Wherein death is not the end, but the first echo of what was always within.
"Thee shall perish and only crawl backeth from those murky depths if thee succeedeth in thy trial
"I'll die?"
So they weren't being overly dramatic?
"Thee shall perish? Nay—thou art already deceased."
Those were the last words I heard before the piercing began.
My mind—
Skewered.
Not with blades, but with psychic instruments, shifting through my skull and into my soul-heart.
Five of them.Needles. Malnourished, precise.
And for the first time in my life—
Peace.
Then came the transition.
I awakened.
Not as the five-year-old boy with cerulean hair and black eyes.No, my body was now black, a mere silhouette of what could be called human.
I had passed the threshold.
This place—it was like a blank page stained black, like a chalkboard void.
Cold. Lifeless.
A graveyard.
It was not limbo.
It was a kingdom of otherness.And from that otherness, a primordial soup stirred.
Before me unfolded structure and shape—but it felt unstable, like diving headfirst into an arrow that marched in maddening directions.
Was this dystopia?
Or was it utopia seen through a mirror of ruin?
It felt like a peace I couldn't access—a photo that had burned so fully it left nothing but ash-black film.
Was this home?
I was in a sanguine sea.But I wasn't drowning.
I washed onto a blackened shore.The sand was soft.There was a stone path leading to nowhere.
In my hand—a lantern, flickering softly in my shadowy grip.
A few paces ahead, I saw a doll.
It was me—the child, Thales Miray.
But it wasn't me.It was a marionette.
I picked it up.
Its mouth opened—
Inside, another Thales.
And in that Thales' mouth, another.
And another.
And another.
Horrified, I dropped the doll.
It shattered into a thousand pieces like fine china.
That's when I realized
I was the doll.
I was the marionette.
I woke again.
Now I was transparent—clear like glass.
I heard screams.
Blood-curdling.Existential.Like a language that could only be spoken in the throat of chaos.
Something was breathing.Not like an animal.Like a world.
A slithering chaos pulsed across shadowed plains, crushing life beneath it.
Those not crushed were worse off.
They experienced life and death—again and again—coiled, compressed, bludgeoned out of reality.
I knew the name of this element, somehow.
Promethean.
Then—impact.
A savage, hungry, homicidal figure tore through me.
My soul drained.My skin peeled.My scream was choked out—only to become a macabre high-pitched cacophony of despair.
And then—
Eyes.
They were aetheric, voidlike, and divine.
They looked at me from the heavens.
A torrent of essence fell.Swirling. Mist-like.
"You shall not massacre the Great Unity.
The vessel—No One can rule it."
"My heart is still as water.
The water is calm.The water is my blood."
"Your will is the truest, but it cannot violate the sacred body."
"I am unruly.
I will not be tamed in death."
I woke again.As if a bowstring snapped across timelines.
Causality flipped.Effect precedes cause.
I swore
I was more awake here than I had ever been.
I saw her.
A silhouette of a pure white lady, glowing so brightly it lacked color.
She grasped my hand.Twirled me.
Traced her fingers across my face.Smiled.And vanished.
Who were you?
A crescent tail coiled across infinity.It had no end and no beginning.
It was everywhere.
And it felt like a cage.
But it also felt free.
Yet I could not move.
Why?
Why, if I was so free, could I not move?
"There is no heaven for you—Only an abyss for your people."