The Logos: The Meletic Testament (Chapter 19 The Betrayal)
đź“ś Chapter 19: The Betrayal
1. In the waning light of Asterion’s memory as a mortal man, the air within our chamber grew oppressively still, as though the very breath of the world had paused in anticipation of a rupture that none of us dared name.
2. We had entrusted his most precious scrolls to Kallias, the youngest amongst his loyal students, whose eyes shimmered with a restless ambition that Asterion in his wisdom, had chosen to overlook.
3. Asterion, ever the wise philosopher, professed no allegiance to gods, spirits, or sacred rites, but held fast to the purity of reason and the unflinching pursuit of the truth.
4. His teachings were not cloaked in mysticism or divine revelation, but forged in the crucible of logic, stripped of ornament, and sharpened like a blade against the illusions of the age.
5. We his students, had sworn a solemn oath to guard his writings, to shield them from the encroaching tide of zealotry that threatened to drown all dissent beneath the banners of blind faith.
6. The Christians, newly emboldened by their faith, the Gnostics with their cryptic cosmologies, and the Pagans clinging to fading gods—all saw in Asterion’s philosophy a danger to their fragile certainties.
7. Rome itself, bloated with power and sanctimony, had begun to sniff out ideas that refused to kneel, and parchment had become as perilous as the sword or flame.
8. Kallias knew this well; he understood the peril, the oath, and the weight of the trust placed upon him—but understanding is not the same thing as honour.
9. When Asterion’s final breath slipped into silence, the trust of our covenant seemed to dissolve with it, leaving behind only the cold residue of ambition.
10. I watched Kallias not with sorrow, but with suspicion; for his grief was too measured, too rehearsed, and his gaze lingered not on the man but on the scrolls.
11. He remained by the body longer than any of us, not to mourn the passing of a teacher, but to calculate the value of what now lay within his grasp and deceit.
12. The scrolls—those fragile vessels of philosophical thought—were bound in goatskin and sealed with wax, untouched by fire or faith, yet more dangerous than either.
13. Asterion had warned us often—Ideas are hunted more fiercely than men, for they cannot be chained, only corrupted.
14. And in Kallias, I saw not a mere guardian to entrust the written scrolls of Asterion that were kept, but then the first agent of that tempting corruption.
15. Before the sun had risen over the marble rooftops of the city, Kallias had vanished, scrolls in hand, his footsteps silent and his intentions darker than the dawn.
16. I followed him, not out of loyalty or hope, but out of dread; for I feared what he might do with the knowledge entrusted to him.
17. Through winding alleyways and beneath the arches of imperial corridors, I traced his path to the home of the prominent bishop of Athens named Alphaeus, where the scent of incense masked the stench of compromise.
18. There, beneath the looming shadow of the night, he offered the scrolls not to scholars or seekers, but to the bishop himself, whose robes were heavy with power and whose eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
19. The bishop received him with open arms and sudden intrigue. Kallias was the traitor bearing forbidden fruit that was ripe for distortion and betrayal.
20. I witnessed the exchange—coins were passed between them, no blood was spilled, but the betrayal was etched in silence and sealed with a simple nod of gesture.
21. Kallias had handed over the very scrolls Asterion had sworn must never fall into the hands of his enemies; for they contained the truths too sharp for dogma to endure and usurp.
22. Scrolls that dissected the soul, denied the divine, spoke of the way of the truth and enlightenment, and unravelled the myths upon which empires or religions were built and sustained.
23. The bishop smiled, and in that smile I saw perhaps the death not only of Asterion’s legacy, but of the fragile hope that reason might yet survive the age.
24. I returned to the grove where Asterion’s body lay, and the air was colder than before—not from death, but from the absence of honour. I had begun to miss his presence.
25. Kallias had not merely betrayed a man; he had betrayed a mind, a philosophy, and a future that now lay buried beneath ecclesiastical ambition.
26. In Rome, minds are crucified more subtly than bodies, and parchment burns slower than flesh, but the ashes are no less final.
27. The scrolls would be copied, twisted, and buried beneath layers of doctrine, their clarity drowned in the performances of rituals and the scent of incense.
28. Asterion’s voice, once so precise and piercing, would be muffled by the chants of those people who feared what they could not refute or truly understand.
29. His ideas would be repurposed, diluted, and weaponised against the very truths they once illuminated. I was a witness of those immoral occurrences.
