The Three Masks
Before Rowan could answer, a subtle shift in the shadows at the rear of the crevice drew every eye. Kiva slipped back into their midst, a ghost returning to its haunt. Her movements were silent, her gaze fixed on the floor.
"Find a quiet place to weep, mouse?" Cassian's voice was a low whip-crack in the quiet, not quite an accusation, but sharp enough to make her flinch.
"I… was scared. I needed a moment. To pray," she whispered, her voice a fragile thread. It was the perfect, pathetic answer. Fear was too common a currency here to be suspicious. But Ezra watched her. The masked figure called one of us 'misguided.' His eyes, cold and assessing, flicked from Kiva's bowed head to Cassian's icy profile, then to Varik's knowing smile. Which one of you is it?
Rowan's gaze was a physical weight, first settling on Mara. The lean woman met his stare, unblinking.
"Tremorsense," she stated, her voice like gravel. She held up her calloused hands. "Through touch. I feel the world breathe. In these stone halls," she tapped a boot against the floor, "nothing moves without me knowing." It was a scout's resonance—unflashy, vital. Their early-warning system woven into the very bones of the temple. Rowan gave a curt nod. She was their ears.
His gaze then pinned Kiva. "You. Your resonance. Now."
Kiva flinched as if struck. She wrung her hands, a masterpiece of anxious misery. "It's... useless," she stammered, offering a weak, trembling smile. "Empathy. I feel... strong emotions. It's just noise. It just gives me headaches. It's why I'm always so scared." She made herself small, insignificant. "A burden, not a gift."
Rowan studied her for a heartbeat longer before dismissing her with a grunt. A non-factor.
It was then Varik spoke, his voice a dry rustle of dead leaves. "A death cannot be unwritten, boy," he said to Ezra, though his milky eyes seemed to stare through time itself. "But the moment of death… that is a law even fate must obey. It can be… postponed. A life is a sentence, but its final punctuation is not always a period." He tapped his gnarled staff on the stone, and for a fleeting instant, the air in the crevice grew still and thin, as if time itself had paused to take a single, shallow breath. "Some laws are older than gods. And some resonances…" He let the sentence hang, a cryptic hook, before his face split into a grotesque smile.
He cackled, the sound of grinding bones. "But such lofty thoughts for a slaughterhouse! Do you forget where you are, little lambs? We are in the heart of Lust. The heart of Seraphine."
At the name, the atmosphere curdled. The air grew warm, heavy, carrying a faint, cloying sweetness like rotting nectar. The golden veins in the stone outside pulsed with a sudden, lurid light, as if answering to its mistress.
"The Celestial of Lust," Varik hissed, his whisper slithering into their skulls. "Do not imagine a creature of base flesh. That is a mortal's folly. Lust is the hunger for the unattainable. The obsession with the forbidden. Seraphine does not crave bodies; she consumes desire itself. She feeds on the yearning, the obsession, the pure, undiluted want in a soul. And this…" he gestured around them, a conductor of madness, "…this temple is her larder. You are not being tested. You are being refined. Distilled down to your most desperate, singular craving. And they are using you to wake her."
The revelation was a physical blow. All eyes were locked on the old man.
"How do you know this?" Soren's voice was a low, dangerous growl, his body coiling like a spring.
Varik's sneering gaze slid from Soren to Rowan, dripping with contempt. "I have been a guest in this Trial for years, boy. Trapped. Watching cycles of hopeful meat march to the grinder. But your little band of rebels… you broke the sacred order. And in doing so, you didn't just attract her gaze." His eyes gleamed with malevolent triumph. "You delivered her a gift. A perfect vessel. An untouched scion of a line she has coveted since the dawn of time. You didn't just walk into her trap. You brought her the final ingredient."
Seraphine. The name was a key turning in a lock deep within Ezra's soul. It was the whisper in the static between heartbeats, the name sighed on the edge of his forgotten dreams. He knew that name. It had been calling to him this whole time.
"Have you all forgotten the true shape of the world?" Varik mocked, his voice rising to a preacher's pitch. "Or do you only remember the gods it is convenient to fear?"
Gods. Plural. The word struck Ezra with the force of a physical blow. He'd only ever heard whispers of one.
