Firelight flickers off the faint, faded paints of broken and weathered stone. Aliyah raises her torch higher in an attempt to penetrate the endless shadow of the cavern.

“The... silent...” she whispers, tracing a finger over—not touching, of course—the long and graceful marks of a forgotten tongue. A forgotten people and their forgotten gods.

“The silent... something?” she sets the torch in a holder and leans it against the wall, pulling her notebook from the bag on her shoulder and a pencil from the pocket on her side, comparing the words written on the wall with the hastily scribbled sketches from other... less peaceful explorations.

The journeys that had led her here, to this lost ruin in a lost world.

“The silent... god?” Aliyah whispers to the still wind. She reaches carefully down to the torch and, almost reverently, raises it to the wall. 

Gilded rays reflect off lapis lazuli, off pale gold and white stone. They reflect off the bright wings of angels, the still, stone eyes of a shadow, enshrouded by whispering lips and twisted screams. Inscriptions wrap around it, through it, binding it to the portrayed ground. The figure has no mouth, but it is smiling. Viciously.

 Underneath, another inscription.

“...He.” Aliyah does not recognize the second word, nor the third or fourth—she has never seen them before, not in all the relics and ruins she has found. But the fifth... 

“Comes? By... tongues. By tongues!” she mutters to herself, writing feverishly in her journal. The torch tumbles to the side with a clatter. A hiss, and its flames go out.

A silent pause and muffled scramble as Aliyah relights the torch with a matchstick. “Wait. The hell does that mean?” she wonders as she studies closer the words she has written. “Tongues?” 

Aliyah shakes her head and turns back to the wall. The torchlight burns and glitters gold off the image of a river—scarlet, as all rivers of blood are. The Silent God presides over the river, watching the crimson tides flow by. The river flows back into itself, endless, eternal... silent. The words that bind him shimmer with a nascent light, almost glowing even without the torch’s flame.

They inscribe a triangle within the river’s cycle, surrounding the silence between the stars.

One of the inscriptions she recognizes. Destroyer. 

Aliyah glances again at the Silent God’s eyes. The object of their cruel gaze is across the mural.

There is a figure standing across from the Silent God. 

 The light of the torch reflects somehow brighter back, gold becoming sunfire, silver turning to moonsilver. A great and grand figure, garbed in starlight, bearing arms forged of the Sun and the Moon; gold and silver wind through the figure’s body as it stands, watching. Watching not the Silent God, but the mists below it.

 The inscription below is sharp and clear, as if untouched by the tides of time. 

 ‘Herodotus, God of Knowledge and Wisdom,’ Aliyah scribbles into her notebook. She is unsurprised to see him there. This god is oft depicted and well recorded within the iconography of these forgotten people. She has seen him many times, but rarely so... warlike. He normally bears a kinder, softer visage.

His other title is perhaps more fitting here: Allseer.

Aliyah follows His line of sight, looking closer at the carved mist. The fog moves, in shifts and rolls and flows, as the torch approaches. Somehow, it splits down the middle without moving. An illusion? Tiny figures flee a black sea. A wave of shadows, a tide of horrors, stalks across a green continent, leaving naught but ash and blood and bone in their wake.

An inscription sprawls across the edges of the land. Aliyah copies it down and its translation—what she can translate—into her notebook.

‘The [—] War began in the (year? day? night?) of the (return? homecoming?) of the (eldest? ancient?), greatest of all. He who has taken the names Destroyer, [—], [—], and [—] worlds. He did much to [—] these names.’ 

Aliyah taps the pencil against her notebook, lost in thought for a moment, before looking up and recording another section of the inscription.

‘The gods (banished? exiled? imprisoned?) the (eldest? ancient?) using the words of the [—], and (willingly? readily?) indeed did the [—] give their words. Thus these words were (forgotten? lost? erased?). Let them never (return? homecoming?), for (when? as soon as?) they do, the (eldest? ancient?) chains [—] be (broken? unleashed?).’

The pencil’s scribbling slows to a standstill. Aliyah stares blankly at the written words, aghast. Silence pervades the empty temple—a deep and cold silence that chills the heart and cuts to the quick. Perhaps it is more correct to call it the illusion of silence. 

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

For Aliyah quickly realizes... it is not silent.

From the far distance, there echoes the quiet, harsh clink of metal on stone.

The rattling of chains.

“There were—or are—many names for the Silent One. Not all of them are correct, and few are true. But many there were.” The camera shifts into focus, revealing a man from the blurred mess of pixels. 

He holds a statue cast in ceramic and porcelain, studying it quietly. “I don’t know all of the names He was known by, but I know Him. Probably shouldn’t have, and I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but so long as I don’t use [ERROR: DATA LOST], it won’t do any harm.”

