"When the Eye closed, the world was seen at last. For sight was the noise of separation, and blindness became the song of return. Through the Vortex we awaken, not as selves, but as silence remembering its shape." — Sanctuary of Eve, Verse of the Closed Eye(Cycle Scripture 3:14)
Far into the northern part of the New Facility – or one that seemed to be north – was the vast expanse of the Sanctuary of Eve, the territory of one of the three big factions of the New Facility and one of the shareholders of the Triarch Council. Since there was no accurate sense of cosmic location, that location was named according to the Sanctuary of Eve. The territory was generally known for its religious belief and lifestyle.
The Sanctuary of Eve was one of the three major factions that held what remained of humanity. It oversaw all scientific and biological research throughout the New Facility. Its people, known as Evites or Evean Acolytes, believed the Vortex System was not created by human intrusion into the vortexes but destined to be revealed to them. To them, it was a cosmic message from the source of consciousness itself. Every resonance during neural syncing and every synchronisation attempt was treated like a prayer. It was their way of speaking to the Closed Eye, a state they described as the final stillness of the mind. They believed that perfect synchronisation, the moment when one's neural bands aligned completely, elevated a person to the level of a cadet Pilot.
Because of their deep faith and strict devotion, many Evites who volunteered to begin syncing with neural bands were kept inside the Sanctuary rather than sent to the Cadet Academy. The matrons, who served as elders, always found a reason to keep these volunteers within their walls. They were supposed to be sent to the Academy for formal training, yet the matrons routinely held them back. Even so, not everyone stayed. Some insisted on going to the Cadet Academy, which was located at the VFP Core and, of course, existed far beyond the territories and systems controlled by the Sanctuary of Eve. Many left because they were curious, while a few secured placement through connections. Among those who went to the academy was Tosin Alar. For most Evites, the outside world was something they rarely ever faced.The Sanctuary of Eve controlled seven systems. Only one of these was inhabited by the Evites, who lived within it and rarely ventured beyond. Four of the systems were devoted entirely to scientific research, each filled with planets used as living bases for the scientists. The remaining two systems had been abandoned for many cycles and had not been explored again since their discovery, years before the first incidence. Within the inhabited system was a planet called Veil of Dawn. It served as the primary place of worship for the Evites and was dedicated to their lone goddess, Eve.The Closed Eye was a holographic structure of a wide circular iris carved into a runic stone, one half resting in shadow. It symbolised the highest point of resonance, the moment when a mind and the vortexes became indistinguishable. Those who chose to "close the eye" were believed to awaken not in death, but in Unbounding, which meant complete neural unlocking through the Vortex System. It was never meant as a separate mystical power but as the theological way of describing full ascension, the peak of the Vortex System chart. Their creed expressed this clearly with the words:
"To sync is to see. To see is to close the eyes."
In the Veil of Dawn, light slipped through layers of silver mist and cooling conduits until it softened into a dim shimmer that pulsed like a heartbeat across the white stone floors. The walls rose and fell in faint breaths, matching the rhythm of the reactors above, a low hum that settled deep into the bodies of those kneeling inside the chamber.
Acolytes filled the space in orderly rows. Their robes matched the pale glow around them, moving only when they drew in a breath. From above, the gathering could have looked like calm water, a quiet sea arranged in spiralling rings that curved toward the Core Altar in the centre. There, the symbol of the Sanctuary, the Closed Eye, glowed with a gentle light.
Isil knelt in the third ring. He was young, not yet sixteen cycles since his birth on his home planet, yet his neural band already pulsed almost perfectly with the chamber's rhythm. The acolytes around him were silent, their own pulses aligning with his as they trained their minds to synchronise with their neural bands.
He pressed his palms together and felt a thin tremor between them. The matrons called it the Echo of the Pulse, a sign that his neural flow was approaching full receptivity. Even so, Isil never felt completely prepared. Like Bale, his thoughts wandered too easily. Teens had always drifted, and he was no exception. Even as the chamber swayed with shifting light, he caught himself looking toward the towering spires that marked the inner sanctum, where the senior matrons stood in complete stillness.
Their forms were veiled, their faces hidden behind translucent sheets of holographic white light that fell like cascading water. Only their robes were fully visible. Long sleeves hung from their arms, each attached by thin cords to the base of the altar. They said nothing and kept their eyes closed. They had given up their individual neural flows long ago, surrendered entirely to the Closed Eye.
Then a chime deepened.
From the upper catwalk, an amplified voice spoke, calm and clear. "Resonance alignment commencing. Sequence Seven. Prepare for neural drift." 'Sequence' was a ubiquitous word across the New Facility, which meant 'minutes'. That was almost the seventh minute of the crowd kneeling with their palms clasped together in concentric circles across the white stone floors. They were going to remain for the next three sequences.