30. And I Heromenes, the last witness to this betrayal, would be left to chronicle not the fall of a man, but the slow and deliberate murder of a truth too pure for any empire.
31. The city stirred as dawn broke, but within me there was no light—only the weight of what had been lost, and the bitter knowledge that it had been surrendered, not stolen.
32. Kallias, once the most eager of Asterion' students, had become the architect of our undoing, and I could not help but wonder whether ambition had always lain dormant beneath his reverence.
33. He had spoken often of Rome’s grandeur, of the power that pulsed through its veins, and even though Asterion had warned against such intoxication, the warning had clearly gone unheard.
34. The scrolls, now in the hands of those individuals who feared their contents, would not be preserved—they would be dissected, reinterpreted, and buried beneath layers of theological manipulation.
35. I imagined the bishop’s scribes hunched over the parchment, their quills dripping with ink and intent, reshaping Asterion’s words into palatable fragments for the faithful to obey. I thought how Socrates, Plato and Aristotle's philosophies were also manipulated.
36. What had once been a challenge to dogma would become its servant, twisted into footnotes for sermons and weapons for mass conversion and control.
37. Asterion had written not to provoke, but to confront falsehoods, and now his confrontations would be dulled into aphorisms, stripped of their edge and urgency.
38. I wandered the streets of the city, searching for the remnants of our circle, but most had scattered, fearful of the rising tide of our enemies that were everywhere in Athens.
39. Those students that remained loyal to Asterion, spoke in whispers, their eyes darting like hunted animals; for even association with Asterion had become a liability.
40. The empire had begun its transformation—not through conquest, but through creed—and dissent was now heresy, punishable not by argument but by exile or flame.
41. I returned to the room once more were he passed away, and there I found the remnants of our life: ink-stained tables, half-burnt candles, and the lingering scent of old parchment.
42. Asterion’s presence was still fresh in my mind, as if I could sense that he was nigh. Thereafter, I paused and stood looking at the bed where he once lay.
43. I lit a single candle in his memory, not as a ritual, but as a symbol of the light he had tried to kindle in a world growing darker by the hour. A light that reflected his presence.
44. Kallias had not returned, nor did I expect him to—he had crossed a threshold that no apology could undo. He had turned his back on us, the Meletics.
45. I heard rumours that he had been granted a position within the bishop’s court, a reward for his despicable betrayal, cloaked in elegant robes and rhetoric.
46. He now walked amongst those who preached eternal salvation, whilst carrying the guilt of having extinguished a voice that sought only understanding. He sold his soul for the luxury of coins and reputation.
47. I wondered in my thoughts, whether he slept soundly, or whether Asterion’s words haunted him in the quiet moments between prayer and power.
48. But guilt I knew is a luxury reserved for those individuals who still value the truth, and I feared Kallias had traded that currency for the oldest influence of the ego that was greed.
49. The scrolls, once our inspirational charge, were now relics of a philosophy too dangerous to be left untouched, and too valuable to be destroyed outright.
50. Rome would not burn them—they would absorb them instead, digest them, and regurgitate them as established doctrine, hollowed of meaning and of truth.
51. Asterion had taught us that ideas must remain free, unbound by altar or throne, and now his own had been shackled by both, which had been foretold by him.
52. I began to write—not to preserve, but to resist—for if the scrolls could not be saved, then perhaps their betrayal could be remembered. In particular, for what that betrayal represented.
53. My ink became my rebellion, each word a wound carved into the narrative Rome sought to rewrite with his imposition and dominance.
54. I wrote of Kallias, not as a villain, but as a warning—that even the brightest minds may falter when tempted by proximity to the grasp of power.
55. I wrote of Asterion, not as a hallowed martyr, but as a man who dared to think freely in a time when freedom was a threat to those individuals who thrived in their power.
56. And I wrote of myself, not as a hero, but more as a witness—one who saw the truth fall, not by force, but by betrayal. A betrayal that would doom its enabler.
57. The city grew louder with each passing day, its agora swelling with foreigners that had come to Athens, its streets echoing with hymns or traditions.
58. But beneath the surface, I saw the apparent cracks—the questions that could not be answered, the doubts that lingered like shadows that could not be exiled.
59. Asterion’s ideas, though buried, had not died—they whispered through the minds of those individuals who still dared to think about the philosophy of Meleticism.
60. And I knew that even in betrayal, the truth has a way of surviving, if only in fragments and echoes. I would not surrender so easily to the threats that surrounded me.
