Bifurcated Dusk Ascent

They climb without speaking, robes fluttering like embered breath on one side and drowned whispers on the other. One foot presses into the cold of midnight stone, the next into a fevered slab that seems to radiate from the molten orb lodged low in the sky. The temple ahead splits its loyalties between frozen vigilance and smoldering prayer, its spires clawing upward in jagged equilibrium. In the left pond, reed letters spell a question that was never meant for strangers—WHERE VOJTA?—their shadows bending deeper than the water itself. Meanwhile, scaffolds hunch toward nothing across the right pool, as if plotting new geometries for escape or reverence. Lamps blink inside the corridors—tiny ocular warnings, or perhaps beacons to someone already beyond reach. The monks surge toward the threshold as though the narrow bridge might crack under hesitation. Each step suggests heat even where the moon exhales frost, and still the silence implies the same truth: Vojta has not emerged.