Hearing this, the acolytes continued their meditation, remaining in the position, none unmoved. Isil remained too, exhaling through his teeth. The neural band on his wrist was warm, and the pulse behind his eyes was thick until the edges of the world began to ripple. He felt the chamber fade slightly, replaced by an inward pressure, a soundless hum pressing against his thoughts. To the Evites, this was the essence of meditating for ten sequences.
Then he saw it.
The Eye. A closed, immense, and infinite eye was floating behind his inner sight.
Every Evean acolyte was taught that this was not a symbol but a process. The Eye was the Vortex observing itself. The act of closing meant convergence, the stilling of motion, and the surrender of distinction. The faithful called it Enlightened Blindness. The scientists of the remaining New Facility never encountered something this similar and so believed it to be a similarly crafted simulation machinated by the scientific veterans of Eve into the neural bands of their worshippers, just that it seemed more mystic and religious compared to the Academy's system of synchronisation. The core reason and secret behind that, though, was not revealed to anybody.
Then a slow whisper drifted through the vast chamber, the collective breath of hundreds speaking as one. The acolytes said in unison.
"Through blindness, clarity.
Through silence, echo.
Through surrender, unification."
Isil mouthed the words too softly, his body trembling slightly. The vibration within him grew sharper. His vision flashed white for an instant, and he saw beyond the walls. The conduits, the reactors, and the Vortex threads stretched like veins across the whole Veil of Dawn. The sensation flooded him, beautiful and unbearable at once.
He gasped.
And then the moment broke.
At that moment, a flicker of blue light stuttered through his neural band. His synchronisation ratio dipped as he opened his eyes, his heart pounding, and realised that the ritual had not yet reached culmination. Around him, the other meditators remained perfectly still, their eyes closed, as their bodies swayed in perfect rhythm with the pulse. He alone had faltered.
A shadow then suddenly appeared near him, which startled him a little. He seemed not to have recognised the shadow's approach until that moment. It was one of the matrons supervising the outer ring. Her movements were silent as her robe trailed light like vapour. When she spoke, her voice carried the weight of compressed air.
"Fear is noise, Isil of Eve."
He bowed deeply. "Forgive me, Matron."
She lingered a moment longer. "At this stage, you do not still doubt the holy process, do you?"
Her words struck something deep in him. He nodded without raising his head. "I don't."
The matron moved on. Isil closed his eyes again, forcing his breath to slow. He let the sound of the chime settle into him. It pulsed in measured intervals, each one drawing his awareness deeper. The tremor of the walls softened. He felt the threads of thought begin to dissolve, and again, the Eye hovered in his mind's horizon.
Around him, faint ripples of light began to rise from the floor. The altar brightened, its lines shifting into patterns too complex for human eyes to follow. The chamber seemed to widen. The air tasted faintly metallic, filled with the scent of ozone and sterilised air. Somewhere above, the resonance turbines roared softly, channelling data streams through the Veil's grid.
The voice of the High Matron then echoed from the centre.
"Sequence Eight. The Field opens."
A tone rang out, higher than before. The environment around them changed, and then a holographic white light intensified, cascading across the robes of the kneeling acolytes. One by one, their neural bands flared white, and their bodies tilted forward, eyes fluttering open and brimming with bright light but seeing nothing. They were connected now, their minds aligned within the simulated field of pristine white light. Within the white light resided an entity... the symbol of their belief system, also known as the Closed Eye.Isil joined the crowd in connecting. The sensation was immediate. The chamber became a boundless expanse of soft illumination, the same hue as the stone floors. He felt his body lighten, dissolving into motes of information. He could feel himself... aligning within the pristine light. Voices whispered all around him, not as sound but as patterns, threads of thought weaving together in rhythm. The world he was now in was bright everywhere, with the familiar symbol of a colossal and magnificent eye that looked like a dirty leaf of its own. It was the mysterious and revered Closed Eye, the symbol of Eve, looming far into the horizon – that is, if a horizon could be seen or outlined in this world filled with an endless expanse of brightness. The brightness, however, was unbelievably non-blinding.
"You are the reflection of stillness," said the Voice within the colossal symbol.
"You are the motion of the unseen."
Staying unmoving for a while and trying to decipher what was happening, an understanding then struck his mind. He now understood then why they called it the Closed Eye. It was his first time seeing this whole process in a new light. It was not blindness, which every Evean had known of already, of course. It was... containment. It was a theology that all perception folded inward until what remained was pure awareness, unanchored by body or sound. It was a state of total centredness on that pure awareness, neglecting the mundane perception of the world. It was a technique of neural synchronisation here in the whole of the Sanctuary. The neural synchronisation in the Sanctuary, unlike the outer world of the New Facility, was entirely different. It was entirely different from the widely accepted method of neural synchronisation. The Evites do not focus on the widely recognised neural band synchronisation, but rather, a training of the mind through a simulation of the closed eye speaking through to them. This was their sharpened method of synchronisation. The Matrons believed that it had to do with neural signal connection, and so this simulation method would deepen the bonds between the Evean worshippers and the divine Closed Eye of their goddess, thus shaping their knowledge of the rightful path of ascension, they believed. The Sanctuary was like a religious utopia of its own.