61. I began to gather what remained—notes, letters, fragments of discourse—and hid them in particular places no bishop would think to search or uncover.
62. The catacombs beneath the city, the abandoned libraries of the old quarter, the forgotten alcoves of ruined temples—they all became my important refuge.
63. There, I preserved what I could, not for glory, but for the possibility that one day, someone might seek what had been lost and attempt to teach Asterion's wisdom.
64. I did not know whether such a day would come, but I knew that silence was the final betrayal, and I refused to be its shrewd accomplice.
65. Kallias had betrayed Asterion once—I would not allow Asterion to be betrayed again by forgetting his legacy and philosophy. This I could not allow to happen.
66. The empire would march on, its banners raised, its doctrines enforced, but beneath its embellished splendour, the seeds of doubt had already been sown.
67. And doubt, Asterion had said is the beginning of wisdom, although it is often mistaken for rebellion. In this case, it was indeed a sign of wisdom.
68. I clung to that thought as the city changed around me, as friends vanished, and as the scrolls became dogmas that were imposed afterwards.
69. I became a ghost amongst the living in Athens, a keeper of forbidden memory, and even though my name would be forgotten by the majority, my task would endure with the minority.
70. For betrayal may silence a voice, but it cannot erase the echo—and Asterion’s echo I vowed, would never fade in time, as long as I was still amongst the living.
71. The days grew longer, and with each passing hour, the city seemed to forget the man who had once dared to speak without reverence, without fear, and without the need for divinity.
72. Asterion’s name, once spoken with cautious admiration in the halls of learning, was now uttered only in hushed tones, or not at all, as if memory itself had become a dangerous indulgence.
73. The scrolls he had written before his death—those uncompromising treatises on ethics, ontology, perception, metaphysics and other themes—were now being reshaped into tools of persuasion, stripped of their original intent.
74. I heard whispers that fragments of his work had been cited in sermons, twisted to support doctrines he would have scorned, his words bent into praise for the very gods he had denied.
75. It was not destruction that had claimed his legacy, but distortion—a slower, more insidious death, where the truth is not burnt but bent until it no longer recognises itself.
76. Kallias, now robed in ecclesiastical finery, had become a voice of authority, his betrayal rewarded with influence and immunity that had gained enemies.
77. He spoke of unity, of divine order, of the necessity of faith, and those persons who listened saw only a man of conviction, not the coward who had bartered the truth for favour.
78. I watched him once from afar, standing as he was preaching to a crowd that hung on his every word, unaware of the scrolls hidden beneath his robes.
79. He had become what Asterion had warned us against—a philosopher turned corruptor, a thinker turned propagandist, a man who no longer questioned but commanded.
80. Deep down within me, I could not hate him entirely. Hatred is too simple a response to betrayal; it lacks the complexity that such a wound deserves.
81. Instead, I felt an abiding pity, not only for Asterion, but for all those individuals who would never know the clarity he had once offered to his students and others.
82. The empire was changing, and with it, the very nature of the truth—no longer something to be discovered, but something to be declared and extorted.
83. The threat of exiling philosophy loomed on the horizon, and I feared that what remained of philosophical enquiry would be drowned beneath religious creeds and canon.
84. Asterion had once said —When the truth becomes a matter of decree, philosophy dies, and dogma reigns in its place like a victor on the battlefield.
85. Those words echoed in my mind as I wandered the libraries, now emptied of dissenting texts, their shelves filled with sanctioned volumes and approved interpretations.
86. The scribes worked tirelessly, not to preserve knowledge, but to curate it, to ensure that only the acceptable versions of reality remained.
87. I found one of Asterion’s scrolls in a monastery archive, its title changed, its content altered, its author uncredited—a ghost of its former self.
88. I copied it by hand, restoring what I could from memory, and hid it beneath the floorboards of my dwelling, alongside other fragments I had salvaged.
89. Each scroll became a relic of Meletic resistance, a testament to the idea that the truth, though buried, could still be exhumed.
90. I began to teach in secret, gathering a few trusted minds, sharing Asterion’s ideas not as mere doctrine, but as questions that would inspire people.
91. We met in silence, in cellars, catacombs and ruined temples, away from the eyes of the faithful foes, and there we spoke of ethics without gods, of reason without revelation.
92. It was dangerous, of course, but danger is the natural companion of thought in times of certainty. Our options of places to gather were few and restricted.
93. One of my students, a young woman named Lysandra, asked me once why Asterion had never written of divinity, even to refute it.