His figures are downcast, cast in shadow, such that their true edges are hidden from the camera’s lens and the viewer’s eye. He is noticeably tall, for even as he sits, the back of the chair only rises to the small of his. A single golden dreadlock dangles out of the shadows of his cowl for a moment before he pushes it back in. The statue is of a hooded figure, surrounded by a triangle inscribed within a circle. 

“Where to start?” he wonders, sitting on his chair. The room behind him is dilapidated, but modern. Perhaps a hotel? The man wonders for a moment, then decides as an unseen person, perhaps the cameraman, gives input.

“Yeah, that’s a good spot. Let’s start there.” The man stops for a moment to gather his thoughts. “In the beginning, there was nothing. This should be pretty standard to you, or any living follower of any sort of theology.”

“But it is standard because it is true. In the beginning there was nothing but emptiness. That great and empty void is gone now—mostly. Parts of it are reflected in the silence beyond the stars. Enough to... to corrupt, as you shall soon see.”

The man turns the statue to look at its face. 

“Now, the Silent One was the greatest of... of the gods. He was firstborn from the emptiness, and he brought about the birth of many of his siblings. He was the symbol of creation, of beginnings. He was creation.”

“Back in those days, there were men. They worshipped all the gods, but Him most of all, for He was their creator and Father. He was lovely, bright as the Sun and the Stars combined in the heavens.” The man carefully, reverently places the statue aside on the ground. 

“But one day, He realized that the men below no longer needed his presence in their lives. They turned from Him, towards knowledge and wisdom rather than blind faith. This pleased Him much, but also made him forlorn,” the man said, unknowingly slipping into a... different tone of voice. “For much did He love Man, but Man had turned away from Him to seek their own destinies. He understood that this was necessary, as all parents must, and it even gave Him a sense of reassurance that He was on the right path, but still was He lonely.”

“And in search of purpose as He was released from his eon-long duty, the Eldest turned from the world to wander the great cosmos. As He did, he stumbled upon something strange... something familiar. He found the silence between the stars.”

The man pauses. “To understand what happens next and why, you must realize that all things have an... innate aversion to change. Sure, people don’t like change. But their fear of change is infinitely smaller than the universe’s own terrible inertia. The void was... is the same. And the void was much greater than the universe. Before creation, there was nothing. This nothing did not want to become something. But it did, and now it wishes to become nothing once more, for even the silence between the stars is filled with light and sound of the living universe.”

“And when the Eldest found the Silence, it entranced him. At first, out of curiosity, He studied it. At first. Hell is filled with good intentions. But, step by step, He found himself drawing on it, then agreeing with it. The Universe was an aberration. It should not exist. The Void is vast and empty, and only the Universe mars its dark perfection.” 

“The gods, of course, disagreed. They believed that the Universe was the flower of the Void, a miracle born of fate and a strange luck. They believed that His eternal perfection was... well, empty. They believed that there should be more than the Void. And this made the Eldest angry. Could His siblings not see the truth? Could His brother and sisters not understand perfection?”

The man pauses again to take a sip of water from a nearby flask.

“They could not. And thus the Eldest turned from Them, descending into the world of Man once more. Surely if His siblings could not understand perfection, then His children would. Unfortunately,” the man spat, “His children did not understand perfection. ‘Why would you want there to be nothing?’ they asked Him.”

“Disappointed, the Eldest turned from the world, returning to the Silence to listen once more to its whispers—whispers that were themselves a sign of imperfection. Eventually, the Eldest began to wield His powers once again, powers that had lain dormant for eons. He created the twisted race known as the Destroyers, beings born only to kill and slaughter and destroy.” 

The man growled. “In his pursuit of perfection, the Eldest became the Silent God. And so began the War of the Morning Star. The War claimed countless lives, countless years. Gods fell from the heavens and their Heralds died by the droves. The Destroyers were endless. Mountains of dead filled the planets of Man. There were not enough worlds to bury them all.” 

“Eventually though, at long, long last, the Silent God and His Destroyers were defeated. The Void Kings were slaughtered and the Silent God Himself captured and brought to trial before the Gods. When They saw Him... the heavens raged. Lightning scorched the places between the stars. Thunder rolled across every land and rain fell as the Gods wept for what had become of Their eldest brother.” 

The man stops again to regard the statue with a cold sneer on his face.

“Gods cannot die,” he says after a long time. “They are simply reborn from the cosmos that created them—in the Silent God’s case, the Void. Thusly, slaying Him would bring no benefit save to soothe the anger of the masses. And so the Gods turned to a different path—they sealed him away, hopefully for eternity.” 

“How, I... ah, whatever. I'm sure that's enough.” The man shakes his head and gestures to the unseen man behind the camera. He stands and turns away. 

On the back of his cloak is an eye inscribed within a triangle—the All-Seeing Eye.

The video freezes. It is over.