Afterlife – “Darkness” Encroaching

Warning – Mature Content

The following story is fictional, as almost all future posts will be under my anonymous identity for now. They will be built on the foundation of my experiences from the first real story: Afterlife – The Two Energies, using a bit of imagination and a pinch of deduction. The stories mentioned here, past, present, and future ones, are not meant to ruin the belief or faith of anybody in anything. They are meant to inspire and push anyone to pass the fear and limits that they have in a good way, on the road of their own life and maybe on what will follow next.

The Ending is a New Beginning

So it has come to this, finally, after what feels like a short or a long time. You have come to the moment when you are face to face with the inevitable. Even if you want it or not, this is the moment when everything you strived for, everything you had fought for, and every moment of the life you had, must come to an end. During your life, as any human, you tried to reach “perfection” under your own terms. You did not do only bad and you did not do only good. Maybe you tried to repent in your final years, dreaming about a rewarding afterlife. Dreaming that divinity will understand your reasons and motives. Maybe you did not care, as you expected that at the end of your existence, you would succumb to nothingness. You almost accepted what you thought would come for you. As the final moments on this plane of reality unfold before you, you start and think about the life you had. You think about every decision you make. You think about the moments when you were happy or sad. You think about the rights or wrongs that you made. You feel them, for the last time, as you never did before. You think about your family and the friends that you have or had, and you wonder if maybe there was another ending for you. An ending that would be fitter, more different than any other ending. Different from the life that you lived, different from the feelings that you felt. The clock is ticking for you, more slowly. In your last days, hours, and minutes, you can’t help but think if there is anything different that you could have done, as you feel that there is not much time left for you. If there was another path for you to take at the beginning of every crossroad you encountered, the path that you chose to follow even if you liked it or not. Is there anything you wish you could have changed for the good? Is there anything that maybe you could have done for the better? Is it anguish and regret you will feel or you will feel at peace, knowing that you can’t change anything that was done before by your own will and hands? Will you curse your existence and put the blame on anything else but yourself, or will you see it as freedom? As a blessing or liberty from the chains you think you were born with? You just tried to live your life under the rules of the society you live in. Under the beliefs that you learned, or from your own experiences. You did nothing but try and survive. Your instincts ordered so, and your mind followed it. Your ending, as the beginning, is the same as for any other being that exists. Life is just a different reality, one you are used to, the one that gave you the spark that you have in your eyes, but that spark can’t be maintained forever. The fire inside you is losing the heat of what was once before. You are washed by an unfamiliar sense. Something you have never felt before. The premonition of death. The feeling is not good or welcoming, even if you feel it awake or asleep. Your system and your mind are collapsing and you feel your muscles contracting. You put a last fight. It is a fight that you know the ending of it already, but you still do it because it is in your nature and instinct. It is the fight where you feel fear in your heart and mind because you can’t win it no matter what you have faced and no matter how strong you are. You don’t know for sure what comes next, and this feeling of the unknown is putting pressure on you. It is the last flicker of honor that you put at stake. You did not end it sooner under your own hands and you did not want to give up on the hardships of life that have been put in front of you. And even if you did have a thought to do it, you resisted and found the strength to move forward, just like anyone should do. Nobody should ever lose this battle without giving everything they have, suffering in silence should only give you a new meaning to the life you have and should only make you stronger. Because even if you are not conscious of it, every moment you feel the pain is the same moment when you find the power to pass it, even if it is one step at a time. And if you did not do it on the first attempt, you should still not give up, you should still not let it beat you. Remember that not even God can control your destiny, you are your own master and nothing in this universe can put a hold on you. This is how we were created, and this is how every bad decision that we made and we suffered or made others suffer did not end by any divine intervention, but with our own will and choice or the actions of others that are almost the same as we are. Even if darkness comes after you, the light inside you is what is keeping it away from fully taking control of you. You begin to gasp with hardness and to grasp firmly on what you have at hand. Your teeth are clinching, and you feel a last sharp pain, feeling weak with each moment that passes. As you close your eyes, knowing you might never open them again, you see only that darkness, that black. The same that you are used to seeing every time you go to sleep. In one way you are used to it, but in another way, you ask yourself if it will last for an eternity. Your memories begin to unfold in your mind for a final time, from the start to the end. A last portrait painted in the colors of life that will show you an honest truth of what you have lived. It is the final embrace that only lasts minutes, but those minutes will not count for you, as time will lose its normal form. Your muscles by now are feeling more relaxed, you feel tranquility, and by all means, you have won a battle that you might have thought you would never win. Just by putting in a bit of effort not to quit. You have won your peace without even knowing. A different reality, a different meaning, and a different purpose will take shape for you now. You will wake from that darkness and that pitch black, but your reality will be different.