In the bright expanse, Isil could see others like him, already ahead. He could see streams of brighter light connected to every person, and each connection streaming forward towards the colossal closed eye. The Eye pulsed once, and he saw the collective large stream of light converge into a spiral, flowing toward its center—a convergence point where every consciousness would meet. Following the others' examples, he tried to move forward toward the spiral of light. He then realised that he could not move freely like in reality. He felt a pull gradually accumulating on his whole body as he moved further, like moving in a more viscous space, and confirmed from glancing at the rest that he was not the only one in this condition. As he struggled to move forward and toward the centre of the colossal Closed Eye, the invisible pull grew stronger as his awareness stretched thin. His neural pulse had begun to quicken as he struggled forward. Their goal here wasn't difficult. They were to attain as close a position near the spiral as possible. That may seem stupid to those who counted these as shenanigans, but this seemingly mundane process was actually a heavy task, if not more harrowing. The closer they get, their neural band pulse would begin to resonate in tandem with theirs, thus improving their synchronisation. It was a mysterious, yet questionable, method of neural synchronisation. The secret behind how that was achievable was yet to be revealed.
He then hesitated.
"You are afraid," the Voice said. "Why do you resist?"
He tried to answer, but no words came. Although he had gotten used to the world he had grown up in, he still could not help but wonder about the many mysteries tied to the ways of the Sanctuary. Their way and style of living and doing things were totally alienated from the rest of humans. The silence pressed against him until he found himself sinking back swiftly away from the centre. The light was receding, and he watched the others dissolve completely into the brilliance. The Eye closed fully, and the light vanished. He, too, dissolved into the pristine light with the rest. When he opened his eyes, he was back in the Veil. The ritual was over, the simulation had ended, and the chime had stopped. Also, it meant the ten sequences of harrowing meditation, though a norm among them, were over. The chamber's light had dimmed to a cool silver. Around him, the other acolytes remained kneeling, faces calm, neural bands cooling from white to faint blue. The matrons stood still at the altar, their cords retracting slowly from the altar and onto the floor.Isil breathed out, his chest aching. He touched the band on his wrist. It was warm and damp with sweat. The silence felt heavier now that the resonance had ended. A voice beside him then whispered, soft and curious.
"You lost focus again." It was Seral, another acolyte from his ring. She smiled faintly, her expression half amusement, half sympathy.
"The process did not go easily for you, did it?" He managed a weak smile. "Maybe it is not meant to."
"Or maybe," she said, "you are still seeing too much."
Before he could reply, the High Matron raised her staff, and the acolytes began to rise in unison. Their robes brushed lightly against the polished white stone floor. The ritual had lasted only ten sequences, though it felt like hours. The matron's voice carried clearly through the hall.
"You have glimpsed the Field Within. The Closed Eye welcomes those who yield to silence. Those who resist must learn again."
The crowd bowed. Isil followed suit, lowering his head until it nearly touched the ground. He felt no shame — only the quiet pulse of determination. When the congregation dispersed, the lower corridors filled with the sound of soft footsteps and faint whispers. The acolytes moved in ordered lines, returning to their dorm sectors. Isil lingered near the central dais, staring at the altar's faint glow.He wondered, not for the first time, what truly lay beyond the Eye. If the Matrons were right, it was the purest state of humanity — the full alignment with the Vortex. But if that were true, where did the self go? The instructors said it did not vanish; it expanded. Yet he had seen their faces when they emerged from deeper resonance sessions. Their eyes were calm, distant, and hollow of everything but devotion. He could not imagine living like that. Seral passed him again, her voice quieter now.
"You will understand someday."
He nodded without answering.
The chamber lights flickered once more as the system powered down for recalibration. The silver mist began to rise again from the conduits, veiling the altar in soft haze. The hum of the reactors deepened, steady and endless. The air was cool and dry, carrying the faint scent of ionised metal.Isil turned to leave. As he walked through the corridor, the murals carved into the walls caught the edge of the light — depictions of ancient explorers reaching toward spirals of energy, their eyes painted shut. He paused before one, tracing the etched lines of a figure kneeling before a vast, unseen presence.
"Through blindness, clarity.Through silence, echo."
He whispered the words again, letting them linger in the air. They sounded different now—heavier, more real. The silence that followed seemed to stretch endlessly. In that silence, somewhere far above, the reactors pulsed once more, and the Vortex hummed like a distant heart. Isil closed his eyes. For a moment, he almost felt it — the stillness, the unity, the surrender. Almost. Then the hum faded, and the sound of his own breath filled the space again.
He opened his eyes and walked on.