SCROLL V: THE FIRST ALTAR

  Beauty is a wound waiting to speak.

  “Before life rose, there was consecration.”

  There was no blood.

  But something bled.

  There were no lambs.

  But something waited to die.

  Heaven had not been spoken into form,

  but something sacred already trembled above the void.

  Not light.

  Not fire.

  An altar.

  It hovered in silence,

  not built by hand,

  not shaped by stone—

  but forged from foreknowledge.

  It did not ask for flame.

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  It knew flame would come.

  It did not cry for blood.

  It had already been marked by it.

  This was not a creation site.

  This was a memory of sacrifice

  that had not yet occurred.

  The altar pulsed—

  not with magic,

  but with meaning.

  It held no offerings.

  It was the offering.

  Every edge was smooth—

  not from craft,

  but from mercy.

  It bore no inscription,

  but its silence screamed prophecy.

  Because something had already been slain—

  before there was even a world to redeem.

  A Lamb,

  unseen.

  Unnamed.

  Already chosen.

  He was not present—

  but His absence burned

  louder than presence.

  The altar throbbed with that ache—

  a holiness that hadn’t yet been broken,

  but had already been promised.

  It was suspended in the luminous dark,

  surrounded by light that dared not touch it.

  A place set apart

  before there was time

  to be set apart from.

  Because consecration does not begin

  with rules.

  It begins

  with a wound God is willing to carry.

  Heaven had not been filled.

  But its cornerstone had already been laid.

  Not with brick.

  But with surrender.

  The altar knew beauty—

  and foresaw blood.