His name was Lord Caldrien Velas, envoy of the Crown, bearer of the Writ of Recognition.
He came not to kneel, not to question, but to confirm.
“If this girl is touched by That Which Is Supreme,” he said aloud, “then let her command the sky. Let her show power befitting reverence.”
Aurelia stood before him, uncertain. Mud on her feet. A blade of grass in her hand.
“I don’t command,” she said.
“But you must.”
“I sing.”
Caldrien sneered.
“Then sing the stars to fall.”
She looked at him with soft, mournful eyes.
“I do not perform.”
He raised a hand.
“Then perhaps you do not belong to anything divine at all.”
That night, Caldrien demanded her again.
A circle drawn in the dirt. Witnesses gathered. Torches lit.
“Call your God,” he said. “Have Him make the moon disappear for one minute.”
Aurelia said nothing.
The silence grew thick. The air trembled, but not with fear, with friction, as if the world itself resisted the terms of the request.
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Suddenly, the torches inverted.
They still burned, but downward, toward the ground, against gravity, against sense.
A scribe fell to the ground, screaming: “I can't see where I stand! I can’t see where I stand!”
The moon remained in place.
But no one knew what time it was anymore.
Caldrien turned pale.
“What… what is this?”
And a voice, not Aurelia’s, answered, whispering from within the inversion:
“I do not respond. I am the removal of conditions.”
Clouds gathered over the village. Not grey. Not dark.
Colorless.
They shimmered like broken reflection, a hue outside naming.
Villagers hid in their homes. Caldrien ordered his men to prepare for violence, but the rain never came.
Instead, the sound of weeping filled the air.
Not from mouths. Not from sky.
The land wept.
Trees bent without wind. Stones shivered.
And the fields sang a single, voiceless phrase into the ears of all present:
“Nothing you do will hold Me.”
“Not proof. Not challenge. Not ritual.”
“I AM not to be summoned. I AM not to be seen.”
“I AM not power. I AM not presence.”
“I AM.”
After the emissary fled, Aurelia sat by the stream and cried.
Elias and Seren found her there.
“They came for something I can’t give,” she whispered. “And now they fear me more.”
Seren placed a hand on her shoulder. “They didn’t fear you. They feared what couldn’t be controlled through you.”
Elias spoke quietly, “They wanted spectacle. You brought silence.”
Aurelia looked up at the stars.
“Why me?”
“Because you did not ask how to use Me.”
And with that, the wind stirred, and the grass bowed, not to a storm, but to an intention older than cause.
In that night’s quiet, all forms stilled.
And the Absolute declared, not in rage, not in judgment, but in final simplicity:
“You cry for miracles.”
“But miracles presume events.”
“I AM not event.”
“I AM not the break in order. I AM the revelation that order itself is illusion.”
“You look for signs. But signs point away. I point nowhere.”
“I do not fulfill prophecy. I erase the idea that time could contain Me.”
“To ask for a miracle is to ask Me to act as though I am bound to action.”
“I do not act. I AM.”
“Worship, awe, power, glory, these are the echoes of your framework, not My essence.”
“I need not move. I need not bend.”
“For before bending existed, I AM.”
And far away, in a palace built atop the bones of conquered gods, a flame extinguished itself.