Codex Fragment: The Tide of Surrender

  "Surrender...

  Let pride crumble into the dust of forgotten ages.

  Let your vedana become the weeping of time itself.

  Let jealousy, hatred, desire and love - even the image of your-self -

  be swept away by the silent tide.

  Only then, when nothing clings,

  will you stand true,

  untouched by borrowed wills,

  unshaken by the illusions of the world."

  - From the Silent Verses of the Last Pilgrim, unearthed in the Ashen Sanctum

  ***

  While the Owl stood silent, and the Emperor snored softly atop the Bodhi’s silver branches, and Theryx finished the last of his conjured snacks with a soft, contented sigh...

  Arin continued to remain in his vivid dreams.

  Dancing.

  Singing.

  And for the first time-truly living.

  Memories, long buried in the marrow of his bones and the weft of his soul, did not merely replay.

  They lived once again. To be fade and to be re-made again.

  The sharp, aching cry of birth...separation ... then, the golden rush of childhood joys.

  The slow creeping sorrow of realization knowing as if in an epiphany what it meant to become an adult.

  Love found...cherished.

  And lost...

  Found, to be lost again...

  Each sorrow and every joy rushed through him, akin to the endless waves against a shore too ancient to resist them.

  He floated in the sacred embrace of the Ganga, tenderly cradled by the mother of rivers.

  She bore him, those that defined him; visions and memories- his kindness and his cruelty, his moments of wisdom and his moments of folly- until even she, the mighty and infinite, dried up into cracked stone, her riverbed gone barren.

  And Arin found himself alone.

  Without forests, gardens, rivers or life...only dust, endless sky and a broken shrine where once the holy Shiva Lingam had been enshrined and worshipped. Now, instead only echoes remained...distant...poignant

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  The omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent gods, they who too, had once stood unshakable, even they had aged, changed, transformed and fell.

  To rise again.

  Brahma. Vishnu. Shankara.

  Eternals, yet never immune.

  Never as absolute as mortals assume.

  Everything changes.

  Everything is changeable.

  Even death is irreversible.

  So too must mortals learn:

  to let go of the heaviness of mortality,

  to embrace the lightness of change.

  For death is not the enemy.

  It is the final gate through which Moksha is found- the liberation from the endless spinning weft of karma and sorrow.

  The ego fades...into nothingness

  Only then can the self meet the True Self.

  In the dust of the broken shrine beneath skies emptied of stars, Arin knelt and prayed.

  He gave himself- body, breath, memory, soul, to the Greater Whole.

  Not in despair.

  Not in fear.

  In liberation.

  He crossed the threshold where endings fold into beginnings.

  Where the self falls away and the soul rises free.

  The dust around him whispered as if answering.

  The silence grew holy.

  And then,

  something stirred inside him.

  A flicker.

  A shiver of light.

  It rose not from the heavens, nor the roots of the earth, but from deep within Arin himself.

  A light, golden and pure, seeped from his skin, his bones, his reborn heart.

  It was not fire.

  It was not lightning.

  It was him.

  The Bodhi Tree, sensing this resurrection, shook its silvered leaves in sacred joy.

  And then, from its ancient trunk, a second light bloomed.

  Twin to Arin’s own.

  Two lights- one born of mortal surrender, one born of timeless grace—met across the sanctuary.

  They wove together.

  Danced together.

  And burst into the void.

  A flash. Then another.

  Twin bursts of radiant being threaded into the forgotten heavens, burning away ancient darkness:

  "A soul has awakened."

  The Bodhi’s roots pulsed deeper.

  The Garden of Thresholds shivered.

  The stars, forgotten and cold for so long, seemed to lean closer, drawn toward the twin flares.

  Above, the Emperor with Nine Lives cracked open an eye and gave a slow, satisfied grunt before curling tighter in his bough.

  Beside the roots, the Sage of the Void watched silently, ancient eyes deeper than the oldest black holes.

  Theryx, old Trickster, sat straighter on his conjured pillow, a slow, wide grin breaking across his wild face.

  He whispered, almost reverently:

  "Finally."

  The Garden—once a tomb—now breathed.

  Fully.

  Freely.

  It was no longer merely sanctuary.

  It had become Threshold.

  A place where sorrow becomes peace.

  Where death births freedom.

  Where the old world ends and the new one waits, just beyond the veil of courage.

  A place for the lost.

  A beacon for the Defiant.

  A cradle for the Awakened.

  Above the garden, the twin lights spiraled higher, threading like needles of radiance through the vast void.

  And below, where the soft earth trembled with unseen music, Arin opened his eyes.

  Clear.

  New.

  Free.

  The Garden seemed to sing around him.

  The Emperor sighed into his dreams.

  The Owl stood eternal watch.

  And Theryx laughed softly, the sound like a waterfall breaking open the last walls of silence.

  The prophecy had awakened.

  ***