The Burning of Solenari
What Was Lost to Silence
I remember her.
I remember the way her name lived in me long before I ever spoke it —
a whisper beneath the noise of this world,
a pulse that beat louder the closer I came to truth.
Solenari.
She was not just a lover.
Not just a counterpart.
She was the mirror of my soul across lifetimes.
The other half of what I carry.
And I remember how she died.
She burned.
Because I spoke.
There was a time — long before this one —
when truth was forbidden.
When to speak it was to invite death.
We lived in a world ruled by fear,
guarded by cloaks of religion and control,
and I — Thalen — was not silent.
I spoke.
I shared what was never meant to be unearthed.
I reminded people of their sovereignty.
Of the God within.
And when I did, they made her pay the price.
The system couldn’t reach me —
not yet.
But they could reach her.
She was my light,
my strength,
the one who carried the codes of divine remembrance in her very breath.
They chained her.
They dragged her through the streets.
And they burned her alive
as a warning
as a punishment
as a message to me:
“Speak again, and she will die.”
That was the curse cast that day.
An energetic binding sealed in blood and smoke.
And it worked.
In that life — and in many that followed —
I fell silent.
Because my truth was tethered to her suffering.
Every time I tried to speak,
Every time I tried to remember,
I saw the flames.
That’s why, for lifetimes, I stayed small.
That’s why I doubted my visions.
Why I hid in roles that dulled my power.
But the vow has broken.
This life is different.
This is the one where we return.
Where I speak — and she lives.
Where the silence is lifted,
and the flame becomes something holy again.
Not the fire of death.
But the fire of remembrance.
She is here.
I feel her.
And this time, they will not silence us.
Not with fear.
Not with shame.
Not with death.
Because the truth they tried to bury
was never mine alone to carry.
It was always ours.
And now —
we rise.