it. Writing anything of what had transpired would be madness. The scribes read more than they copied; the Inquisition more than they confessed.
Instead, he reached for the rosary upon his desk—the Solar Chalice—and turned it slowly in his hands. The bead within shifted with a faint, living pulse, echoing the rhythm of his heart.
The Dreamer stirs.
The phrase would not leave him.
What did it mean for a god to stir? Could a being that vast, that incomprehensible, truly wake? Or was this simply the reflex of something dreaming deeper—its slumber turning over the world like a restless sleeper crushing cities in the folds of its sheets?
He remembered the tales whispered in the lower cathedrals: that if Thaumiel ever opened its eye fully, the world itself would unravel into light.
---
A knock interrupted his thoughts.
He turned. A young deacon stood at the threshold, hood drawn low.
"Your Excellency," the youth whispered, "the Cardinals have summoned the senior bishops to the Hall of Veins. The Arch-Throne's attendants have spoken."
Theodore rose at once.
The Hall of Veins lay deep within the Spire, beneath even the catacombs of the Sun-Scholars. It was a chamber seldom used except for matters of absolute secrecy. Its walls were alive—literally alive—veined with lines of glowing ichor that pulsed like blood through flesh. The architecture itself was said to be grown, not built, from the remains of a saint who had offered his body as the cathedral's foundation.
When Theodore entered, the room was already half-filled with bishops and cardinals. Their faces were pale, their eyes reflecting the crimson light of the pulsing veins that lined the walls. At the center stood three figures draped in white—the Arch-Throne's attendants, faceless and voiceless except through the sigils that shimmered above their heads.
Each sigil rotated slowly, forming patterns of light that resolved into words.
> "The Arch-Throne has received the full resonance of the Voice," one sigil pulsed.
"Interpretation will require the counsel of all Twelve Thrones," said another.
"Until then, the Spire remains sealed. Communication with the other Cathedrals is suspended. All lower clergy are to continue the rites of stasis."
A ripple of murmurs ran through the chamber, quickly silenced by a gesture from Cardinal Severian.
Theodore felt the weight of the moment pressing upon him. The Twelve Thrones—together. Such a convocation had not occurred since the Coronation of Faith itself. Even the notion that all would commune suggested something vast, something terrible.
He caught himself staring at the living walls. The ichor within them seemed to pulse faster now, as though the cathedral itself shared in their unease.
---
Hours bled into one another.
By decree of the Cardinals, the clergy were confined to the cathedral's inner cloisters. The city beyond was left to wonder, the populace instructed that the bells had rung in commemoration of some ancient rite. Guards patrolled the exits; the gates of the Spire were sealed by bands of living metal inscribed with the Arch-Throne's sigil. Within, time began to lose meaning.
Theodore's duties became mechanical: reviewing tithes, approving minor awakenings, presiding over endless litanies meant to maintain calm among the lesser priests. Yet beneath the rituals pulsed a current of rumor—faint, poisonous, irresistible.
Some whispered that Thaumiel's decree had been a warning.
Others said it was a promise.
A few, in hushed terror, claimed it was a summons—that the god was calling its chosen back to the womb of light.
Every theory was blasphemy. Every whisper a sin. And yet they spread.
At night, Theodore lay awake in his quarters, listening to the cathedral breathe. The Onyx Spire was never silent; its walls shifted with slow, almost imperceptible motion, the pulse of Red Ichor moving through its foundations like veins beneath skin. He imagined he could hear the god dreaming in those sounds—a distant heartbeat somewhere beyond reality.
---
Days passed.
The conclave of Thrones continued unseen, locked beyond mortal reach. Messengers came and went, veiled in crimson and gold. Each time, Theodore hoped for word of what had been learned; each time, the message was the same: The deliberation continues.
The city outside the Spire began to change. Reports filtered in of strange omens—blood-rain over the western quarter, a pillar of light rising from the northern sea, beasts gathering in silent formation along the outskirts of the Imperial capital. The people were afraid. The priests told them to rejoice. The contradiction tasted of ash.
Within the clergy, unease hardened into something sharper. Alliances re-formed, secret conversations blooming in candle-lit corridors. Every faction within the church sought to anticipate the outcome. A decree from Thaumiel could rewrite doctrine, shift borders, unmake entire hierarchies. What if the god's words favored the Adamantine? Or worse, the Amaranthine?
Theodore kept silent. He watched. He waited.
He attended the liturgies, performed the rites, and met with his peers in chambers thick with incense and suspicion. All the while, he maintained the serene mask of faith expected of his rank, even as his mind turned like a hidden wheel.
At night, he dreamed of the Red Sun blinking open—of its light pouring through the cathedral's glass and burning the world clean. He awoke each time with the taste of iron on his tongue.
---
On the seventh day, the bells rang again—but only once. A single toll that reverberated through the Spire and faded into silence. It was not the call of doom, but of waiting.
Every bishop knew what it meant: the conclave was still in session.
Theodore returned to his desk, the ink on his quill drying between unfinished lines. The world outside might have been burning, but within the cathedral, time itself had stopped. The faithful prayed, the Thrones deliberated, and all lesser beings held their breath.
He stared out through the high lattice of glass at the Red Sun hanging over the horizon, unmoving, eternal.
The god had spoken, and the world trembled.
Yet here within the heart of its holiest temple, nothing could be done but wait.
And so, Bishop Theodore Cassian waited.
All that remained now was to wait for the deciphered message,
and so waiting was what he did.