Ghevont’s jaw tightened slightly at the mention of the codex. He did not flare in anger, but neither did he retreat. “No,” he admited quietly. “The Zaphadrin did not teach me that the Anointed One demands blind submission. That suspicion was born long before I met Jehoram.”
He exhales slowly. “In the cells, we spoke often of faith. Of sight and of darkness. Jehoram would recite from the Scroll of the Veiled Dawn:
Blessed are those who have not beheld the Radiance, yet walk as though it warms their skin; for theirs is the truest fire, kindled not by sight but by trust.
— Scroll of the Veiled Dawn, Canticle IV
“He would say that faith is not the denial of uncertainty, but the courage to move through it.”
Ghevont looked directly at Lah now. “But I also remember another passage. One we were made to memorize as acolytes.” His voice grows firmer, almost liturgical.
Though we, or even a herald robed in heaven’s own light, proclaim a teaching contrary to the Word once delivered, let that herald be cast out and named false.
— Codex of the First Illumination, Book II, Verse 19
He let the words settle between them.
“That verse was used to justify purges. To condemn sects. To silence dissent. You say the Annointed One does not demand blind submission, but the Church does, and its followers wield those verses like swords.” His expression softened, though the conflict within him remained.
“So tell me, Master… when the Hypnost speaks of awakening beyond forms, and the Church answers with anathema, who stands under that curse? The rebel? The institution? Or the one who dares to ask whether both have misunderstood the flame?”
As the echoes of Ghevont’s words decayed back into the silence of the expansive cathedral, Lah turned to the many prayer candles burning at the altar, their glow radiating an ethereal outline around the venerable holy man. After another long pause, he spoke.
“I am not your master, nor anyone’s master.” He gave this statement its own moment to settle in, then continued, “There is one who might help you find your truth. Come back to me in six days and we shall see if he accepts your request for guidance.”
Finally, he announced, “tonight’s observance begins in two hours. All are welcome.” He turned and disappeared through the postern.
Six days later (2/14), Ghevont waited patiently in the courtyard before the great chapel. The morning sun had just crested the spire of its steeple.
The courtyard was quiet, sunlight spilling across the worn stone. Lah appeared beside Ghevont, his robes brushing the floor. “Ghevont,” he said softly, “you have walked long among questions that do not yield easy answers. There is one who may help you see further.” He gestured toward a figure seated under the shade of a vine-covered arch. The man was old, robes simple, hands resting lightly on a wooden staff, his eyes calm and piercing even in stillness.
“This is Master Sivros. He lives in seclusion, and he listens more than he speaks. You will find no sermon here, only questions, if you are willing to hear them. I have told him of your question Ghevont.” With that, Lah stepped back, leaving Ghevont facing the monk, whose quiet presence seemed to invite the first step into deeper reflection.
“I have heard much about you, Ghevont. You have asked the right questions. That is why Lah sent you to me. Most men defend what they were given. You have begun to examine it. You ask what curses someone to anathema. You have asked whether the gods are worthy of trust. Whether the world is gift or prison. Whether suffering sanctifies or indicts. These are not rebellious questions. They are necessary ones.”
Master Sivros sat cross-legged on the floor next to a small lit brazier, occasionally poking the steadily burning coals. He motioned for Ghevont to sit with him.
“There was a time when I believed the Hypnosts had seen clearly. If deception were powerful enough, could it not shape temples? Could it not inspire miracles? Could it not bind souls to cycles they mistake for grace? If the gods were jailers, would they not clothe their chains in gold?” His eyes became suddenly wild with emotion before he settled himself down, slumping over, setting down the poker and manipulating a wax candle near the brazzier.
“So I stripped it all away. Scripture. Tradition. Vision. Even memory. I asked: If everything I have been taught were false, what would remain?”
The monk leftthe question hanging in the air for a moment before answering, speaking with his hands. The candle melted enough to be manipulated by the hand of the old monk.
“One thing did. The fact that I was asking. The fact that I could doubt. The fact that I could reason. If deception exists, it cannot erase the one who is deceived. If illusion reigns, it cannot silence the mind that questions it. That was my first certainty.” Sivos molded the candle into a wax ball.
“But here is where you have not yet gone. You are still deciding whether the structure stands. You have not yet asked what would make Truth possible at all. If deception were absolute, without rival, without limit, then even the desire for Truth would be meaningless. Yet we desire it. Not comfort. Not power. Truth. Why?” The old monk ceased molding the wax candle ball, setting it down next to himself. He turned back to poking the fire.