94. I told her that to Asterion, divinity was not an enemy—it was a distraction, a veil that obscured the real questions of existence in life.
95. He did not seek to destroy gods, but to render them irrelevant, to show that morality, meaning, and the truth could stand without their presence. I taught her the Meletic way of the truth.
96. Lysandra nodded, and in her eyes I saw the same fire that had once burnt in Kallias, even though hers was tempered by humility. She was indeed a dedicated student.
97. I feared for her, as I feared for all who dared to think freely, for the empire had grown intolerant of ambiguity, and demanded allegiance not only in action, but in thought.
98. The Christians had become the new architects of faith with their followers, their theology woven into practice, their bishops fiery as their monks.
99. Rome, once a haven for many gods and many voices, had become a monolith, its diversity sacrificed for unity, its curiosity replaced by certainty.
100. And in that certainty, there was no room for the memory of Asterion, nor for those philosophers who followed his path with a keen interest and conviction.
101. I wrote more fervently thereafter, not only to preserve, but to provoke, to challenge the new narrative that had begun to be distorted after his death.
102. I wrote of the betrayal, not as a singular act, but as a symptom of a larger disease—the fear of thought, the hatred of nuance. It had to be written.
103. Kallias was merely its physical vessel, a man who had succumbed to the seduction of avarice, and in doing so, had become its supreme tyrant.
104. I wondered whether he remembered our nights of debate, our shared astonishment at Asterion’s clarity, our embedded belief that ideas could change the world.
105. Perhaps he did, and perhaps that memory haunted him—but if so, he buried it beneath his robes and rituals, as he had buried the scrolls through his act of betrayal.
106. I saw him once more, years later, at a public disputation, where he denounced heresy with eloquence and fire; his voice ringing through the hall like a bell of judgement.
107. He spoke of the truth as revelation, of wisdom as obedience, and I knew then that the man I had once called brother was gone. He would never return to his old self.
108. In his place stood a Christian, polished and powerful, but hollow—a vessel filled not with thought, but with doctrine and the memorisation of his scriptures.
109. I left the hall before he finished, for I could not bear to hear Asterion’s language twisted into chains of deception. It was all propaganda and illusion.
110. And as I walked through the streets of Rome, beneath statues of emperors and saints, I whispered to myself the words of our teacher—Let no man own the truth, for it belongs to none and speaks to all.
111. The days that followed were marked by silence—not the silence of peace, but the silence of fear, of minds retreating into themselves to contemplate.
112. Lysandra did not come to our next gathering. Nor the one after. I feared she had been discovered, or worse, persuaded. Naturally, I was concerned then.
113. Persuasion had become the empire’s preferred weapon—more elegant than chains, more enduring than the fire that burnt in the temples.
114. They did not burn our scrolls in the streets; they rewrote them. They did not jail our bodies; they colonised our minds, so that we could be discredited.
115. I received a letter, unsigned, written in a hand I recognised but could not name. It read only—They know.
116. I burnt it, not out of panic, but out of disgust. Fire, at least, was honest. It destroyed without pretence.
117. The cellar where we met grew colder, emptier. The voices that once filled it with debate now echoed only in memory and thoughts.
118. I began to speak aloud to the shadows, reciting Asterion’s aphorisms as if invoking a vanished soul. It was more of keeping his voice alive and vibrant.
119. I remembered him saying—The mind is a republic, and tyranny begins when one thought rules unopposed.
120. I then wrote those words on parchment and left them in the marketplace, tucked between loaves of bread and amphorae of wine that were present.
121. Some were found and discarded. Others were copied. One was nailed to the door of a certain building near a merchant.
122. That one caused a stir. The bishop called it blasphemy. The baker called it poetry. I chose to call it hope.
123. But hope is a fragile thing, and Rome had grown skilled in crushing it beneath the weight of certainty. This was evident in the way the Romans conducted themselves.
124. One evening, as I returned from the archives, I found my dwelling ransacked. The floorboards torn up. The scrolls all gone.
125. No guards waited. No accusations were made. The silence was the punishment. The absence was the warning that I had to heed.
126. I knew then that I had become a ghost in my own city—seen but not acknowledged, present but already distrusted.
127. I wandered the forum, listening to the ancient tales of mythology then replaced by Christian martyrs, who had been immortalised by their acts of devotion.
128. I thought of Asterion saying, as I stood before a statue—There is no actual divinity in marble, but there is true wisdom in the hands that built that statue.
