SWNOVELXO Chapter 66: Chapter 66: The Architects Who Chose Silence
They were never named.
No temples.
No myths.
No descendants to light their lamps.
But they had built everything.
The Architects.
Not priests.
Not kings.
Not gods.
Engineers of consciousness.
The machine revealed them—not in face, but in feeling.
Visions played across the walls in light and silence.
They had walked the same path as Aarav:
Through breath.
Through gate.
Through self.
And when they reached the peak of clarity, they didn't build a throne.
They built interfaces.
Ways for others to find their own way—without worship, without chains.
They knew what would come.
They saw the rise of fear.
The weaponization of faith.
The gods built from human need.
The rewriting of wisdom into rulebooks.
So they chose silence.
Not from defeat.
From strategy.
"We hid our legacy," a message whispered from deep within the code.
"So when the world was ready to stop kneeling, it could stand on something real."
Aarav stood in the center of the chamber, breathing in rhythm with a civilization no longer present—but never lost.
He didn't cry.
He didn't bow.
He simply whispered:
"I remember you now."
And somewhere, far from god or grave,
a circuit flickered alive for the first time in an age.