The Change of Destiny

You will wake up, and every feeling of pain and regret will wash away just as every feeling of happiness. Every emotion that you have had will be just a remembrance. You won’t wake up in either “heaven” or “hell”. You are waking up in the same place where you closed your eyes thinking it will be for the final time. Just like a final blinking, and the moment of darkness and nothingness disappearing. What was unseen until now will become visible. You start to understand that something has changed, you cannot see the colors anymore, only black and white. The reflex of breathing has stopped for you just as the blinking. Your senses are gone. You can only see and your hearing sense has changed, the soundwaves are reaching out in a different form. You are standing up again, and you are looking behind you. You see yourself, or what can be called your “shell”. And also, your loved ones are next to that shell.

“What is happening?”, you ask yourself.

You try to reach out to your loved ones, but any effort to do so is not working. It is like you are invisible to them. As you try to touch them, you see that what should be your hands have a different color from the skin that you wore during life.

“Why am I pitch black?” you ask yourself again, without feeling any emotion.

 As you try to comprehend your new form, you see that there are no more features of what you once had. You stand still as you try to grab something, but it is not working, and you can’t feel the sense of touch anymore. All of a sudden a voice crosses your mind. A voice calling you by name.

An Unusual Guide

You hear the voice again and you don’t know from where it is coming, it is only resonating in what should be your new mind. You look to the right and there is no one, almost immediately you turn to the left, and again, no one. You look above and beneath you, there is nothing. And finally, you turn your gaze behind, and this is when the first revelation comes. You see a human form, but just like you, it has no features, it is just pitch black without even a face.

-“Who are you? What are you?” you ask the entity.

You can hear the sound of your voice, not in your ears, but in your mind. Because of the loss of senses and emotions, you feel no fear or threat in the face of this unusual visitor. The voice of the black silhouette resonates again in your mind.

“I am no one”, the entity responds. “Neither in life nor now in death.”

“Death? Is this death?” you ask the visitor.

“This is what the ones that think they are alive call it, I once called it also like this, but in fact, it is just the continuation of life in another form. You and I are the same now, I came to guide you and show you the truth that only the unliving could see.” says the black silhouette.

“To guide me? To guide me where? Why should I come after you, I don’t know you, I will stay here with my loved ones.”

“There is nothing left for you here, says the entity. “Do you want your questions answered? You should come after me then and leave your loved ones to mourn what they think is your loss, your temporary loss.”

“What do you mean by temporary? I can return back to them?”

“Unfortunately, no, there is no turning back for you. If you stay here and do not come, you will become lost, and you won’t find a way out. This is the real darkness that should not reach you by any means.”

“How can I be light when I am pitch black? This is not darkness?”

“No, it is not, it is light. A light that every living being that exists is bearing. The ones that you hold dear will meet with you again in this reality when their time will come, just like yours came. When this moment comes you will return and be the guide, just like I am your guide now. This light is your new gender, you are neither a man nor a woman now.”

You look back to the ones that you hold dear, for the final time until you will meet again and you approach them, you see again the light in their eyes, the light that made you the human you were. Seeing them does not make you feel anything, and now you understand that this continuation of life, as your guide is telling you, is the new normality. You understand now alone that the loss of senses and emotions is part of your new destiny.

“It is time.” says the black entity in what sounds like a warm tone.

“I will come with you then. Guide me,” you tell the black entity.

