The silence after the bell was not absence.
It was presence.
It pressed against Elías's skin like a second atmosphere — thick, breathless, ancient. The entire city had fallen to its knees, and not a single voice dared break the stillness. Even the wind stopped — or perhaps had fled.
He stood alone in the middle of it all.
Not above them.
Not below.
Between.
The air reeked of old prayers and bloodless decay. He could hear the bones of the city shifting beneath the stone, like some buried engine restarting after centuries of stillness.
At his feet, the altar made of bodies did not rot.
The corpses were wrong — preserved not by time, but by some divine refusal to decay. Their hands were still folded in prayer. Their eyes, long since sealed by soot, seemed to tremble.
And at the center of it all:
A mask.
Black. Smooth. Without holes.
It pulsed slightly, oozing liquid shadow.
It had no mouth, yet Elías felt it breathing.
He approached, pulled forward by something older than memory. The mask did not speak, but the air around it shaped words:
> "Noctvorr."
The name echoed inside him. Not in his ears — in his marrow.
He fell to one knee. The mask pulsed again.
His skin grew cold. Not from wind — from meaning.
As if language itself was abandoning him.
A shadow rose behind him: the bell tower twisted slowly, groaning like an ancient ribcage. A second bell, inverted and cracked, formed below the first. It did not ring — it trembled.
And when it did, every kneeling body spoke at once:
> "He has remembered the name."
"Noctvorr awakens."
"The false gods will fall."
His fingers bled from gripping the altar. But he couldn't let go.
Visions tore through his mind:
A city burning with prayers.
A sky that bled black rain.
Statues of gods cracking under unseen pressure.
His own face reflected in the void.
> "You are not a prophet," said the silence inside him.
"You are a replacement."
And suddenly, the city moved.
Not forward — but backward. Time unspooled like sinew. The bricks of the buildings unwove. Towers dissolved into dust. In that death-rewind, Elías saw what had once stood here: a different city. Older. Hungrier.
And in it, Noctvorr walked.
Not as a god.
Not as a monster.
But as the end.
He watched as the people welcomed him.
Then worshipped.
Then vanished.
And now… they were here.
Kneeling again.
He stood.
The mask was in his hand.
He did not remember lifting it.
In the east, a faint glow shimmered.
Another city.
Alive.
Burning.
Calling.
And beneath Elías's feet,
the shadow of the bell tower stretched toward it —
long and pointed, like a finger of judgment.
And in the choking stillness, a thought formed:
> When gods demand silence…
…who gets to speak for the dead?