Codex Fragment: The Path of the Gentle Flame

  "There are many roads to liberation,

  but none so steep and as luminous as the path of non-violence.

  To see the enemy not as the faceless shadow,

  but as a bearer of breath, of memories-

  a soul shaped by suffering, not unlike your own.

  So spoke the Ancient Seer of the East,

  who faced the Empire where the Sun Never Set,

  not with sword, but with open arms, with boundless empathy

  with a heart uncluttered by the grudges generations carried.

  Through stillness, he shattered chains.

  And through compassion, he reclaimed a nation

  Not for himself but for the future, the unborn souls"

  —From the Scroll of the Gentle Flame, buried beneath the Broken Rajan Pillars

  ***

  Soya was a slave- as most were...

  Unrecognized and unblessed by the almighty System, she belonged to the vast mass of the forgotten: the ones who tilled the fields, mined resources, raised noblemen's children and wiped blood and spit from the marbled temple floors.

  They lived quietly, toiled constantly and died without names or sagas sung about them.

  They were not tested in battle or died trying to achieve lofty ambition- they simply survived without ever being given a choice, to choose a path of their own.

  The rare few who were blessed by the System, they were marked with its radiant scripts of untapped potential- were taken swiftly. As ascended, they were either swept into the Church of the Lightbringer or stolen away into the deeper shadows, never to return.

  The rest? They quietly served. And stayed where they were, until the day they died at the very place they were born - from dust unto the dust...

  Soya lived with her aging parents in a crumbling hamlet nestled in between the end of the range of Dravenholt and the beginning of the plains of Gilded Reach, a place too poor to be remembered yet too stubborn to be erased.

  By day, she was a serf for the richest man, the only merchant who hadn’t abandoned the village. And by night, she scrubbed old tankards and poured sour ale in a mud-floor inn owned by the same merchant.

  It was like any other evenings, until she noticed the strangers ordering food and drinks.

  An old man with rich luster of silver hair and too curious eyes...

  A younger man, quiet and calm, carrying seriousness behind his silence...

  And a cat. The cutest cat she had ever seen, with not a fur out of place, sitting high above upon the younger man's shoulder, with solemn eyes looking down at her and all the inhabitants with an air of natural superiority. It blinked at her once, slow and wise. She couldn’t say why, but in that instant, something inside her stirred. She could only look away unable to continue meeting it's eyes.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  That night, long after the strangers had vanished beyond the edge of the hamlet, she lay awake, her heart beating like it had remembered a rhythm older than her younger body.

  She dreamt of roots, of stars and the breath in the earth, their conversation mysteriously, almost comprehensible...

  As she could half remember a tree that shone like silver under a sun that had not yet risen...before she was swept by darkness...

  ***

  Elsewhere, under a sky littered with sleeping stars, the strangers walked in silence.

  Past fields that had forgotten spring.

  Past shrines whose gods no longer answered.

  Past villages like Soya’s, where hope had long learned to speak in whispers.

  They came to a grove.

  No roots should have grown there.

  No leaves should have rustled.

  But there it stood—

  The Bodhi Tree.

  Silver-barked, old beyond reckoning, and yet breathing—deep and slow like the world’s own slumbering heart.

  The Owl watched from its branch.

  Still.

  Silent.

  Unblinking.

  The Cat danced from rock to rock, tail curled like a question.

  Theryx lounged on a conjured pillow, spinning spells from idle thoughts.

  Arin sat at the base of the Bodhi Tree, hands resting on his knees, eyes closed, as if listening.

  He opened them.

  “It’s time,” he said softly.

  Theryx cracked one golden eye and made a dramatic sound halfway between a yawn and a sigh.

  “Time for what, exactly? To finally take over the world, or just liberate a few orphans and ruin some high priest’s day?”

  Arin didn’t smile.

  Not tonight.

  “They’re suffering,” he said. “All of them.

  Born into chains.

  Taught to love them.

  Told it’s their place.”

  “Ah,” Theryx murmured. “System rot. The old infection.”

  “They deserve to know,” Arin continued. “That there’s more. That they are more. That they don’t have to wait to be chosen by the System to be alive.”

  The Cat purred, circling the base of the tree, brushing against Arin’s ankles like it agreed.

  The Bodhi Tree shivered gently, its silver leaves singing in a breeze that hadn’t blown.

  The Owl blinked once.

  Theryx tilted his head.

  “You speak like someone ready to burn it all down.”

  “No,” Arin said. “Not burn.

  Free.”

  He stood slowly, the ancient wood of his staff forming in his grip—not forged, but remembered.

  From earth.

  From light.

  From the truth within.

  “I intend to awaken them,” he said. “The forgotten ones. The overlooked. The never-blessed.

  I’ll remind them they have always had power. That the System's judgment is a cage made of light and lies.

  And that freedom doesn’t come from being chosen—but from choosing.”

  The ground hummed.

  The Bodhi Tree exhaled, as if in blessing.

  The Owl stretched its wings once, as though marking a vow.

  Theryx stood now too, grinning like a fox who had waited centuries for this moment.

  “You plant the seeds,” he said. “I’ll water them.”

  With a flick of his fingers, sigils danced through the air—chaotic, mischievous, and glowing with impossible potential.

  "And let’s see," Theryx added with a wink, "just how much mischief it takes to crack the System's bones."

  They turned toward the void beyond the grove.

  Toward the cities drowning in protocol.

  Toward the farms where souls were weighed and discarded.

  Toward the temples where light was sold in chains.

  The Cat leapt onto Arin’s shoulder.

  The Owl flew silently above.

  The Bodhi Tree pulsed behind them—breathing, waiting, watching.

  In that instant, far away, a barmaid in a forgotten village jolted upright in bed, sweat on her brow and a song on her lips she did not know she knew.

  She didn’t understand it yet—

  But something in her had woken.

  The first flame.

  The first echo.

  The first crack in the cage.

  ***