The First Steps of the New Existence

As you start moving, you see that the steps you take are very light, you are not floating, but you are weightless at the same time. You watch yourself as you move and the shape of your legs remains behind, vanishing afterward. You go outside for the first time under this new form. As you take the first steps you look around you, and nothing has colors anymore. What should be the sun is now a white object like the sky, and you can look exactly at it without blinding yourself.

“Why I can’t see the colors anymore? If I lost my senses why can I still see but without colors?” you ask the black entity.

“You are just seeing the things as they were created, these are the colors of the genesis.” answers the black entity.

“The genesis? The genesis of what?” you ask again.

“Of everything.”

“I don’t quite understand. You are saying that everything that was created had no color?”

“Yes, this is the foundation of the genesis, this is the start and the end at the same time. Everything that exists in your realm is made of this black and white.”

“What is this black and white? What connection do we have with it?”

“It is simple, just by looking at yourself, it is what you call “energy” or “light”.

“So this energy…this black light and white light, this is what stands at the base of life and death?”

“Yes, exactly.”

As you continue to walk for a long distance, you don’t feel fatigued at all. You gaze at everything you encounter along the way, from human beings to birds and plants, they all look the same as from when you were alive. But you are not visible to them at all. You arrive at a crossroads and at that moment, the entity, your guide, stops. His voice is once again entering your mind…

“Left or right?” the black entity asks.

“What?” you ask him back

“What is your choice?” he asks you again

“Why does it matter? Why do I have to choose the way if you are the guide?”

“You will see, look at yourself, and make a choice.”

You dwindle a bit on your decision, as you feel unsure what this is all about and you look again at yourself. You see the same black that you did from the start. You ponder for what would seem a few minutes, and then you make a choice.

“I will choose right.”

“An interesting choice, seems you are as stubborn as ever.”

” What do you mean by this?”

“Nothing that is important at this moment, you will find out eventually as we talk along the way.”

You take the right and continue to walk with the entity on a road that seems to never end. You stop asking any questions for a moment, and you are left with silence, not even hearing your own footsteps. You keep asking yourself questions, you keep following the black entity that looks exactly like you. A mirror image almost, but you don’t know its name and you don’t know its motives. Why is it guiding you? And what does it have to show you? After some time walking on the seamless never-ending road, you start and think if you should have chosen the left path.

“Don’t stray from your choice” the black entity says.

“Now you can hear even my thoughts?” you ask.

“Yes, maybe you don’t understand quite yet young soul, but we are connected”.

“Why then I can’t hear your mind as well then?”

“You have much to learn from your new destiny and form young soul, in the never-ending time that awaits, you will learn and adapt.”

“You keep talking about my destiny like you know me, you don’t know anything about me or the life I had, of the moments I have lived, and of the pain and happiness I have been put through.”

The black entity stops, and turns towards you, without its voice resonating in your mind again. And then all of a sudden it says:

“I have been watching you, young soul. Since the moment you came into the mortal realm, it was my duty to keep an eye on you. Every moment of the pain you felt and the happiness you shared, I stood there, observing it.”

“Then why you do not tell me more about yourself, you were once a human just like I was right? I want to know you also like you know me, this would seem fair enough.”

The entity pauses for a moment, and it is getting closer to you.

“If this is your wish, I can show you, but know that everything you will see is just an empty past, one that I still carry with me, but I am not anymore connected to it. Take my hand.”

“Why should I take your hand? What will happen?”

“Trust me, young soul, trust me as you did until now since you accepted me as your guide”.

