We glided over the white world. Gold from the glyphs wove with the silver of Seth’s breath until the air between us shone like soft metal. The light painted our hands and faces as we rose, and for a moment, even the silence felt kind.
Jamey peered over the edge, watched the Expanse slide away beneath the clear bell, then thought better of it and stepped back. His exhale fogged the air and vanished into the glow.

The first whisper slid through the air like a finger across glass. Then another. Voices without mouths, old and weightless, testing the edges of thought.

Jamey winced. “They are back. If one of them calls me by my full name, I am filing a complaint.”

Adrian studied the air. “Where are they?”

“Everywhere and nowhere,” I said. “Do not follow them. They do not know the way out.”

Israel stirred. A thin ribbon of shadow slid from his blanket, fell through the glow beneath our feet, and touched the ice below.

Where the mist reached, the frost darkened. The plain became a mirror. Our reflections rose on the surface and looked up at us.

They were not obedient mirrors.

Alec frowned. “Why is mine blinking when I am not?”

Jamey leaned, then leaned back. “It is flirting with you. Stay humble.”

The reflections started to lag, then twitch. A smile formed where none of us had smiled. Adrian’s mirror tilted its head, a fraction wrong, as if listening to someone we could not hear.

Adrian’s voice was quiet. “That is not reflection. It is resonance. His burden is bending the surface.”

The Scripture along my arms brightened. “He absorbs what the world spills, and this place answers. He is not doing this by choice.”

Seth extended his hand. Silver breath streamed from his palm and slid down like a veil, meeting the darkened patches of ice. The false reflections steadied, then stilled, like water after a stone is removed.

“Peace first,” he said. “Then passage.”

The jellyfish pulsed. Its golden glyphs flared and dimmed in a slow rhythm. Snow began to fall at last, delicate flakes that gleamed silver and gold before they melted on skin and vanished like sparks in water.

At its side walked the echo of a man we knew. The jellyfish drifted ahead, each pulse of light slow and deliberate, like breath moving through water. Yet Christopher’s echo kept pace with it, or perhaps within it as though the spirit-walk allowed him to move between each flicker of light.

His outline was clear as glass and twice as fragile, yet his presence felt strong enough to bear a house.

He turned his face toward me. A thousand things passed between us without sound.

We followed.

The snow thickened, not in a storm, but in blessing. Each flake that touched Israel’s blanket flashed once and disappeared, as if the sky itself was knitting around him.

Jamey watched, eyebrows up. “Now that is a first. Gifts with free wrapping.”

Alec smirked. “Behave.”

Elizabeth held Israel higher. His faint glow brightened, then steadied, like a candle finding its own wick. Her shoulders loosened a fraction. She did not speak. She did not need to.

The jellyfish slowed, lowering us toward the mirrored expanse below. Then, a hush rolled through the air, reverent and expectant. Across the horizon, faint silhouettes emerged through the haze.

The Angels of Reverence stood waiting. Vast, motionless statues carved from stone that did not belong to this world. Their wings stretched wide, feathered in frost and eternity, their hollow eyes locked on the horizon as if watching all that dared to enter. Even frozen, they radiated a presence that pressed against the heart like the memory of thunder.

Adrian’s gaze climbed the towering forms. “So, these are the Angels of Reverence you mentioned, Alec,” he said quietly, reverence edging his voice. “They are as beautiful as they are terrifying.”

He turned his back to the statues, his eyes tracing the glow of the jellyfish above. “No wonder Heaven listens when you speak and guides you with wonders like these. Never, in my wildest dreams, did I think I’d see something so magnificent… so utterly beyond this world.” His voice faltered into a breath of awe.

I let him speak. Sometimes awe was its own kind of prayer.

He shook his head slowly. “If they are Heaven-sent, then how can there still be those who oppose you? Nothing should be more powerful than God and Heaven.”

I smiled faintly, my words soft but sure. “Because evil believes that numbers make it strong. It forgets that truth only needs one voice to prevail.”

Beside him, Elizabeth clutched Israel close. Awe trembled through her voice. “If this is the life we’re meant to lead,” she whispered, “will it ever stop feeling like a miracle?”

I smiled softly. “Miracles aren’t meant to feel ordinary.”

The jellyfish glided forward until we hovered before the guardians. The air rippled around them, a silence so deep it felt as though the world itself had paused to listen. Beneath us, the ice shimmered and then melted into liquid light. A staircase spiraled into gold and shadow, its runes glowing in threads of silver and pale amber, gentle enough to invite, bright enough to warn.

I looked over my shoulder. “Everyone, stay close. The whispers might magnify the moment we step below. Especially you, Jamey. I want no dramatics the moment I touch that first step.”

Jamey elbowed past Alec, huffing. “Dramatics? Please. I’m still in therapy from the last time this place tried to read my thoughts.”

I slung an arm around his shoulders and squeezed him. “Therapy I’m still paying for.”

He grinned. “Worth every coin.”

The jellyfish bowed low, its tendrils folding inward in reverence. The Angels of Reverence remained motionless, their colossal forms towering above, carved from eternity itself. They did not bow or breathe, yet the air around them vibrated with a living stillness that made Adrian’s voice falter.

Beside the glowing bell, Christopher’s echo lingered. He raised one translucent hand, his familiar smile a whisper of warmth before fading back into the creature’s light.

Seth took a hesitant step forward. He reached for Christopher just as the apparition dissolved completely, leaving behind only a soft shimmer that brushed his face like a farewell blessing.