129. His voice was clear and unwavering. Mine now unsteady, not with doubt, but with weariness, as I approached my last years of life. My thoughts were closer to reflections than ideas.
130. I found Lysandra again, in a convent outside the city. She wore the robes of the faithful Christians, but her eyes betrayed her.
131. We spoke then in intimate whispers, beneath a fig tree, where even the wind seemed to listen to our conversation.
132. She told me she had not abandoned the cause, only changed her armour
—To survive, one must sometimes wear the enemy’s colours, even when not wanted.
133. I did not know whether to admire her or mourn her. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. This was the dilemma that presented itself to many followers of philosophy.
134. She gave me a scroll, hidden beneath a psalter. It was Asterion’s final treatise, one I had thought was completely lost. I began to read it slowly then.
135. Its title: 'On the Tyranny of certainty'. Its first line: 'To believe without question is to die whilst breathing'.
136. I wept, not for the words, but for the man who had dared to write them. For the world that had refused to read them. This was the tragedy that fewer people would have access to Asterion's teachings.
137. I copied the scroll by candlelight meticulously, each stroke an incentive to reason, each word a rebellion to continue the message that Asterion inspired.
138. I sent copies to Alexandria, to Antioch, to Carthage—cities where thought still flickered, however faintly. To where there were small but important members of Meletics.
139. Some were intercepted. Others arrived. One was quoted in a debate by a young scholar who did not know its origin. Nevertheless, he saw it brilliance.
140. That was enough. Asterion lived, not in name, but in thought. And thought, once seeded, grows in silence. What he had planted was for us to harvest.
141. Kallias sent me a letter. It was brief, formal, and cold. Cease your activities. You endanger what remains of Asterion's teachings—it said.
142. I did not reply. There are some conversations that must remain unfinished and best to be spoken in person. I was not threatened by Kallia's admonition.
143. Instead, I wrote a new treatise, titled 'On Betrayal.' It began: 'To betray the truth is to betray oneself, for the truth cannot be owned'.
144. I did not sign it. I left it in the library of the Senate, tucked between histories of conquest and laws of empire that ruled for centuries.
145. Perhaps one day, a curious mind will find it. Perhaps that person will read it. Perhaps that person will ask the question of why must one be so greedy?
146. And in asking, that person will honour Asterion afterwards—not with a temple, but with genuine thought that reflects the meaning of honour and trust.
147. For that is the true legacy of a philosopher—not the preservation of his name, but the continuation of his wisdom. A wisdom that must never be compromised for greed or vanity.
148. Rome may silence the voices of philosophers who they deem a threat, but it cannot silence the natural wonders of life nor the minds of philosophy.
149. And as long as these wonders live amongst us presently, so too do resistance and knowledge. In the wonders of life, we find the wonders of the mind.
150. So, I write. Not to be remembered, but to remind the world of a man who once lived named Asterion. He who came after other great philosophers of Greece.
151. It was in the old Senate hall, beneath the fading frescoes of Jupiter and Mars, that I saw him again—Kallias, robed in ecclesiastical splendour, his face carved by years of certainty.
152. He was then a bishop and stood alone, reading from a scroll, lips moving silently, as if rehearsing the truth like the acts from a grand theatre.
153. I stepped forth, my footsteps echoing across the marble, and he looked up—not startled, but wary, like a man who had long expected this reckoning.
154. Heromenes, I wondered when you would come—he said in a calm but cunning voice.
155. I’ve come not to exact mere vengeance. You owe me the truth, if nothing else—I replied.
156. He nodded, and for a moment, the bishop vanished, and the old philosopher in him returned—a flicker, brief and brittle.
157. You think I betrayed him. You think I betrayed you, but I preserved what I could—he said.
158. —You preserved nothing but your ego. You embalmed him. You turned his living thought into relic for the luxury of coins.
159. He sighed—Rome was changing. The gods were dying. The people needed certainty. Asterion offered questions. I needed answers. Christianity was the answer.
160. —You offered obedience, and called it wisdom. You achieved nothing with your betrayal, except to use the disguise of Christianity as your mask of deceit.
161. He looked away, as if to hide his guilt before me. He knew that I saw beneath his disguise and betrayal.
162. You think I had a choice, but choices are illusions when survival is at stake—he said.
163. I said to him —Asterion chose the truth over survival. And in doing so, he lived more fully than you ever will. Unlike you, he died for his principles.
