The feather did not settle in his stomach.
It nested in the cavity between memory and refusal, where the truth had long laid dormant. The sensation was not physical, but its effect was. A tension uncoiled in his jaw. Muscles in his throat, long dormant, began to twitch with the anticipation of words that had no safe shape. As the boy stood in the ritual chamber, surrounded by Choir silhouettes cloaked in stillness, he felt the inside of his mouth change, not as an organ shifts, but as language redefines its own structure from the inside out.
There was no sound. Not even breath. But the silence was not absence. It was audience. The Choir's heads tilted as one, not in gesture but in gravitational yield, like planets rotating toward the emergence of a new sun. The boy could feel their attention. It was not reverent. It was expectant. He had swallowed the feather. That act was the signal. From here forward, there would be no metaphors, no symbols to hide inside. The truth would no longer rest in vision or allegory. It would be given shape, not in what he revealed, but in what he spoke.
Ashur remained outside the ring. The man's eyes, shadowed by regret and something worse, knowledge — did not blink. He had seen this ritual before. Not just watched it, but orchestrated it. Whatever role he played now, it had already fractured the boy's trust beyond repair. The boy did not care what Ashur felt. His presence was static. The truth, however, moved.
It began behind the tongue.
Not as word, but as edge.
The boy touched his lips, then the base of his throat. A sensation thrummed in the back of his mouth, the way a blade vibrates after it strikes steel. He breathed in, and the breath caught on that edge. He understood, without being told, that the Second Truth, Silence, was not born from insight or remembering. It was born from saying something that could not be unsaid.
He would need to confess.
Not to the Choir. Not to Ashur.
To himself.
But saying it aloud would wound him. And not only him.
This was the shape of the power. Voice given weapon. Word made blade.
The Choir opened a path.
They did not speak. They simply moved, robes folding outward like paper, revealing a low stone platform in the center of the circle. Its surface was marked by concentric etchings, delicate grooves filled with an oily ink that smelled faintly of blood and brine. There was no place to kneel, no place to rest. The design was not meant for comfort. It was a stage for self-dissection.
The boy stepped forward.
The stone was cold under his bare feet. Every footfall echoed with weight, though the chamber was still without acoustics. Memory echoed louder than sound.
He stood at the platform's center and closed his eyes.
A phrase entered his mind: Speak the name of what you buried.
He opened his mouth, and nothing came out.
The silence inside him twisted.
His jaw clenched. The air thickened. He tried to form the first syllable, not a name, but a moment, a memory, a noun that would undo him, and his voice cracked before it could begin. A sharp pain traced the roof of his mouth to the base of his skull. His lungs pulled in air reflexively, but could not hold it. This was not ordinary hesitation. The truth resisted its own revelation.
Another image came.
The riverbank.
A face beneath the water. A hand left unclasped.
He opened his mouth again.
A whisper escaped.
Not of speech. But of tension breaking.
The word he tried to form struck the air, and that air broke.
One of the Choir members staggered.
Blood trickled from beneath their mask.
The boy stepped back, horrified.
He had not even spoken clearly. But the shape of the truth in his mouth had already wounded someone. The Choir said nothing. They only watched.
This was the price.
The boy pressed his hands to his throat. He tried again.
And this time, the word came.
A single phrase, not long, not ornate. A plain sentence, the kind any child could form.
"I could have saved them."
The moment it left his lips, the sound did not travel.
It tore.
It cut the room.
Not like noise. Like absence splitting presence. The air turned viscous. The candles went out. Several Choir members fell to their knees, not in reverence, but in pain.
His voice had opened a wound.
The boy dropped to the floor. He could not feel his tongue. His lips stung. His jaw ached like it had been used for something it was never designed to do.
In the distance, though the room had no distance, he heard crying.
Not external.
From himself.
Silent, but felt.
He crawled backward from the stone, not looking at Ashur, not watching the others writhe. He felt every fiber of his self shaking. Not with guilt. Not just with grief.
With release.
Something had unlatched in him.
He had confessed. And now the truth would not stop.
Another image came. A boy holding a dying bird. Refusing to say it was dead. Letting it suffocate in his hands because saying the word "dead" would make it real.
Another confession forced its way up.
"I wanted to forget them."
That sentence did not echo.
It screamed inside his own skull.
He collapsed fully, cheek pressed to the cold floor.
The Choir fell with him. Not out of sympathy. Because the Truth of Silence was now loose.
And every word he spoke would wound.