We stood at the edge of the descent. The light beneath our feet pulsed with the slow rhythm of a divine heartbeat. I stepped forward first, the hum of Heaven moving through the soles of my boots. One by one, the others followed, their silence a kind of reverence.

The air thickened with honeyed light. The walls breathed living scripture, their gold veins shifting like currents under glass. Every step felt like walking deeper into a heart that already knew our names.

The chamber unfolded before us; it was vast and radiant, hinting that the Sepulcher of Echoes was awake and aware. At its center, the bronze statue stood tall, still holding the sun in her hand, her other arm outstretched. Upon that arm rested the stair that wound forward, a bridge into the Sepulcher’s heart.

Above her palm, the moon glowed, no longer distant but alive, pulsing softly with every breath we took. Its light was not harsh but soothing, its radiance the color of serenity itself. It embodied faith, the calm mind of Heaven, the perfect alignment of body and spirit. It was peace made visible.

Beneath our feet, the ground lit up in ripples, gold and silver racing outward from the stairway to the statue, blooming in concentric rings. The light reached us and lingered, as if recognizing every soul present before settling like a benediction.

The Sepulcher had opened.
And Heaven watched in silence.

Jamey leaned closer to Alec and whispered, “Did it just smile at us without a mouth?”

“Do not encourage it,” Alec said, but his voice was softer than his words.

No one was expelled. No pushback. No warning. Even Adrian felt it and stared in wonder, his guarded expression unlocked by awe. Elizabeth exhaled a sound that was half sob and half relief as the glow along the floor curled gently around her shoes like a child hugging a knee.

The Sepulcher’s voice rose without words. A vibration gathered in the gold and traveled through stone into bone. Israel cooed, and the sound of it struck the chamber like a bell. For the first time, his glow flashed bright and clean, gold over silver, then settled again without pain.

I felt the room rejoice.

Seth’s hand found mine. “It is glad we came back.”

“It is,” I said, and my Scripture warmed under my skin like a hand held by a friend.

New light stirred behind the statue. Panels of gold along the far wall folded inward, petal by petal, revealing hidden passages that shimmered like veins of sunlight.

The floor to our left split along invisible seams, the lines widening until pathways of liquid radiance emerged, each one pulsing with a life of its own.

The chamber began to sing. Not loud, not fierce, just full. The kind of song that could only come from a place that had been waiting for centuries for its family to return.

I stepped closer to the bronze figure and lifted my gaze to her tranquil face.
“We are here.”

Seth’s fingers closed lightly around mine, anchoring me before his eyes moved to the radiant corridors ahead.
“Which one should we enter?”

I leaned my head lightly against his shoulder.
“Wait for it... three... two... and there it is.”

A golden flurry burst forth from the third passage, hundreds of butterflies, each one a fragment of light. They swirled through the air in elegant arcs, circling us in slow, reverent motion.

Wherever their wings brushed, warmth bloomed across my skin. My Living Scripture stirred, glyphs rippling like living fire, while Seth’s Breath shimmered beside it in silver reply.

I reached out. One butterfly landed on my palm, its body trembling like a heartbeat before melting into my skin.
A single word filled my spirit.
Chosen.

I turned to Elizabeth and held out my arms.  “Let me take him.”
She hesitated, clutching Israel a little tighter, then nodded and passed him to me. His warmth settled against my chest, soft breaths fogging the air between us.

“You cannot come with us,” I said gently. “The Sepulcher allows only Seth and me.”

Alec took a step forward.
“I don’t feel comfortable staying behind without you.”

Jamey joined him.
“Yeah. What if the only reason this place behaves is because you two are here? What if, when you’re gone, it, you know, gets... weird.”

I gave him a look sharp enough to shave glass and a holy slap to the side of his head.
“The Sepulcher is sacred. How dare you have such thoughts? Would you speak that way of Heaven?”

He rubbed his head with a grimace.
“Okay, okay. I was joking. But I still don’t like it.”

I softened, turning to Elizabeth and opening my arms.
“It isn’t that I don’t want you to come. It’s that we simply can’t.”

Turning toward the golden corridor where Seth waited, I met his steady gaze and reached for his hand.

Without looking back, I called out,
“Behave! Especially you, Jamey. Or I’ll give you more than a side slap next time."

Light bloomed along the walls, flowing upward like rivers that ran straight into Heaven. Behind us, the door sealed with a deep, resonant hush, not a slam but a closing that felt final. The sound rolled through the chamber like the last breath of the world outside.

The butterflies drifted ahead, leading us into the heart of radiance. For a time, their motion stilled, frozen midair, then resumed with a gentle flutter, as though the world itself had paused to listen.
Each time they moved again, the chamber trembled, the air filled with the soft thunder of a thousand golden wings. The sound was both fragile and infinite, like the heartbeat of eternity itself.

When they finally reached the end of their path, the butterflies dissolved against the walls in bursts of gold, revealing cascades of silver water that poured into a shimmering basin below.
The pool spread out like liquid glass, its surface alive with drifting dusts of gold that rose to meet the light above.

Seth’s hand tightened in mine.

The last ripples of gold folded into the water, leaving a mirrored calm that reflected more than our faces.
“It has changed,” he whispered, almost afraid to believe it.
“So have we,” I said.

The pool brightened, as if it heard us.

For a heartbeat, I thought I saw the future staring back, brighter, heavier, and divine.
The kind of light that saves and burns.