Varik's cackle was a screech of triumph. "This place doesn't just embody Seraphine, you fools. It is her. A shard of her dreaming consciousness. And you are all thoughts flickering through her mind." His eyes, ancient and hungry, swept over them. "But then, you all have your own little hungers, don't you? Your own filthy secrets. Your leader is hiding more than any of you know." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "Or perhaps… all of you are."
The accusation hung in the sweet, heavy air, a poison taking root. In the silence that followed, no one dared look at another. Soren stared at the ground, his jaw a block of granite. Rin's knuckles were white on her flute. Cassian's face was a mask of frozen fury. And Ezra felt the crushing weight of his own unknown heritage, his impossible sight, the golden light that felt less like a power and more like a brand.
"Take a look," Varik cackled, pointing a gnarled finger into the dark. "Look at them!"
Heads whipped around. The vast, sickly moon poured its light, but the darkness clung thick and syrupy. Ezra's eyes narrowed, his senses sharpening, pushing past the mundane. He peered into the gloom, past the now-slowly pulsing veins. He focused on the floating motes, the Sparagmos Flies. He saw them now, truly saw them. The tiny, shifting human faces on their backs. His blood ran cold. They weren't random. They were a horrific chorus, all their features twisted into one of three expressions: bottomless sadness, frenzied mania, or ecstatic delight.
He shook his head, trying to dislodge the crawling horror, and his eyes met Rowan's. For a fleeting instant, he saw something feral and predatory staring back—the eyes of a wolf caught in a trap. Then it was gone, replaced by cold command as Rowan turned his glare to Varik.
"What else do you know?" Rowan's voice was taut, his jaw clenched tight.
"What is it?" Nora asked, her voice tight with dread.
Ezra didn't turn to her, his gaze still locked on the horrific insects. "The faces," he said, his own voice hollow. "They all wear the same three masks. Sorrow. Rage. Ecstasy."
And as he said it, he saw the effect crystallize. Cassian's icy control hardened into a sharp, brittle obsession. Nora's fear ignited into a volatile, shimmering heat. Rin's trembling fingers stilled, poised over her flute as if to play a note that would shatter the world. The flies weren't just watching. They were categorizing. Refining. Harvesting.
Varik watched the ripples of understanding with vile satisfaction. "The refinement is not a future event, children. It is the present tense."
"Enough." Rowan's voice was a low, visceral scrape of sound. It cut through the mounting panic. His gaze—now pure, cold calculus—fixed on Varik. "We see the game. We know the board. Now we move. You want a new ending? You'll earn it. There's a way into the temple's heart that bypasses that refinery. You know it. You'll lead us."
Varik's smirk was a crack in dust. "Or what, little Alpha?"
"I leave you here," Rowan said, his voice deadly calm. "Alone. With nothing but the echoes of your stories and the whispers of the flies. Enjoy the silence of your empty theatre for the next eternity."
The mockery in Varik's eyes dimmed, replaced by assessment. A bleak smile spread. "A connoisseur of consequences. Very well. There is a door. Not of stone, but of memory. It weeps stone tears. It whispers of the time before the shattering. We can reach it…" He let the dread build. "…if we cross the Garden of Frozen Lovers."
The name fell among them like a tombstone.
"We move at the peak of this wretched moon," Varik rasped, his voice slithering from the shadows themselves. "When the domain is drunk on its own borrowed sorrows. Until then…" His ancient, pitiless gaze swept over them, lingering on the tight line of Rowan's jaw, the rigid set of Cassian's shoulders, the silent tracks on Kiva's cheeks. "Guard your minds. And your dreams. In this place, memories are not passive. They are predators. And they are beginning to stir."
He dissolved back into the dark.
The silence he left behind was absolute, and worse. The hum of the flies was a gloating chorus. The three masks were no longer on the insects. They were lenses held up to every soul, focusing each flaw into a single, consuming beam.
Ezra looked from face to face, seeing the fractures. Milo, muttering equations like protective runes. Nora, a contained explosion. Rin, her lips moving in a silent, desperate melody.
The Garden of Frozen Lovers.
Memories with teeth.