The words came before he meant them to. At first, only once. Then again. Then often.
They slipped past his lips like seams splitting in fabric, fine threads loosening from the weave of thought before he could catch them. A name whispered before anyone entered. A warning spoken while a hand still reached for flame. An apology delivered before the offense.
He didn't mean to speak them.
Didn't know he had until others reacted.
Sometimes with confusion.
Sometimes with fear.
Sometimes not at all.
"You're unraveling your breath," whispered one of the silent faithful, watching him from across the dormitory's shadowed arches. Her voice was scratchy, like someone who'd forgotten what pitch meant. "You're saying things from ahead."
The boy opened his mouth to ask what she meant.
But his voice answered for him.
"I never meant to break the jar," it said, calm, resigned. "But it was already broken, wasn't it?"
The woman froze. "How—" she started, but her question fell apart before it reached the air.
The boy blinked.
He hadn't broken anything.
Not yet.
But the way she stared told him he would.
Later that day, he passed the memory chamber where the voice jars were kept. They pulsed faintly behind their glass cases, each one humming with the trapped resonance of someone's breath. His eyes locked onto the second shelf. Third jar from the left. The cracks were already forming.
He backed away.
Every word he didn't mean to say now felt like a match struck near old paper.
Ashur noticed.
He didn't say anything, not at first. But he began watching more carefully. Placing the boy in quieter tasks. Sending him on errands that kept him from others.
"Your mouth," Ashur murmured one evening as the two of them cleaned the stone slates used for chant transcription, "is no longer waiting for your mind. That's dangerous."
The boy nodded. He hadn't meant to.
"Some truths," Ashur continued, "want to be said. That doesn't mean they should be."
That night, it got worse.
He woke gasping.
Words he hadn't thought yet were already dripping from his tongue. Small sentences, trivial things. "It falls tomorrow." "She lies at the steps." "Ashur leaves first." Each syllable came with a weight that pressed behind his teeth, demanding to be born.
He stood. Walked. Didn't know why.
The halls were quiet, but not empty. Gray-robed faithful knelt near their altars, heads bowed in mimicry of silence.
He passed them.
Didn't speak.
Didn't have to.
Their heads turned anyway.
One recoiled as he walked past. She clutched at her ear.
Later, she would be found weeping with no memory of sound.
By morning, the whispers had spread. "His words split time." "He breathes before the hour does." "He is not listening, he is reading ahead."
The boy sat alone in the reflection chamber, mask laid across his lap. He wanted to say nothing. Not because he was afraid, but because everything now came with consequence.
He breathed through his nose, counted his heartbeats, focused on stillness.
But the words didn't care.
They came anyway.
"She dies on the steps," he said aloud.
Then paused.
No one was there.
He looked toward the hallway.
A figure in gray robes lay crumpled near the altar stairs. Face pale. Neck bent wrong.
He ran.
Others gathered behind him minutes later, murmuring, crossing themselves with ash.
The whispers grew louder that evening.
They called him many things.
But mostly, they called him cut.
"He cuts the line," one elder whispered. "His voice leaves wounds."
Ashur didn't speak that night.
But when he returned to their chamber, the boy found a scrap of paper on his cot.
Written in Ashur's careful hand:
"You can't stay much longer."
And beneath it, a smaller line:
"We don't choose the Truths. They choose us."