FRAGMENT IV – ASHES OF LIGHT
Recovered from the Bare Plateau — a land where truth burns before it’s spoken. “I burned the word hope,” says the voice, “it smelled like childhood.” Ash remembers what fire forgets.
the Guest
🜂 Fire
Tremor 9 – Bare Plateau, Eastern Edge
[File 4.IX / Signal continuity: 38%]
Engraved on calcined bark fragments across the Plateau’s eastern edge; legible only under ultraviolet resonance. Sequence assembled from dispersed plates.
I never hated the light.
I hated what we did to reach it.
The Plateau doesn’t host. It resists. A land of burnt salt and fractured stone. Even the dust remembers heat.
[heat signature // residual 2.3°C]
Here, faith burns without combustion. Every truth becomes smoke before it’s spoken. The body adjusts — learns to live inside the ember.
Once I believed in transparency. In traceability. In the beauty of data.
Light was a god once. They said to see was to be good. They said to shine was to exist. Until seeing turned into exposure. Until light began to peel the soul like skin.
Those lit too long don’t turn holy.
They turn to ash.
He burns words now. Instead of speaking them. Names, memories, certainties. Each confession leaves the scent of sugar and smoke.
[air particulate // sweet-carbon spike]
He whispers ἀλήθεια once — and the horizon flickers. A brief wound of brightness. Then nothing.
I burned the word “hope.”
It smelled like childhood.
The subject describes a ritual of cleansing: writing truths on thin bark, then setting them alight with breath. He says the last thing he burned was his own silence.
Fire no longer destroys. It reveals what refuses to die.
Now he sleeps among embers.
The light glows through his ribs.
Each bone — a lantern.
Each dream — a scar.
I’m not afraid of the dark.
I’m afraid someone might try to save us with the light.
Then - static. Then only wind. The ember keeps breathing.
[thermal distortion // signal decay]
⟟ [language: Ancient Greek]
ἀλήθεια (aletheia) — “truth, disclosure”; used here as a burning act of unveiling, the moment when illumination becomes pain.
Note from the Guest:
Some faiths don’t vanish — they fossilize in heat.
Ash remembers form long after the flame forgets why it began.
Archive: 4.IX / Bare Plateau / Outer Edge / Bone Plate 3F
Seal: 🜂
Recall Code: “I burned the word hope."
// Reread the archive //
the Guest