Wax dripped onto the mahogany desktop with a quiet, rhythmic hiss.
Kaelen sat deep in his armchair, staring at his hand. The skin there had stopped reflecting light the way human tissue does, losing its warm, matte hue. He moved his hand toward the flame of the single lit candle—close enough that he should have felt pain. He felt nothing. He moved it closer still until the tongues of fire licked his fingers.
Nothing.
He withdrew his hand and examined his fingertips. The skin was intact, smooth, and cold to the touch like a polished coin. It shimmered in the candlelight with a silvery luster that hadn't been there three months ago.
Outside, far beyond the meter-thick walls of the ruined metropolis, the wind howled through the skeletons of iron towers. Here, deep underground, there was near-absolute silence. The air smelled of old paper and expensive incense.
Kaelen lowered his hand to his knee.
The process was advancing faster than he had anticipated. Too fast. It had begun with the fingernails—hard, cold, and glistening. Then the fingertips. Now, the entire right hand and wrist. In a week, perhaps two, it would reach his forearm. He didn't know what would come next, and he had no one to ask.
He rose from the chair, walked to a small side table, and stood before a mirror set in a heavy wooden frame. He leaned in close.
The face was still his own. There was the scar at the left corner of his mouth—a souvenir from an old fall. Deep-set eyes, dark and motionless. A shadow of stubble on his jaw. But beneath the skin of his cheeks and forehead, a delicate web of silvery veins was visible, as if someone had slipped a thin sheet of metallic fabric under his features.
Kaelen straightened up.
On the table beside the mirror lay the mask: a perfectly smooth, silver oval with no facial features, no eye slits, and no ornamentation. Only cold, polished metal. He took it in both hands and examined it by the candlelight. He remembered the day he found it in the cellar of the old library, in a chest of documents he was meant to catalog. He hadn't known what he was doing when he first put it on; he hadn't known it would change everything.
Now he knew.
He set the mask back on the table. It wasn't time yet.
He walked to his desk and opened a drawer, revealing a thick, leather-bound notebook—his own, filled over the years. He pulled it out and turned to the last entry:
Faith Stream—absorption properties with a congregation exceeding five hundred. Hypothesis: Critical Threshold. Upon crossing the threshold, consciousness may undergo permanent transfer beyond the physical body. Risk: Irreversible.
He read it twice and put the notebook away.
Today, there would be over seven hundred of them.
The knock at the door was quiet and double. Kaelen turned from the desk.
"Come in."
The door opened slowly to reveal a woman—tall and slender, her gray hair bound in a tight braid. Across her shoulders, she wore a heavy navy-blue cloak bearing the symbol of the cult on her chest: an open eye within a cracked circle. Her name was Mira. She was Kaelen's first follower and his only true advisor.
She bowed her head.
"Everyone is ready," she said, her voice calm and low. "Seven hundred and twenty-three."
"More than I expected."
"Word spread further than we planned. They came from the outer districts." She hesitated. "Kaelen, are you sure this is safe?"
Kaelen looked at her.
"No."
Mira tightened her lips and waited.
"But it is necessary," he added. "Stay by the exits during the ritual. If anyone loses consciousness, carry them out immediately. Don't ask, don't wait."
"I understand."
"And Mira," he stopped her as she turned to leave. "If I lose consciousness, do not wake me. You wait."
A long silence followed.
"How long do I wait?"
"As long as it takes."
Mira bowed once more and left. The door closed soundlessly behind her.
Kaelen turned back to the table and took the mask.
The corridors beneath the metropolis were ancient—older than the building above them, perhaps older than the city itself. Kaelen walked slowly, without haste. Torches in iron brackets cast long, trembling shadows against the gray stone walls. Every few paces, he passed followers standing against the walls, motionless, with heads bowed. None looked up as he passed; he knew they felt his presence. Each of them was connected to him by a thin, invisible thread.
He felt those threads. He always felt them—like delicate vibrations in the air, like taut strings he couldn't hear but whose tension he recognized. Over the last few months, they had become clearer, stronger. Too many followers, too many threads. It was difficult now to enter crowded places.
He passed the final corridor and stopped before heavy oak doors. From behind them came a muffled sound: hundreds of breaths, the shuffling of knees against stone, and a whisper of prayers so quiet it merged into a single, continuous hum.
Kaelen emptied his lungs. He straightened his back and raised the mask.
He pressed it to his face. The thick leather straps fastened at the back of his head with a quiet click.
Darkness.
It lasted exactly one heartbeat.
And then Kaelen stopped looking with his eyes.