SUTURING THE HEAVENS

“He fashioned his thread from the vocal cords of a fallen angel to suture the rift upon the ninth firmament.”

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The ninth firmament was bathed in an ephemeral crimson, as fragile as the lips of a maiden first tasting the kiss of darkness. Yet, this was no dawn. It was a wound. From that jagged fissure, no longer than a man’s arm, a feeble light leaked out—insufficient to illuminate, yet enough to evoke the silhouette of an unhealable trauma. And from that wound, faint whimpers drifted down—not from human mouths, but from the very sinews of the sky being torn asunder. It was the sound of carnal longing—the most primordial of lusts, an echo that never ceased rising from the Earthly Hell.

Lão Bát stood there, upon a precarious ledge amidst the void, his bare feet planted on a layer of grey clouds as thick as mire. He did not remember how long he had remained in this position. Perhaps a day. Perhaps a thousand years. Time, to him, was no longer a flowing river but a stagnant pool where past and present merged into an indistinguishable sludge. His fingers, long and gaunt, bone-white, gripped a needle crafted from the rib of a long-dead god.

His thread was neither silk nor hemp. It was the vocal cord of a fallen angel, braided from the final screams uttered before being cast out of paradise. But not just any angel. This thread once belonged to the Seraph of Silence—the one who dared to whisper a word of love amidst the grand liturgy, when all sound was forbidden before the throne of the Most High. That love went unrequited. It was throttled, ripped from the Seraph’s throat, and exiled into the abyss along with his broken wings. Now, that word of love was twisted, stretched taut, used to patch together the lusts of mortals. Each stitch was more than a mending of the sky; it was a re-imprisonment of that wingless soul.

The thread was thin, pallid, and still warm—as if freshly drawn from the Seraph’s throat. Every time Lão Bát pulled the stitch, those vocal cords would shiver, whispering a prayer long forgotten. He did not know what the Seraph had prayed for. Perhaps to return to the heavens. Perhaps to finally die. Perhaps to utter that word of love once more, knowing it would never be answered. Those prayers were now mere senseless echoes, used by him to bind the sky. He did not care. He had never cared.

Yet, directly beneath that silver needle, reality was sliced open. There was no blood, only cataracts of infatuation cascading from the rift above. It was a light that did not shine, a sound that did not resonate—an invisible torrent that only those drowning in desire could perceive. It snaked through every alleyway, every rooftop, every crevice of the Earthly Hell, seeking out yearning hearts and whispering promises so sweet they bordered on nausea.

Lão Bát glanced down. His eyes betrayed nothing—no pity, no disdain, no curiosity. It was merely the gaze of one who had witnessed this scene a thousand times, through a thousand seasons of suturing the heavens. He leaned down, continuing his toil.

The first needle pierced the skin of the sky.

Instantly, a numbing surge of electricity raced from the flesh of the firmament, through the bone needle, and jolted directly into his marrow. It was not pain—at least not a pain mortals could comprehend. It was a vibration, a resonance from the very fabric of the universe, as if the heavens were reminding him: “You are touching that which should not be touched.” He had no face to contort, but his bone-white fingertips trembled slightly, leaving faint red welts upon the Seraph’s vocal cords. A tiny droplet of blood—not his, but the sky’s—oozed from the puncture, falling heavily toward the world below.

In the place known as the Earthly Hell, desire was not merely a collision of flesh. It was a plague of possession, a fever shivering through every fiber, every drop of blood, every fleeting thought. Some knelt before a shadow cast upon a wall, palms pressed together in prayer for a frantic touch they knew would never come. Others dissected their own chests with shards of broken glass, merely to tuck away a tattered fragment of a lover’s memory—a withered lock of hair, a scrap of cloth still lingering with old sweat. The blood that flowed was not red, but the color of sunset upon the ninth firmament—a pale, washed-out pink, as thin as the water used to rinse raw meat.

The rooms here had no walls. They were partitioned by interlacing nerves, raw and humid, quivering whenever a stray touch grazed them. At the center of this neural labyrinth, pleasure was distilled into a viscous poison, amber-hued and murky, simmering softly as if it were breathing. Those who imbibed this draught—and they drank deeply, as if parched by an unquenchable thirst—would instantly find themselves in paradise. They felt their skin caressed by invisible hands, heard their ears whispered with the sweetest devotions, felt their souls bathed in a light both warm and merciful.

But then, when the hallucination faded—and it always faded, faster than a heartbeat—they would find their marrow melting. They would see their flesh rotting from within, see tiny maggots squirming beneath their epidermis. They would smell the stench of their own bodies, a cloyingly sweet and pungent odor, like fruit overripening under a harsh sun. And they would scream. But the sound that tore from their mouths was not human; it was the cry of wounded beasts—hoarse, guttural whimpers, broken and void of meaning.

Lão Bát had heard those sounds a thousand times. They echoed up from the Earthly Hell, piercing through the nine heavens, reaching his ears like a melody so familiar it had become tedious. He no longer heard them. Or perhaps, he had learned how not to listen.

The second needle pierced down.

Another surge, more violent this time, struck his marrow. The thread vibrated fiercely. The Seraph’s prayer suddenly became clear—no longer a senseless whisper, but a question, repeated like a curse:

“Do you remember? Do you remember? Do you remember?”