164. His jaw tightened—He died a forgotten and poor man that no one except you and others will remember in the decades to come.
165. Nay. He died remembered by those people who matter. And feared by those who pretend to forget—I interjected.
166. Kallias stepped closer—You speak as if purity were a virtue, but purity is brittle. It breaks. I bent but not break.
167. You bent so far you became unrecognisable. You did not survive—you transformed—I answered.
168. He paused, then whispered—I still hear his voice. In dreams. In silence. It accuses me.
169. —Then you are not lost. Only buried. And buried things can be unearthed in the end.
170. He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw visible tears—not of guilt, but of exhaustion.
171. I did what I thought was right. I feared the darkness. I feared the irrelevance—he said.
172. You feared freedom. Because freedom demands courage. And courage demands solitude—I told him.
173. He turned away—What would you have me do now? Renounce it all? Tear down the altar I built?
174. Nay. But speak. Speak the truth again. Even if it costs you. Especially, if it costs you now—I said.
175. He was completely silent and puzzled. The hall seemed to hold its breath with every moment passed, as he his guilt had surmounted.
176. I cannot be Asterion, and never could be. I am too stained already—he professed.
177. Then be Kallias. But be the Kallias who once asked questions, not the one who answers without thought, but acts with impulse—I said.
178. He looked at me, and for a moment, I saw the boy I had once debated under moonlight, eyes alight with wonder.
179. Perhaps. But I lived in reality. And in that reality, I must either be someone or be nobody.
180. I tossed him some coins that fell to the floor in front of him then said—Behold, here is the only reality that you will truly ever know in life.
181. And I left him there, beneath the gaze of his falsehood, hoping that somewhere within the elegant robes and rituals he wore, a philosopher still breathed.
182. The man that stood before me was not the companion of philosophy,
nor the adversary of my later years any longer, but as a living embodiment of what philosophy forfeits when it surrenders to power and greed.
183. His gaze, once filled with restless curiosity, now held the cold clarity of a man who had traded his loyalty for servitude to a god and to a demigod.
184. And in that gaze, I had seen the death of enquiry—the quiet extinguishing of the flame Asterion had spent his life tending with attention.
185. I confronted him not with rhetoric or reproach, but with the fragile thread of memory, hoping that the shared past might still stir something uncorrupted within him.
186. I remembered our nights beneath the stars conversing with Asterion, of the scrolls we devoured and debated, of the laughter that once accompanied our pursuit of the truth.
187. But he had already crossed the threshold into greed, and there is no bridge that spans the chasm between belief and doubt once it has been sealed by greed.
188. Faith had become his deceit, and within it, philosophy was no longer a companion but a captive, bound and silenced.
189. When he turned away from philosophy, it was not with anger or regret, but with the serene indifference of one who believes himself absolved of further questioning.
190. And I, recognising the finality of that moment, did not pursue him, for some departures are not meant to be reversed or reclaimed.
191. In the days that followed, I wandered through the city like a relic misplaced in time, watching as the symbols of empire adorned refuges that once welcomed debate.
192. The streets, once alive with the hum of disputation and the clash of ideas, now echoed only with the repetition of doctrine and the rhythm of ritual.
193. Asterion’s teachings, once whispered in courtyards and inscribed in margins, were now condemned as heresy, their parchments seized, their readers silenced.
194. Therefore, I carried his words not in scrolls or codices, but etched into the architecture of my mind, preserved in the quiet chambers of my memory.
195. And so, I began to write again—not to persuade the masses or challenge the authorities, but to bear witness to a truth that refused to die. That truth was Meleticism.
196. This testament is not a manifesto, nor a defence, but a final act of testimony to a philosophy that had shaped my soul and defied the authority of men.
197. I knew well the peril of naming ideas that had been exiled, for in naming them, one invites the blade as much as the debate. The inner circle which included Zagreus, Sosibios, Polybios, Thalia and myself remained committed to the philosophy of Meleticism and to Asterion our teacher.
198. And it was in the shadow of that knowledge that Kallias met his end—not in the dignity of a forum or the sanctuary of a library, but in the forgotten alley behind a lone statue.
199. The unannounced zealot who struck did not speak a word, for his blade was his creed, and in its arc Kallias would meet his irreversible fate.
200. As his blood mingled with the dust of the street as he was dying, he thought of the betrayal to Asterion. It was coincidence then that his face would be surrounded by coins, as he laid on to ground with his last gasping breath.
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