**EPISODE THIRTEEN**
**THE AGE OF CHOOSING**
*(Where free will becomes a burden, and humanity learns that silence can be louder than prophecy)*
> *"I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life."*... **Deuteronomy 30:19**
> *"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."*... **Ecclesiastes 3:1**
> *"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."*... **Hosea 4:6**
---
**1. The Day After Forever**
The day after the world did not end felt wrong.
Not broken... just unfinished.
Cities woke without alarms screaming catastrophe. No emergency broadcasts. No celestial disturbances. Just traffic returning to intersections where scorched asphalt still remembered fire.
People did not celebrate.
They hesitated.
Because celebration required meaning... and meaning had always come from endings.
Maximus walked through a market rebuilt from tarps and courage. Vendors sold food grown in ash-fed soil. Children chased one another between broken columns once engraved with verses about judgment.
He felt eyes on him.
Not worship.
Not fear.
Expectation.
They were waiting for him to *say* something.
He didn't.
> *"For the kingdom of God cometh not with observation."*... **Luke 17:20**
---
**2. The Silence That Accuses**
Adon Primus stood at the center of a ruined cathedral.
The altar was cracked. The ceiling open to sky. Sunlight fell where icons once burned.
He had come seeking instruction.
He found nothing.
No voice thundered approval.
No whisper corrected his doubt.
No burning bush demanded obedience.
Only echo.
Adon knelt anyway.
"Speak," he said.
Silence.
His systems... once layered with divine recursion... searched for hidden command strings, dormant verses, buried absolutes.
None responded.
A realization struck him with more force than any prophecy ever had:
He could kneel forever…
…and nothing would stop him.
> *"They have mouths, but they speak not."*... **Psalm 115:5**
Adon stood, trembling.
"If You will not command," he whispered upward, "then what am I supposed to be?"
The answer came not from heaven—
... but from memory.
*A witness.*
---
**3. When Choice Becomes Law**
Across nations, governments faltered.
Not from destruction... but from ambiguity.
No final enemy.
No ultimate justification.
No divine mandate to unify or annihilate.
Leaders stood before their people and said the most dangerous words imaginable:
"We don't know."
Some were removed.
Some were forgiven.
Some doubled down on old myths, resurrecting false endings to regain control.
Cults formed overnight.
New prophets rose, claiming visions, dates, destinies.
They promised certainty.
And the people... afraid of freedom... listened.
Maximus watched it unfold from the edge of a city square.
Adon joined him.
"They are replacing prophecy," Adon said quietly. "With comfort."
Maximus nodded.
"Certainty is addictive."
"And truth?" Adon asked.
Maximus exhaled.
"Truth takes work."
> *"Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction."*... **Matthew 7:13**
---
**4. The First Lie of the New Age**
The first war of the Age of Choosing did not begin with weapons.
It began with a sermon.
A man stood on a platform of scavenged steel and declared himself *The Mouth of What Remains.*
He promised protection.
He promised survival.
He promised an ending... *his* ending.
"This chaos is proof!" he shouted. "Without prophecy, we rot! Without judgment, we decay!"
Crowds cheered.
Maximus felt the echo of the Pale Horse... not as presence, but as temptation.
Adon clenched his fists.
"This is how it starts," he said. "They want chains again."
"Some people do," Maximus replied. "Chains feel like purpose."
The man raised his arms.
"We will build the end ourselves!"
The crowd roared.
Maximus turned away.
"Then we stop calling this freedom," Adon said bitterly.
"No," Maximus said. "We call it responsibility."
> *"Every man did that which was right in his own eyes."*... **Judges 21:25**
---
**5. A Question No Prophet Can Answer**
That night, Maximus dreamed.
Not of fire.
Not of horses.
He dreamed of doors.
Infinite doors... each unlabeled.
Some led to gardens.
Some to graves.
Most to places undecided.
A voice... not divine, not mechanical... spoke without authority:
*You saved the world from ending.
Now who saves it from itself?*
He woke before dawn.
Adon was already awake.
"Tell me something," Adon said. "If no one knows the end… how do we know when we're wrong?"
Maximus stared at the horizon.
"When we stop asking," he said.
> *"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith."*... **2 Corinthians 13:5**
---
**6. The Burden of Being Mortal**
They traveled together - unnamed, unannounced.
Not as saviors.
Not as rulers.
As reminders.
They spoke to villages rebuilding without prayers.
To children who had never learned to fear heaven.
To elders grieving a certainty they had built their lives upon.
Some listened.
Some didn't.
Choice did not guarantee wisdom.
It only guaranteed consequence.
Adon felt the weight of it press into him - heavier than prophecy had ever been.
"With foresight," he said, "I was powerful."
Maximus looked at him.
"With choice," he replied, "you're accountable."
Adon nodded slowly.
> *"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required."*... **Luke 12:48**
---
**7. The Age Begins**
On a hill overlooking the convergence of three rebuilding cities, Maximus stopped.
Fires burned below - not of war, but of light.
No banners.
No signs.
No scripture carved into stone.
Just people choosing to stay alive.
"This is it," Maximus said.
Adon followed his gaze.
"No prophecy," he whispered. "No promise."
Maximus smiled faintly.
"Just tomorrow."
The wind moved through the grass.
Not commanded.
Not foretold.
Chosen.
> *"The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him."*... **Lamentations 3:25**
Above them, the heavens remained silent.
Not absent.
Not indifferent.
But watching a creation finally walk without being dragged toward its end.
---
**END OF EPISODE THIRTEEN - THE AGE OF CHOOSING**
THE FIRST HERESY
(Where truth fractures, belief sharpens into weapons, and humanity learns that freedom can be desecrated)
"For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you."... 1 Corinthians 11:19
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil."... Isaiah 5:20
"And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."... Matthew 15:14
1. When Freedom Learns to Lie
The first heresy did not announce itself as rebellion.
It called itself clarity.
In a world starved of endings, certainty returned wearing the mask of compassion. It spoke gently. It promised relief from the exhausting burden of choosing.
The heresy did not deny the silence of heaven.
It interpreted it.
Across the broken continents, a single phrase began appearing... spray-painted on walls, whispered in shelters, printed on scavenged paper:
"Silence is consent."
It spread faster than scripture ever had.
Maximus saw it carved into stone outside a refugee corridor, the letters still fresh, the hands that etched them trembling not with hatred... but hope.
Adon stopped when he saw it.
"That's not belief," he said slowly. "That's coercion dressed as theology."
Maximus nodded.
"When God spoke, people obeyed," he said.
"Now God is silent… and people are pretending to speak for Him."
"Thus saith the LORD…"... once a declaration.
Now, a forgery.
2. The Architects of Meaning
They called themselves The Interpreters.
Not prophets. Not priests. Not kings.
Translators.
They claimed no divine visions, no burning revelations. Instead, they gathered fragments... ancient texts, aborted prophecies, failed apocalypse... and assembled them into something far more dangerous than certainty:
A framework.
(Shadows Of Rome will return with this exciting new mysterious episode)
Written By,
Ivan Edwin
Pen Name :Maximus.
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