PILLARS OF THE MIND

BOOK FIVE: THE RETURN Where Love Conquered All ________________________________________ Chapter 18: The Man on the Subway It happened on a Tuesday. Nothing special about the day. Overcast. A little cold. The kind of Tuesday that feels like it might last forever, which is usually a good thing. Paimon was on the 6 train, heading downtown to a meeting. He was reading something on his phone—earnings reports, whatever—when the train stopped between stations and the lights flickered. People looked up. Looked around. Went back to their phones. The lights flickered again. Went out. Came back on, dimmer. And then a man at the other end of the car stood up. He was nobody special. Jeans. A jacket that had seen better days. Hair that needed cutting. But when he stood up, everyone looked at him. Not because he was loud—he wasn't. Not because he was doing anything. Just because... something. "I have something to tell you," the man said. His voice was quiet, but everyone heard it. ...

BOOK FOUR: THE BECOMING Where Love Found Them Anyway ________________________________________ Chapter 15: The Long Goodbye By the twenty-first century, it was almost over. The humans had stopped believing. Not all of them—there were always a few, clinging to old stories, old hopes. But most of them just... moved on. They had phones in their pockets and screens on their walls and a million distractions that didn't require gods or demons. They had each other, and that was almost enough. The demons gathered one last time. Not in Pandemonium—that place had been empty for centuries—but in a rented conference room in New York City, because that's where things happened now. That's where decisions were made. There were seventy-two of them, but they didn't look like demons anymore. They looked like people. Business suits. Casual clothes. One of them—Furfur—wore a hoodie and kept checking his phone. "We have to face it," Paimon said. He was at the front, standing behind...

BOOK THREE: THE DYING OF THE LIGHT Where Love Was Murdered ________________________________________ Chapter 11: The Silence of Heaven The nineteenth century was when the trouble really started. It wasn't sudden. It was slow, like a tide going out. Less and less each year. Less prayer. Less belief. Less of that particular hum that had always been there in the background, the sound of millions of humans reaching toward something they couldn't see. At first, the demons didn't notice. They were too busy with their own business—tempting, watching, occasionally being summoned by some fool with a chalk circle and a book. But then the summons started coming less often. The prayers they'd always felt as a distant buzz started fading. "What's happening?" Paimon asked one night. He and Stolas were on their hilltop. The city below had grown. Lights everywhere. The stars harder to see. "I don't know," Stolas said. "Something's changed. They'r...

BOOK TWO: THE LONG EXILE Where Love Became Complicated ________________________________________ Chapter 7: The Whisperers For thousands of years, the demons watched and waited and learned. They learned that humans were hungry. Always hungry. For food, for each other, for answers, for more. And hunger, they discovered, was the easiest thing to work with. Agares found he could make people run from things that weren't there. Not in a mean way, not at first. Just... nudging. A little push. Watch them panic, watch them exhaust themselves, watch them collapse. It was funny, in a sad way. Marbas found he could help. A human trying to build a shelter that kept falling down—Marbas could show him how to make it stand. A human trying to fix a tool that kept breaking—Marbas could whisper the solution. And then, later, when the human had learned to trust the voice, Marbas could whisper other things. You could build more. You could take what others built. You could be the one with the most. Andr...

BOOK ONE: THE CRACK IN THE SKY Where Love Was First Forgotten Chapter 1: The Music Before Before the fall, there was only music. Not the kind you hear in concert halls—nothing so small. This was the sound of everything fitting together. Every note in its place. Every voice in harmony. The kind of music that doesn't just fill the space but is the space. If you'd asked any of them back then what it felt like to exist, they would have said: It feels like singing. It feels like being sung. And at the center of that music was love. Not the messy kind—not yet. This was love before it had to prove itself. Love as the thing that held the notes together. Love as the silence between them that made the music possible. The theologians would spend millennia trying to name it—Plato would call it the Form of the Good, Aquinas would call it God's own substance, Kierkegaard would say it was the thing you reached for even though you'd never hold it. But back then, before words, it was ju...

Kidung Jangka Mbah Joyo ``` Pupuh I - DHANDHANGGULA (Tandha-tandha Jaman) Kala mangsa wus ganti saiki Jagad raya kebak pepadhang Tanpa diyan tanpa srengenge Cahya anyar wus sumebar Sing biyen adoh dadi cedhak Wayang anyar tanpa kelir Solah bawa tanpa raga Paworing roh lan mesin Jroning jagad anyar kang tanpa wates Manungsa ilang tapake ``` ``` Pupuh II - SINOM (Wewarah Jaman) Pitutur lawas wus kalindhih Dening kawruh tanpa guru Bocah anom wus ora ngaji Mung nyawang kotak sing murup Ngelmu instant wus sumebar Tanpa proses tanpa laku Rasa rumangsa wus sirna Diganti angka lan semu Jroning donya anyar kang tanpa rasa ``` ``` Pupuh III - PANGKUR (Pralambang) Ana lindhu tanpa bumi Gegeran tanpa swara Pageblug tanpa lelara Wong keneng wisa tan ketok Roh kajiman wus mlebu Ning njero kotak panguripan Manungsa dadi wayangan ``` ``` Pupuh IV - MASKUMAMBANG (Panggugah) Kang kawruh lawas Aja kongsi kabuncang Nadyan donya wus malik Tetep kudu eling ``` ``` Pupuh V - KINANTHI (Pitedah) Pitutur iki da...