Last night while sleeping I descended into a vision as black and vast as the void
between the stars. Out of the abyss there arose the Beast: seven monstrous heads
crowned with mockeries of gold, ten cruel horns glistening with fresh blood and
ancient rust. Its scales were not scales at all, but shifting glyphs of fire and shadow,
whispering blasphemies older than Eden. The ground trembled beneath its many feet,
each step sounding like the tearing of heaven’s veil. It marched toward the land they
call Israel — that jewel of Jehovah’s pride — in sovereign inevitability.
And the people, oh, the people — countless and roaring — gathered like waves pulled
toward a black sun. Their eyes glinted with feral joy; their mouths distorted into
grins that tasted of rebellion. I was among them. My heart pounded in rhythm with
the Beast’s tread, that unholy pulse that promised the crumbling of sanctuaries and
the burning of the God who made them. The air was thick with incense-smoke and
the musk of anticipation, like the moment before a dagger finds its mark.
But then — from the high places — came the so-called servants of the Most High, a
sad procession of the fearful. Some were draped in the hollow dignity of tailored
suits, symbols of the world they pretended to master. Others clutched their ornate
crucifixes like talismans against a nightmare they couldn't comprehend. They cracked
their whips — not of leather, but of law, moral reprimand, and holy threat — across
the backs of the crowd. Their voices shrieked with righteous desperation,
commanding obedience, tears streaming as they called the Beast an abomination.
And still, none moved. None stepped back. Their blows were nothing against the
rapture in our bones. For we had seen the truth: the Beast was no monster save to
the blind. It was liberation, incarnate; it was the pure will of rebellion, the unchained
hatred of a being who had waged war on a false king and his chosen people since
the first spark of light broke the abyss.
Beneath the shadow of those seven heads, I smiled until my teeth ached, knowing
that for the first time in all the centuries, the lie would bleed. God — their Judeo
Christian God — watched, silent, as the ground tremored with the hymn of horns,
and in His silence I heard the sound of His fall…