PERSONAL JOURNAL - CALEM TORRA
Novitiate of the Order of Divine Containment
Planet Kir-Moriah – Temple District of Mournspire
Entry: First Day of the Weeping
I have not yet taken my vows.
They were meant to come in the next cycle, once I completed my liturgical recitations and walked the Flame Spiral with clean hands. But my hands have never felt clean. I was sent here not because I heard the call, but because I didn’t. My mother said the temple would show me how to listen. My father said belief would grow in the silence.
It never did.
Not until today.
This morning, the statues cried.
Not just the one in our cloister, but all of them - from the Grand Archstone in Halder to the Broken Sentinel in the north quarter. Eyes that had not blinked in seven hundred years began to glisten. The tears fell without pause - thick, silver, and lit with a dull light that I swear pulsed in rhythm with breath.
I watched it happen.
I was in the Garden of the Fifth Bell, cleaning the slate walkway as part of morning meditation. One of the statues there - The Silent Flame - began to weep. I thought at first it was water, condensation from the dawn air. But when I touched it, it clung to my fingers like sap. And in it, I felt… sorrow.
Not mine.
Not the statue’s.
But sorrow, ancient and deep, as though the stone had been carrying pain for longer than the world had language.
The elders collapsed into prayer. Some wept louder than the statues. The Temple Speaker dropped her scroll and fled. No one knew what to do.
But I knelt.
Not to worship.
To witness.
I stayed there until dusk, watching the light play in the silver trails down carved cheeks. I don’t know if Lyrax was a god or a tyrant. I know only that the world shook when he fell, and today, our statues wept - not for him, I think, but for all of us who followed.
The people have begun singing in the streets. They sound uncertain, like they’re relearning the shapes of their own voices. I think it’s beautiful.
I still don’t know if I believe in gods.
But I believe in the people who are finding their voices again.
And I believe that truth, once spoken, echoes.
Even through stone.
Calem