Lão Bát paused. This was the first time the thread had asked him a question. He looked down at the shivering vocal cords in his hand and wondered what it was the Seraph wanted him to remember. He had no memory. Or perhaps he once did, but they had been buried under centuries of suturing the sky, beneath thousands of needles driven through the flesh of the nine heavens.

But then, as the third needle pierced down, he saw it.

Not in the sky. Not in the thread. But down there, in the Earthly Hell, where he had never set foot—or perhaps he once had, and had forgotten.

In an alleyway so narrow that the light had to strain to pass through, a pair of lovers were entwined. Not by flesh—their flesh had been tattered long ago—but by invisible strands of longing. The air in that alley was so thick they had to swim through it rather than walk. The beads of sweat falling from their brows did not vanish into the earth but crystallized into bitter, dark salts, shimmering under the weak light like black pearls. That very bitterness—the salt of unfulfilled craving—was the only thing that made them feel alive.

The man’s hand rested on the woman’s waist, not to tighten his grip, but as if trying to suture a wound that would never heal. The woman tilted her head back, revealing a blue vein tracing from her chin to her collarbone—a vein taut, as if she were trying to swallow the entire crimson sky into her lungs.

They did not moan. They did not gasp. They only remained silent, and in that silence, their lust became a mute sound—a scream not uttered by the mouth, but by the very cracks within their souls.

Lão Bát stared at the scene. There was something in that alley, in those lovers, in the blue vein on the woman’s neck, that made his heart—the thing he thought had died long ago—thump violently within his chest. He narrowed his eyes, trying to see more clearly.

And then he saw.

The man in that alleyway... was himself.

Not the version of him now—the heaven-suturer with hollow eyes and gaunt fingers. But the him of a time gone by, a time he had tried to forget, or had been forced to forget. The him of then still possessed a face—a blurred, indistinct face, yet a face nonetheless. And that version of him was entwined with a faceless woman, in a cramped alley of the Earthly Hell, with a burning hunger so fierce it threatened to melt his very bones.

Lão Bát trembled. For the first time in centuries, his hand shook. He gripped the needle tight. He could drive it straight down into that alley, ending that yearning self. Just one stitch, and he would be liberated from the hunger that imprisoned him upon this ledge.

But then he realized.

If he killed the one below, the ninth firmament would never heal. The thread from the Seraph’s vocal cords would snap. The only word of love the Seraph had ever uttered—the word that led to his damnation—would be forever forgotten, and the rift in the sky would never be closed. His existence up here, his labor, the sole meaning of his life, depended entirely upon his own pain down below. A cruel symbiosis.

The fourth needle struck astray, piercing a tendon of the sky that should have remained untouched. Blood erupted from the new wound, not the pink of carnal lust, but the deep crimson of wrath—the eighth heaven, where the screams of hatred never ceased to echo.

But Lão Bát did not care. He continued to stare into the alley. At himself. At the faceless woman.

And then, that woman—for the first time—looked up.

She had no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Yet, somehow, Lão Bát knew she was looking at him. And she was smiling. A smile that made no sound, that did not appear on a face, yet possessed the power to pierce through nine heavens and strike him directly in the heart.

“You sold your face to sit up there,” the smile said. “But you never could sell your hunger. And you know it. That is why you cannot kill him.”

The final needle slipped from Lão Bát’s hand. It fell, tumbling through nine firmaments, through cataracts of infatuation, through the neural labyrinth, and struck true into the alley where his mortal self stood. The man in the alley reached down, picking up the needle. He looked at it, then up toward the sky, where Lão Bát stood frozen.

In that moment, Lão Bát realized what he had seen. It was not a memory. It was the present. He had never left the Earthly Hell. He was merely sitting upon the clouds, suturing the wounds he himself had created, while his true self remained writhing in that alley, with the faceless woman, with the hunger that would never end.

The ninth heaven had mended. The rift was sealed. The ephemeral crimson had returned, as fragile as the lips of a maiden first tasting the kiss of darkness.

But beneath Lão Bát’s feet, a new fissure had just cracked open. This time, it was the eighth heaven—the realm of wrath. Dark red blood seeped out, staining the ledge where he stood. The screams of hatred began to rise, more violent, more agonizing than anything he had ever heard.

Lão Bát sighed. A steady, composed sigh. He leaned down, plucking a new thread from the bundle of vocal cords—this time from an angel who had died of rage, one who had screamed curses into the void until his very cords snapped. He threaded the needle and began to sew.

Below, in the alley, the man with the blurred face remained entwined with the faceless woman. He did not know that above, another version of himself was mending the sky. Nor did he know that his hunger would never be satisfied.

Or perhaps he knew. And he chose to stay anyway.

The eighth firmament was bleeding. Lão Bát wondered if this time, when he finished his work, he would see his own face within the screaming crowd below. Or if he would see another version of himself—the one who was angry, beating his chest, howling senseless curses into the void.

He did not know. And he did not care.

The first needle pierced the eighth firmament. A new surge, more violent, more searing, jolted into his marrow. This time, the thread did not whisper a prayer. It screamed.