"She who remembers every death that has not yet happened."
---
The world had changed since Asma-Ra donned the mask of Adi-Rohu.
Now, he could see what others forgot. Shadows bent away from him. Stones whispered prayers not meant for ears. His blood pulsed with the ache of stolen light.
The Dancer's anklets grew heavier with each step.
He crossed the salt-blasted plains of Maṇḍala-Raag, where even gods refused to tread. This was a place unwritten by time, cast aside by both Deva and Asura—a forgotten stanza in the hymn of creation.
In its center stood a shrine, crumbling and weeping sap.
Inside, the Bone Oracle waited.
---
She sat cross-legged atop a lotus of skulls, her body twisted in thirteen directions, her voice echoing in tongues long extinct. Her eyes were sewn shut with hair. Her jaw was cracked open by gold nails.
Yet she sang.
And her song was prophecy.
> "He comes. The bearer of ash. The eater of light. The rhythm-breaker.
But what does he seek? Redemption, or release?"
Asma-Ra knelt.
> "I seek the source. The true root of the curse. I have seen the First Light. I have heard its heartbeat. But I do not understand."
The Oracle's mouth creaked open wider.
> "You seek understanding. But understanding comes at the cost of certainty."
She reached into the bundle of skulls at her feet and pulled out one shaped like a serpent curling into itself.
> "This belonged to the monk-child who once guarded the Tree.
He was the first to defy the divine law and the first to be devoured by it.
His name is no longer spoken—but his soul clings to the deepest root."
---
She offered the skull to Asma-Ra.
> "To find the monk-child, you must journey to the place even memory has abandoned.
The realm of Unwoven Dreams—the garden before creation bloomed."
But before he could rise, she screamed.
Her voice split the shrine, and the skulls began to bleed ash.
> "They have seen you.
The Veiled Kings stir. The ones who dance in stillness.
They will hunt you now, for you carry the rhythm of rebellion."
Asma-Ra turned.
The shrine darkened.
From behind the veils, three figures emerged, faces hidden, robes made of unwritten verses, blades forged from oaths broken by gods.
The Veiled Kings.
---
The Oracle flung her broken body between Asma-Ra and the kings.
> "Run. And when you reach the dream-that-was,
find the monk-child's name.
Speak it.
And the world will bleed truth again."
Asma-Ra fled—mask tight against his face, anklets singing with every breathless step, the skull of the lost monk clutched to his chest.
Behind him, the shrine crumbled into silence.
---
END OF CHAPTER XIV
Next: Chapter XV – "The Dream That Chose to Forget Itself"