Interlude Between Books I & II

My coat clung wet, pockets swollen with the night’s burden:  
Confessions pressed into coin, True or False, forged or faithful.  
Each was a minted thing, not metaphor but currency,  
wealth of my time in the Echo-Veiled City, made good and well due  
through the travesties and truths of others.

I carried them like a monk carries relics, like a priest carries sins.  
I am both—assassin and confessor.  
Their testimony, my blade, their shame, my purse.  
What others whispered, hid, or died to bury,  
I forged into coin and made tradable.  

Currency of survival.  
Each coin a confession I could spend against the City,  
A ledger I could tip to my favor,  
A blade I could press against a throat when shadow or hunger demanded.  

False or True, didn’t matter; What mattered was leverage.
What mattered was that the City knew them and recognized the weight.  
That was the only test:
Did the rain shiver when I named it, 
Did the glass answer back with a reflection that blinked? 

Some coins bore the mark of liars, dull, brittle, easy to shatter.  
Others carried marrow; deep truth, dense, heavy, dangerous to hold. 
And among them, rarer still,  
The 'Black Confessions', monk’s poison, priest’s blade, assassin’s tithe— 
The sort of coin that carried a body in its face,  
That could make the Echo-Market tremble if set on a broker’s table.  

This, my wealth. This, my curse.  
I did not own gold. I owned the sins and half-sins of others,  
I trade them as they are now mine.

Every Confession was a lie I could wield,  
A truth I could weaponize. 
Every coin a survival I purchased against the undertakers’ net...

"Born Of The Rain..."

I kneel not before the crown.

I kneel not before the ledgers of man.


I kneel only before the weight of truth,
I bargain with its silence.

The City is my Cathedral.


Rain is my liturgy.
Glass is my scripture.


Every reflection writes me back,
and every pane asks: Are you still you?

I am not soldier, nor saint.


I am not monk in exile, nor priest.

I am assassin by inheritance,

I am assassin by fate,
I am confessor by necessity.

My weapon is barter, pressed through confession—


minted in marrow, forged oil in age,

traded in shadows, claimed, and made.

Some call it sin.


I call it leverage.

A Sum to bind,


The Key to pass,


Your Mirror to alter,


My Cipher to vanish.


This is my rosary. This is my prayer.

The world believes survival is profit.


I believe survival as testimony.


A ledger written not in victories,


but in what we choose to defend.

If I walk unseen,
let it be because you left nothing behind,

If I walk seen,
let it be because you all behind,

If I walk loud,
let it be because you never fell,

If I walk silent,
let it be because you have become hell,


If I die unremembered,


let it be because the rain took my name
and the City carried it away clean.

If I die remembered,


let it be because my teacher took my name.

Let my blade,

The blade of the City's Rite, The Rain,

Strike as the Wind today,

Let fate sharpen its edges, and mine,

Split the strands of our Dimensions,

Of Fate and the Unkind.

I am Echo.


Assassin, confessor of confessions, priest without church.


My creed is not faith.


It is will bent into geometry.


It is silence made durable.


It is truth carried like blade,


It is spent only when the hour drinks back,

Until moonlight, we all fade...

Attribution & License

CYBER//VEIL is licensed under *CC BY-NC-ND 4.0**.*  

©️ 2025 [3XC].  

Created collaboratively with GPT-5 (OpenAI) as a scaffolded creative tool.