“If there were only deceivers, why would truth call to us? Why would reason itself rise against falsehood, even when falsehood is easier? You see, reasoning is itself proof. Even if every scripture, every miracle, every godly claim were a lie, the very fact that your mind can reflect, can doubt, can seek, this is undeniable. This is the foundation upon which truth may stand.” Sivos smiled as he pokes a particularly reactive piece of coal causing embers to surge near his face. A bright orange light shimmered over his eyes.
His visage calmed, the smile fading from his face. “I do not know whether all gods are as they appear. I do not know whether creation is wounded more deeply than we imagine. But I have come to believe this: there is a force that does not deceive. A light that does not bind. A voice that does not coerce. It calls. And I have heard it most clearly in the Anointed One. Not in an institution. Not in power. Not in fear. But in the invitation.”
He struggled to stand, using the poker as a crutch while slowly picking up the molded wax ball. The old monk offers the wax ball to Ghevont. “You are right to doubt. You are right to question whether the gods are trustworthy. But you have not yet asked the final question: If truth exists… what kind of being must stand behind it? And if goodness exists… can it be the product of a jailer?”
He began to walk slowly toward a cross of the Anointed One. “Doubt is a doorway. Reason is the key. Walk through, and see whether the light you fear is deception, or the very thing that makes deception impossible. For if you have witnessed the miracles of the Anointed One, how can you claim there is no goodness, no redemption? Is your capacity for reason not evidence enough that there is a greater purpose? That the world is not merely chaos? That some light exists, even if faint, to guide the lost?”
Master Sivros clasped Ghevont’s hand tightly and whispered, “The True Spirit, Ghevont… if severed into fragments, is not a sufficient answer for the acts of undeniable good we witness, nor for the goodness that stirs within us.” His eyes softened. “What Hypnos glimpsed was real — the divine spark within the soul. But he mistook its source. The spark is not the shattered remnant of an unknowable being torn apart by jealous deceivers. It is not exile. It is an imprint.”
He released Ghevont’s hand slowly. “If goodness were only rebellion against a prison, it would burn with bitterness. Yet what we see in the Anointed One is not bitterness. It is an invitation. Not escape alone, but restoration.” The monk turns slightly toward the cross.
“The divine within us is not proof that we are fragments of a broken god. It may instead be evidence that we were fashioned to reflect something whole. And if that is so… then the jailer Hypnos feared may not be the architect at all.” He looks back at Ghevont. “Test it. Do not silence your doubt, refine it. Ask whether the light you perceive is merely resistance… or revelation.”
Ghevont rolled the warm wax between his fingers and gave a faint, crooked smile. “Well,” he says lightly, “I was promised no sermon. I see now that I have instead received a philosophical treatise instead.” He glanced toward the cross, then back at Sivros. “Subtle work, Master. Very subtle.”
That night, Ghevont retired early to the small chamber given to him at the retreat, a narrow bed beneath a window that faced east. The last light faded slowly across the stone floor, and for a long while, he remained seated, boots still on, hands resting loosely in his lap. He did not kneel. He did not recite any formal prayer. Instead, he sat with the quiet weight of the day pressing in on him.
Lah’s words echoed first, the burden of freedom, the refusal to surrender discernment even to God. Then Sivros’ questions rose behind them, not as accusations but as foundations, asking what made truth possible at all. Ghevont turned these thoughts over carefully, and for the first time the edge of his skepticism felt less like strength and more like habit. He had always questioned institutions, doctrines, miracles. He had been quick to suspect hidden motives, to assume that certainty concealed coercion. But tonight a more troubling thought came to him: “why do I question the way I do?”
He laid back at last, staring at the beams overhead as starlight gathers faintly at the window’s edge. What if some of his conclusions were shaped less by disciplined reason and more by wounded pride, by fear of surrender, by the desire never to be fooled again? The thought unsettled him, and instinctively he wanted to dismiss it. But he did not. He let it remain, unfinished and sharp.
Nothing dramatic changed within him. He did not abandon the Hypnost framework, nor did he rush back into simple devotion. What shifted was smaller, quieter. He began to suspect that the greatest deception may not come from temple or tyrant, but from opinions he has never examined within himself. If truth existed, he reasoned, it will endure scrutiny, but so must he.
Sleep came slowly and without vision. Only the uncertain awareness that something in him had loosened, just slightly. It was not yet faith restored, nor doubt defeated. It was merely the first step of turning his questioning inward, and he sensed, dimly, that this step will prove more demanding than any argument he had faced.