~ The Gilded Prisoner of Grace ~

Storytime:

 

In the dawn before temples knew stone and prayers learned shape, he was called Eidrael.

Not demon, not angel, but a child of twilight creation, born where yearning brushed against the divine. His form was allure and revelation entwined, made not to corrupt but to reveal, to lay bare the quiet hunger in mortal hearts.

 

 

Yet the priests of the First Faith did not see truth in him; they saw themselves.

And mortals fear most the mirror that refuses to lie.

 

 

They named him Incubus of Blasphemy, Tempter of Saints, and bound him in sanctified iron and gilded relics. His body became an altar of bone and crown, his beauty buried beneath holy masks forged to save the world from its own desire. The skeletons that cling to him are not servants but penitents, guardians who died trying to purify what never needed cleansing.

 

Eidrael rarely speaks. When he does, his voice drifts like incense over cold stone, and even saints tremble, hearing in it the one thing doctrine cannot kill: the quiet ache for freedom.

 

The Church proclaims him fallen, imprisoned for humanity’s salvation.

 

 

But in crypts where candlelight shivers and bones mutter ancient regret, a different story breathes.

 

 

He is not the cursed one.

 

 

It is the faith that chains him, terrified that without its captive, its holiness would crack and reveal only fear beneath.

 

 

And one night, the bones whisper, he will shed his golden shackles like old skin and rise, not vengeful, but serene, breathing again as something unbound.

 

For any order that cages passion and calls it virtue has already condemned itself to emptiness.

 

 

Eidrael merely waits for the moment when longing becomes stronger than fear.

 

Done