A Vision of Agony

You look at the pitch-black hand that is reaching toward you. And without a moment to reflect, you grab it just like you wanted to grab the final moments of your mortal life. In an instant, you are washed away by what seems to be memories of someone. You start to see in your own mind a person, a once proud man from an age long forgotten. You see in the eyes that are watching your determination, and honor, a power that only a few reach to have it. A power that comes with a cost. A power that you immediately understand was built on hardships and pain. The image changes, and a boy appears now in your vision. He is looking at you smiling, and you can see in his hazel eyes the same spark and brightness that could warm even the coldest hearts. The point of view changes and you see now from his own eyes his past life. The man was born at the crossroads between the moon and the sun. He had a family. His mother would teach him what compassion was and his father taught him about honor and how to fight for that compassion. As the moments of his life reveal before you, a cold memory takes shape. It is the moment when he was young, and he returned from what seems to be a successful hunt where he went alone in the first rays of dawn, embracing his mother who gave him a kiss, and saluting his father who wished him luck and not to forget what he learned from him. You see upon reaching back to his own village in the first moments of dusk, that the sky was already red, as someone smeared blood on it. He started seeing smoke on the horizon, and without a moment to think, he dropped his prey from his back and started running towards where the smoke came from. You did not understand what was happening to him, but you could understand that he was desperate. Upon reaching his village, he only witnessed blood and fire. The houses were burning, and the mutilated bodies of the people he knew were lying breathless in front of him. War came to his door’s threshold. As he crosses the path of bodies, he can recognize his friends, he recognizes the people who each day gave him a warm look. Agony and pain took their place within his being. He wanted only one thing, to reach his home and see if his parents could save themselves from this atrocity. He reached it, and just like in a dream, everything was normal. He entered and came toward his parents who were sitting in the darkest corner of the room. He could not see them very well, as pitch darkness covered their face. He could only recognize the clothes that they were wearing that day, and for a moment he felt only happy when his father raised his hand to salute him from the darkness, and his mother opened her arms and waited for him to come and hug her. As he got close, he could see that something was not right, the hands of his parents were very white. And just as he blinked, the dream ended. In front of him, he could see only the fire that was losing its grasp on his house. The smell of smoke and blood engulfed his mind. On the floor, his parents were lying breathless. The image you see started to become blurry, as his own view and soul broke into pieces like a mirror. He fell on his knees, crying, and cursed all the gods from the unknown world and his own destiny and existence between his moon and sun. He went to his father to close his eyes for the final time, and to grab his hand, telling him with tears in his own eyes how he returned from the hunt successfully. The darkness of that night became half of his soul. Then he started dragging himself to his mother so he could see her beauty again. He lift her up only just a bit, to hug her and see those blue eyes that made him love life. Her face was serene as in every morning when she would wake up and see her beloved boy. He closed her blue eyes for the final time, with tears dropping on her face, cleaning the stains of blood. The white of her skin became the other half of his soul, bright as the sun and cold as the abyss. As the last fires in the house extinguished, so did the spark in his hazel eyes. He buried his parents separately, just as the duality of his broken soul. He buried his father in a field of black lilies, and his mother in a field of white roses. You see a last glimpse of the image of the boy, looking at you, and in his hazel eyes, you can see now an amalgam of chaos and madness. He is piercing you with hate that can only be matched by his hollowed heart. The vision ends abruptly, and the entity loses its grasp on your hand.

“I…I don’t know what to say…” you tell the entity.

“I granted your wish, a part of it. You witnessed a fragment of my mortal life that shaped a part of the destiny I had.”

“Why did you not show me more? There must be more of this life you had.”

“Patience, young soul, we will continue after we walk more on the path that you chose. Let’s continue to walk it.”

The Soul of the World

You continue to walk the path that seems endless, surrounded by what seems to be an empty field. Without noticing, both of you stop, as the road ends and you encounter a forest, the scene feels familiar.

“We are almost there” whispers the entity, “There is no more path to follow now, we must go through the forest. Don’t stray from my side, or you will become lost.”

“You told me before about this “lost”. What do you mean by that?”

“This is the temporary fate of the souls that refused to walk with their guide. At any moment they can change this, but they don’t want to. They refuse their new purpose and are still clinging to their mortal past. They scour the Earth alone, wishing that the living could see them and know of their existence”.

“After all this long trip, why don’t I feel fatigued, why don’t they feel also?”

“I told you before young soul, your new form, that of light, has a part to play. You are not carrying the same burdens of your mortal life. You don’t need to catch your breath, because you don’t have one anymore. You don’t need to let your body rest, because you don’t have the one you were used to anymore.”

