SPACE has in itself bound the sullen man. He looks around and sees the light but not from the Sun—rather from the walls if they could be called as such. It seems wide and open, and he cannot help but walk around.
As he walks, he comes across a man hunched on the ground. The sullen man can see himself within the hunched man as if they are one and the same. The hunched man turns to reveal his tiredness-wracked face, seemingly having gone through a heavy ordeal. The hunched man looks up, and there in front of him appears another man but old, clad in exquisite garments. Beside that old man appear more men and women alike – some old, some young, and one that is even a babe.
The old man takes the babe and hands it over to the man hunched on the ground. He whispers something to him, though the words that can be made out are unintelligible. They vanish before him, and the sullen man and the hunched man enter into each other, becoming as one.
The sullen man looks to the babe, who cries for a bit but then smiles. He rocks the babe back and forth for a while and then looks around him. Then he walks onward as senescence takes its toll on the man’s body, all while the babe looks the same.
After walking for some time, the light shifts and morphs, and before him appears a staircase but not one that could be called regular. This one is long and wide, and the steps themselves are rough as if carved from rock. And though its essence can be said to be of the light itself, the form that it has taken is not akin to it. But then again, what form that is visible could such an entity take that could still be regarded as its inherent nature within this space?
The man walks up the staircase, and the light shifts color from white to golden. And having ascended far atop it, he reaches a platform beside a series of gates, situated above, below, to the sides, and in front. And from these gates come even more men and women dressed in exquisite garments and directing their hands toward the babe.
They ask of him to give it to them and lament their sorrows over their fallen kin. He gives them the babe, and they all prostrate before him. He, however, displays anger, confusion, and resentment and blames them for this outcome of events, though he knows to himself that it was truly no one’s fault and that fate deemed what has come to pass.
He lifts them and kneels to them before walking away, never to see them again. As he walks down the steps, he sees the blood shed by him drip down his arms and legs. When he lifts his head, he sees before him the heads of those slain. And then he sees the Lord who sits in his seat, with his eyes gouged and a spear embedded within him. And below them, he sees the countless ones felled, bare and torn in heaps and piles, enough to terrify any who should behold the grim sight. A macabre display, one that causes him immense anguish.
When all has been passed through, the images vanish and he sees no more before him except the white. And then the white recedes to give way to a city, full of tall and wide structures built of sandstone, lime, and brick.
He walks through the street toward a well and sits beside it in remorse. After some time passes, another person approaches him, a person unlike any he has ever seen.
Shining with effulgence and dazzling like the stars, this being lifts him and asks him if he wishes to hear a story. The being then shifts their gaze to me and gives a smile. They whisper something, but it is impossible to make out what it is.
All once again recedes into the white, bound by the space.
