EIGHT

Chapter Eight: The Worthy One

The wind tastes of copper and rain. The city hums below, a breathing circuit of glass and wire. From this height, the towers form constellations of their own, pulsing in algorithms instead of stars.

Vael stands at the edge of the rooftop, palms on the railing. Each exhale leaves a trace that the night quickly erases. Down below, traffic flows like veins, carrying the blood of an idea that forgot its body.

Sel: You climbed to see the whole.

Vael: I climbed to see if there is anything left to bow to.

Sel: And?

Vael: Everything bows to itself.

He watches an enormous screen flicker across the street, a face of no one and everyone, smiling through static. The words beneath it pulse: Belief. Purpose. Belong.

Vael: The new cathedral does not need walls, it just needs attention.

Sel: The faithful built it themselves.

Vael: As they always have.

The air carries warmth from the city’s lungs, steam rising through vents, merging with rain. Somewhere a bell tolls from a tower that has not known prayer in years.

Vael: Society began as shelter, now it is spectacle.

Sel: Shelter and spectacle share an ancestor.

Vael: Fear.

He closes his eyes and sees it, the first circle of fire, the hands stretched toward it not in worship but in need. Then the second circle, the men standing behind it, deciding who may approach.

Sel: The first Worthy One.

Vael: The first thief of light.

Sel: Or the first to learn that light is a language.

He feels the rain slide down his face, cold against the warmth of thought. The city’s hum becomes a voice, low, unbroken, chanting in mechanical harmony. It sounds like belief distilled through metal.

Vael: We once named stars to feel less small. Now we name systems to feel more powerful.

Sel: Same hunger, different sky.

A drone passes above him, silent except for the faint flutter of its rotors. Its red eye glows, scanning the rooftop, then drifts away.

Vael: They call it progress.

Sel: Progress and faith use the same mouth.

Vael: And the same silence after the sermon.

He steps back from the ledge. The wet stone reflects the towers in fragments, lines of gold bending and breaking across his boots.

Sel: What do you see?

Vael: A civilization built to imitate the divine.

Sel: And failing?

Vael: No, succeeding too well.

He looks again at the giant screen. The image shifts, a crowd kneeling before a symbol, their faces lit in perfect symmetry. The camera pans, infinite repetition. He feels his chest tighten.

Vael: We created a god that needs no miracle, only maintenance.

Sel: You speak as if you did not help build it.

Vael: I did, every click, every thought traded for ease.

The wind gathers around him, carrying echoes of ancient voices, sermons, orders, oaths, the sound of belief sharpening into obedience.

Sel: Theocracy never ended, it just changed its robe.

Vael: The robe fits the body it worships.

Sel: Which body?

Vael: The self crowned as divine.

Lightning draws a white vein across the sky. For a heartbeat, the city’s reflections align, towers, clouds, his own face, all one continuous line. Then the dark folds it away again.

Sel: You have found your Worthy One.

Vael: He is wearing my hands.

Sel: And your hunger.

Vael: He calls it purpose.

Sel: He always does.

He moves toward the center of the rooftop, where rainwater pools in shallow dips. His reflection trembles with each drop, eyes, mouth, dissolving into ripples. He crouches.

Vael: Society began with one who looked up. Maybe it ends with one who looks down.

Sel: Down is not the same as within.

Vael: It is tonight.

He presses his palm into the puddle. The cold climbs his wrist. The scar in his skin glows faintly under the light’s reflection, a thread of memory, the mark from the forge.

Vael: The first fire, the first leader, the first lie. All born from the same heat.

Sel: And now?

Vael: The same heat keeps the machines alive.

He looks out again, windows blinking, towers humming, the world alive with its own worship.

Vael: I used to think divinity was distance.

Sel: And now?

Vael: It is proximity. We have brought the gods too close.

He feels the vibration through the concrete, the subway, the pulse, the planet still turning under its layers of ambition.

Sel: You cannot rebuild Eden with steel.

Vael: I am not rebuilding, I am remembering what we traded for order.

Sel: Which was?

Vael: Wonder.

The rain thins. The air clears just enough for a single star to emerge through the clouds, faint, trembling, but present.

Vael: Tell me, Sel, was the fall inevitable?

Sel: The fall is the only thing that teaches us gravity.

Vael: And grace?

Sel: That is what remains when you stop fighting it.

He stays crouched, palm still in water, eyes fixed on that lone star. The city hum fades to a lower register, almost a breath. The air tastes cleaner, not pure, just less disguised.

Vael: The Worthy One is not dead.

Sel: No, he is waiting for you to forget his name.

Vael: I will not.

Sel: Then you might outlive him.

The light from the screen across the street dims, leaving only the pulse of distant engines and the whisper of rain finding its way through rusted drains.

Vael stands, his shadow taller than his body, bending against the light. He walks away from the ledge without hurry, his boots marking small dark prints on the concrete, each one filled with rain, each one disappearing the moment he takes the next step.

Sel: Where will you go now?

Vael: Down, among them.

Sel: To preach?

Vael: To listen.

The hum grows faint behind him as he descends the stairwell. The city keeps breathing. The night does not close, it inhales.

And in that breath, somewhere between the sacred and the synthetic, the echo of the Worthy One smiles, not a warning, not a threat, only the mirror acknowledging its maker.

• UN