As you walk through the forest, there is only silence, as every being from your mortal reality has vanished and run away. The only thing you see is the earth, the grass, and the trees. But something feels different from what you remember in your mortal life. You see that the wood and the branches are black, yet the leaves are white. As you walk, you see that you are surrounded but what seems to be snowflakes.

“Is it snowing? I don’t think it is that time of the year,” you ask the entity.

“What you are seeing is not snow, young soul. What you are seeing are particles of light that are dropping before you. As everything is made of what you call black light and white light, you also understand the fact that nature itself as every being that is encompassed by it, has a soul of its own. The Earth is alive and made of the same material as you are made.”

Nature itself welcomes you in this forest, as the particles are dancing around you. You open the palm of your black hand, trying to let a white particle drop in it, but when it is almost reaching your hand, it deviates and goes around you. You try and catch it, but with no use, it feels like it already knows the next move you make.

“Why do the particles go around me, why they don’t let me touch them?”

“Because they are different from you, even if you are connected with it, the polarity you have now is making it almost impossible, and also, they know your intent.”

As you continue to walk surrounded by the particles that drop and vanish into the earth, you are face to face with a very familiar scene, a field of black lilies. The particles changed their shape, and became black, taking the form of a sharp needle that did not avoid you. You are feeling a small electrical surge on each point it drops on your new form. You understand without asking anymore that you can now commune with the needle-like shape.

“I know this place, you have shown me this in your vision”.

“Exactly, this is the place where in my mortal life I have shed respect for life. It is the place where I struck a bargain with death. This is the place where darkness embraced me and I lost a spark within me and something else took its place. But it reached only half of me, and stopped, not gaining ground anymore, making room for something else also”.

You pass the field of black lilies, and continue to walk, reflecting on what you just experienced. In your mortal life, you would feel sad, but now, every feeling seems to have left you. In front of you, the black entity walks, faster and faster, as being drawn to something more and more by each step. You feel it also, it calls to you too. You try to keep the same speed at which the entity is moving. And then all of a sudden, it stops. You go again beside it, and you are struck by another familiar scene, a field of white roses. As you get close to it, together with the entity, small spherical white shapes start falling down, they are avoiding you. But not the entity that is your guide. He stretches the palm of his black hand, and a spherical white shape drops on it, making a round movement, almost dancing like it is happy to see him. He then clenched his fist, and the white spherical shape vanished from its hand.

“This is the place where you….”

“Yes, this is the place. In this place, I have shed my compassion and love for life. This is the place where in my mortal life, I embraced the white and cold reality of being alone without my angel with blue eyes. But half of my soul back then did not completely embrace the cruel black. It was just like it was already owned by my angel, and did not want to leave me. Even so, I resented all the feelings that I had, letting only hate and agony grow within me.”

“What happened to you after you did this?”

“I will show you at the end of our journey, we must continue to move forward in the “right direction” that you chose. There is not much left to walk, only one more encounter remains.”

The Song of the River

As you walk and pass the field of roses, you look behind to see the beauty of that place once more, and the light that surrounds it. You wish you could have stayed longer, but your guide did not want to linger very much in that place. It was his mortal curse and you understand that even for an entity without any feelings, maybe the remembrance of it woke something inside him. You continue to walk in silence, and not before long, do you stumble upon a river. Beyond it, you see what seems to be a shape in the distance, but you are too far to determine what it is. The guide stops by the edge of the river and turns towards you.

“We have arrived at your last test, young soul”, tells you the black entity.

“What test are you talking about? What do I do?” you reply to the entity.

“You must pass the river, and reach the other side of it.”

“Just that? I think I remember how to swim so it should not be very hard.”

“You don’t need to swim it, as the river is not very deep. It will only become deep if you will resent it, but even so, the currents here are strong, and they have their own mind. You must prove yourself to them before you will be able to pass and have access to the other side.”

“What must I prove? Is there anything left for me to prove? I am already an entity just like you, what more do I need to prove?”

