Volume 2: Nest of Snakes — Part 3 Final

Silencium and Ceres

The children of Ceres enter Silencium, where sound does not exist. Entering this territory is like entering a dream — or a nightmare. Our screams cannot be heard; it is as if time itself stops. The voice only returns to existence after crossing the borders of Silencium.

The atmosphere is made up of precious metals, intensive agriculture, soybean and wheat farms — as efficient as those of Ceres. Both share similar technologies, although Silencium is more rigid. There, no one can speak; only the sounds of the dormant volcano, with its eternal flame, break the silence. No one goes hungry. No one is abandoned. Communication happens only through sign language.

To shape this way of life, Silencium brought about a profound transformation in the habits of its inhabitants. Mysticism was forbidden; gods were forbidden; Gifts were forbidden. Chancellor Aquila, cruelly known as the “Collector of Gifts,” imposed the gag as law. Only the central members of Silencium are permitted to speak in the council.

Silencium and Ceres are allied nations in political decisions. Even so, Mother Ceres has never entered Silencium. The Chancellor himself fears that her presence would alter the behavior of a population that has lived for years under these conditions, without any stimulus of hope — not even false hope.

If the city of Ceres is cruel, a citizen of Silencium does not even have the chance to say so. Both societies developed a kind of somatic empathic hypersensitivity: they express themselves through the language of silence, through looks and gestures — a human channel we lose in adulthood, but which intensifies in Silencium. Everyone works in whatever they are suited for. The Chancellor rules with an iron hand.

As she enters the central fortress of black marble, coming from Ceres, Silencium seems to desire to be Ceres. The atmosphere is minimalist. The flag, dark gray, is crossed by a brown-gold diagonal, forming a four-pointed star on the gray section.

With the arrival of the armored train, the very atmosphere of Silencium seems to silence the voices of the machine. From it descend, accompanied by Ceres Silencers, the envoys — among them, the girl Ceres, dressed in the military uniform of Silencium’s students. Waiting on the platform is Chancellor Aquila.

Ceres and Aquila stare at each other.

They hated each other instantly.

Both imagine setting everything on fire, if they could — even themselves. She, sixteen years old, carries an immense hatred for her father. He, thirty-nine, hates his own daughter.

Chancellor Aquila suffers from the complex that everything born from his blood will eventually take everything away from him. He killed his own father and his own mother. He possesses a god complex: he believes that his creation devours the previous generation, without any mysticism.

He hated Ceres the moment she stepped off the train — the same face as her mother, Assum, the same insolence, the same arrogance. He wants to break her. He could have done it at birth, but he did not.

Why?

Life finds monstrous ways to happen.

Even if the girl Ceres suffers at the hands of this very devil, she carries the same bestial genius as her father — although he denies it.

Aquila only appears calm before Mother Ceres. With her, he negotiates; he maintains cordial relations. Outside of that, he is Satan himself on Earth. Neither the hell that exists within Silencium, nor even the volcano of eternal flame, possesses the soul of this poor wretch, whose weight makes the very earth sink.

Additional Passage — Assum, the Blind Mother

Ceres continued her studies in sign language, geography, and local history. The fortress remained silent; even the servants were shadows. Not even breathing could be heard.

Months passed before her first contact with her mother, Assum.

The meeting was apotheotic.

Assum knew how to walk through the black fortress dressed in white, with blue vests, always with her eyes closed. She claimed to see through silence — guiding herself by the echoes of the wind and the sensations within her own body.

When she touched her daughter’s face, the two embraced.

They remained together for weeks.

Assum said she deeply loved Mother Ceres, to whom she was devoted. Even so, Ceres could not understand why her mother never opened her eyes.

Until the day Assum told her the truth.

It was her father, Chancellor Aquila, who had blinded her.

Before the marriage — sealed solely for political interests — during an ordinary conversation, Assum had said that she sang better at night.

The next day, in Silencium, Aquila blinded her.

He locked her inside an acoustic room, where she could hear only her own bloodstream and the beating of her heart. At times, she thought she would go mad, but she endured — all for Mother Ceres and Ceres II.

And yet, the Chancellor was wounded where he could never have been wounded: he fell madly in love with Assum.

He covered her in gold, jewels, and blood.

Assum never surrendered her charms.

She was forced to maintain relations with Aquila under the marital agreements.

From that violence, the child was born:

Ceres.

Consumed by paranoia, the Chancellor ignored his own daughter. He denied her existence, claiming he had never been capable of producing offspring.

But the miracle had happened.

Consumed by hatred, Ceres tried to demand answers from her deliberately blinded mother — in vain. The two eventually became isolated.

Ceres spent days without sleeping, tormented by her father’s cruelty and vileness toward Assum.

It had been months since Assum had sung.

Even so, the Chancellor missed that voice.

Ever since the radio waves from the city of Ceres invaded the clandestine transmissions — which he himself maintained — Aquila had fallen in love with that unique Gift: a god’s voice in flesh and blood.

Its sonic effects were divine, capable of dominating even Mother Ceres, who declared her favorite daughter.

Always beautiful, with blue eyes and long black hair.

Ceres was identical to her mother in appearance — but now carried her father’s bloodthirsty temperament.

The Song, the Fall, and Theo

The Chancellor never met either of them after Ceres arrived in Silencium.

The meeting happened only when Ceres and her mother, Assum, sang together in the acoustic room.

Their voices were identical.

Besides physically resembling her mother, Ceres possessed the same voice — a divine song.

Aquila heard it.

And he did not like it.

To him, it was heresy: Ceres possessed the same Gift as Assum.

Ceres was torn from her mother’s arms.

Tortured to confess crimes she had never committed.

Under pain, she eventually said that she had seen the great room of the Collector of Gifts: severed and stuffed hands, tongues preserved in jars, some of them still fresh.

Aquila wanted to tear Ceres’s tongue out himself.

Even while anesthetized, at the moment of the cut, he could not do it.

For the first time, he saw before him something that belonged to him absolutely:

His own daughter.

He tried to sterilize her.

He fell to his knees.

For the first time in his life, he cried.

His daughter was there, drowsy, beaten.

The Chancellor imprisoned Ceres for months.

He cared for her wounds.

After that, he never saw her again.

Nor her mother.

By decree, he ordered Ceres’s return to the city of Ceres.

He ordered her to be sent malnourished, humiliated, and excommunicated.

She was to be left at the border and walk for kilometers to the tower — alone.

At the border, soldiers armed with black sledgehammers forced her across.

With kicks, they covered her with a filthy blanket and forced her to walk while wounded.

The Ceresian soldiers could not intervene.

Aquila humiliated his daughter one last time.

Walking through the wheat fields of Ceres, Ceres saw apple trees and peach trees.

Abundance was visible, but her stomach, twisted by weeks without food, felt only pain.

She wandered toward death in a land of plenty — the final contradiction, her father’s revenge against his own daughter.

She spotted a school.

No one noticed her.

She hid inside a bush, barefoot, her vision blurred.

Then she heard a voice.

It was someone being humiliated by another student, but who still spoke carefully, as if protecting a brother.

Even though he was the target, he shared his own bread.

How could someone endure such humiliation and still offer food in such an unjust and cruel world?

What was his motivation?

The boy’s speech carried hatred — but it did not overflow.

It was solid, cold, and heavy hatred, like lead.

Ceres’s hatred, by contrast, was liquid and boiling, always on the verge of spilling over.

How did he silence the lead?

His name was Theo.

The one who endured everything.

What was his secret?

Why him?

What was special about Theo?

How could he control the lead?