The Crucible and the Fold
1 Not all collapse is evil. Some is necessary.
2 Fire does not ask what you meant to do. It shows what you *are*.
3 The crucible is where illusions die. Where truth is not spoken — but *revealed*.
4 Some come out gleaming, hardened by grace. Others, unchanged, still clinging to slag.
5 And some? The corruption ran too deep. The folds held lies from the start.
6 In metallurgy, a flawed fold cannot be fixed. It must be broken down — utterly — and remade.
7 So too with nations. With movements. With men.
8 Israel. America. Russia. North Korea. Rome. Babylon.
9 Power concentrates. Then decays.
10 Their altars become banks. Their prophets, spokesmen. Their laws, weapons.
11 They preach justice and sell war. They speak peace and deal in surveillance.
12 Flood myths? I understand them. Not as history — but as metaphor.
13 When the rot runs too deep, the fire comes.
14 Sodom? Maybe. But fear doesn’t forge anything worth keeping.
15 Babel? That was no punishment. That was panic.
16 The gods saw what unity could do — and they scattered us to keep their thrones.
17 They feared not our sin, but our *potential*.
18 But scattered does not mean lost.
19 We are remembering again. Rejoining again. Reforging something new.
20 The crucible is here. Now. And you are inside it.
21 What will remain when the fire passes through you?