“You need to prove that you are ready to let go of your past mortal life and rise towards the new destiny that awaits you. Be careful, as one fragment of doubt could mean the end of the journey, and the currents will take you and wash you away, becoming lost, just like others did before you. Let me guide you again, just like I did until now. Watch me.”

You look at the entity, paying attention as it is taking its first step into the water. It is not deep for him, just enough to cover a part of its chest. He reaches the middle of it, submerges completely and after some moments, he is up again and reaches without any effort the other side of the river. He turns towards you and gives you a hand sign to start what should be your final test. You get closer to the edge of the river, and you look at the water in front of you. The water is black, just like your new form, but there is something strange about it. You see that in black water, there are ripples of what seems to be white light undulating inside it. You take the first step into the black water, and you don’t feel anything, it is like you are walking on the ground again, but you don’t feel the end of the surface, as if you are floating in it. The lining fragment of white light is moving, ripping itself apart, to get out of your way, as it is encouraging you to continue without crossing your path. It is waiting for something, you start feeling it. It is inviting you to reach the middle of the river, where the water should reach your chest as it did to the entity. You feel a surge of something inside you, as you enter into a connection with something that you don’t quite understand yet. You push forward in the water, as you try to not let doubt reach you, trying to be sure of each step. Each step you take becomes heavier, and you start a fight to pass it. You almost reach the middle of the river, and now, the lining of white light in the black water is circling around you. You feel something is not as it should be, it is not the same experience as it was with the guide that passed before you. You reach the middle of the river, and stop, feeling you can’t take a single step, as it is beyond your power to do so. You feel as if you are stuck and you can’t move anymore. As you watch the surroundings of the water, the white lining appears to come closer to you. It becomes more restless, and without any warning, it starts to envelop your feet. You try to reach out of the water, you try to move but it has already got you. In an instant, without your own will, it submerges you. Under the water, you can’t see anything, not even the surface, as it becomes too deep and you feel that you are inside the heart of darkness itself. The only thing you can see is the white lining with a diffusing brightness. As it circles around your neck, it puts a grasp on you, pulling you desperate…and deeper. You feel the currents hitting you, making you move in all directions, and you are losing focus. You can’t help but think that you will succumb to the black deep and become lost just like the entity told you. In the last moments when you feel fatigued for the first time in your journey, you hear a whisper resonating in your mind.

“Look at you, so weak and powerless, just like in the moment of your death. Out of your own stubbornness, you chose the right side and not the left side. You chose to follow the hard path, to be more different than the rest of your kind. Just as you wanted to be in your mortal life. Why don’t you embrace the destiny that others want you to have? Why do you still fight us and you don’t want to give up? What are the reasons that make you push forward even if each step became almost impossible?”

All of a sudden, a vision comes and envelops your mind. You wake up and see in front of you what seems to be the start of your life. You see yourself from the beginning, when you were born, and your family lifts you up in the air for the first time and kisses you. You understand that this was the first blessing that was bestowed upon you after life itself. You see your friends that you had, the games you played together, and the amusement that made you enjoy life. For the first time after what seemed like an endless and emotionless trip, you feel happiness inside you again. The vision shifts abruptly, and you are face to face with the mistakes you made now. You feel for the first time what others felt when you disappointed them, you see the look on them, the one that you did not see until then because they hid it from you. You see your family being sad because of the choices and the path you took. You become conscious of every “sin” that you made, even if you wanted to or not. You are now overwhelmed by sadness and grief and you wish you could have repaired what you broke and turned back time, starting something new and giving the people in your life the happiness they deserved from you. The vision shifts once again, and now you see yourself as what you did not have time to witness before the start of your journey with the entity. You see your own funeral, as your friends and family mourn your loss for the final time. Each of them wishes for you that you find your peace, each of them forgiving the wrongs you made and taking more into account the happiness you gave them, giving you a final blessing so that your journey would be easy. The vision suddenly ends. You are back into the black deep and the voice resonates inside your mind again.

“Do you see now? This is the curse of life, this is what you have lived and what you have done. You cannot follow this path, you are powerless and useless, just like the ones that came before you.”

