Christopher's gift takes a sharper turn here. His "soul-stills" are not dreams but visions that seize him, showing fragments of what must come to pass. This entry begins with one such trance and ends with him standing before the waters that guard the way to something greater.
─── ❖ ────── ❖ ────── ❖ ───
It came on me without warning, as it sometimes does. One moment, I was scribbling notes from Andrea's descriptions, the next, my hand went slack, and the world folded in.
Stillness. A soul-still. My body was numb, my breath slow, while my mind was carried elsewhere.
I stood upon a summit I had never seen. Its jagged crown rose sharp against a black sky, the ridges carved like teeth biting into the stars. And below it, a shimmer of water stretched to the horizon, so wide and glassy it seemed to hold the heavens themselves.
When the trance broke, my pen had scrawled half-legible lines across the page. My hands shook, but my gut whispered certainty: time was not mine to waste.
I tore through my own shelves, through books long abandoned to dust. Hours passed in the flurry of turning pages, until I found it; a crude sketch buried in Ancient Relics of the Veil. The same jagged ridges, the same unnatural symmetry. And there, beneath the sketch, the name: Nyxveil Summit. Proof that what I saw was no phantasm.
I packed at once. Sleep could wait. I told myself I could rest on the bus, though my eyes never closed. Each mile only sharpened the pull in my chest, as if my very blood beat to the rhythm of the summit's call.
The bus halted in a village at dusk, though the driver swore there was no mountain by that name. To his eyes, only mist and forest lay ahead. But my gut knew better. The rest of the way would be on foot.
I walked until night bent the trees into shadows, until the mist parted. And there it was.
Astral Maw Lake.
I froze on its bank, breath stolen by the sight. A glassy expanse swallowing the sky whole, every star doubled and shimmering on its mirrored skin. The air hummed, thick with a presence too vast for words, as though the lake itself exhaled the breath of forgotten knowledge.
I could not move. Not yet. To stand at its edge was to be caught between awe and fear, certain that one step forward would change me forever.
I end my entry here, overlooking its beauty. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will find the courage to step onto its waters.
─── ❖ ────── ❖ ────── ❖ ───
The hike with Andrea and James left Christopher shaken, but the Sepulcher is not finished with him. This new vision drags him into motion, pulling him toward Nyxveil Summit and the Astral Maw Lake, places unseen by ordinary eyes. His envy and awe have become resolve. What waits across the lake will shape not only his path, but the future he does not yet realize he is writing down.