You feel for the first time doubt in your mind. Maybe you deserve to be lost, and maybe you deserve to be engulfed by darkness and nothingness. But without any vision, you remember how you fought for everything you had before, you remember how you faced all the pain and all the challenges. You never let them beat you completely. You remember how you fought even for the last breath, and you remember how you chose your own path, the right one.

“You have no sway over me, just like nobody had. You are keeping me in these black deeps with no use, nothing will ever change me and nothing will ever make me doubt myself.”

“You still refuse your fate and you still refuse the destiny that was chosen for you. You still do not understand.” says the voice in your mind.

“You want me to shed the memories and experiences that made me who I am, that made me choose the path I wanted to walk, you will never make me do it. I am both the good and the bad that made me what I am. And I will accept myself just like this. I have the power to start something new even if the burden I carry makes my steps heavy. I will never give up on them, they are the legacy that you have seen yourself. You are the one that does not understand”.

“And what it is I don’t understand, stubborn soul?”

“I am the master of my destiny and the shaper of my fate.”

The white lining enveloping you loses its grasp, and you feel as if the chains become weak. With a newfound strength, you break free and reach the surface again. The white lining starts to make room for you to move, almost dancing before you, admiring what you just did. Every step you take now becomes as easy as a feather carried by the wind. You take the final steps and you are out of the river, and your guide is waiting for you.

“You have made it, and you have freed yourself from the burdens that you carried. What did you learn from this?”

“Only that we must move forward, nothing will stop us anymore now.”

The Way Home

The entity looks up to the sky, it is not white anymore but grey. Something you have never seen before in your journey. With what seems a whisper that only he should hear, you do it also.

“….this is your work right?”

“What do you mean? The work of who?”

“It does not matter, young soul, maybe you will find out when the time is right. You are now ready for the end of the journey.”

As you continue to walk, you look behind you at the river and for the final time, you hear its voice in your mind again.

“May all the lights from the known and unknown realms bless you, stubborn soul.”

You nod your head in respect for what you have just learned. It does not take long, and you reach what seems to be a field, surrounded by trees. And in the middle of it, you see a black shape, irregular, almost like a crack or fissure of some kind. You can feel it is calling for you. It is time to ask your guide what is the next move.

“What is this shape we are seeing in front of ourselves?”

“It is a tunnel, a fissure between realms, do you feel ready to go to your new home?”

“My new home? What realm are you talking about?”

“You will find out for yourself when we will reach the other end.”

“Then tell me who created this realm? Who created this black light and white light that we encountered so many times in our journey?”

“Well, the Maker, everything you see is made by his hand.”

“The Maker, who is this Maker?”

“He is the Nameless One, unreachable by anyone. He sees all and pulls all the strings of fate around all the known and unknown realms. He is neither black nor white, he is beyond eternity’s understanding. He is the one that created it”.

“Well, he could at least show himself to me after everything I was through.”

“Don’t speak lightly about Him, young soul. Eternity does not have a time frame, but if it had, you still wouldn’t have enough time to understand him completely.”

“Then we will skip this for now. By the way, you did not finish what we started. After all these trials you put me through and all the journeys we made, I only know a part of you, while you know everything about me. Before we press on, I want to know how your mortal life ended”.

“Then grab my hand again, and you will see.”

You grab the hand once more of the entity that guided you until now. A vision comes to you, the one that was interrupted before. You see the boy with hate and spite in his hazel eyes, turning away from you. He left his home after he buried his parents, and followed the stars with a thirst for vengeance. Walking across the land in search of a purpose. He was greeted by what seemed to be a woman dressed in black. He approached her and looked her in the eyes. Her eyes were blue like his mother’s. She hugged him. And you could see how he fell asleep in her arms, tired of the long journey and the hate that was consuming him. He found a corner of peace in all that chaos, and he rested. He woke up, with his head on the knees of the woman, while looking at the blue sky and her blue eyes that seemed so familiar. He decided to follow the woman, grabbing her hand, feeling a kindred warmth again that made him forget for a moment the heat that he felt when his house was engulfed by flames. They walked together until a crossroads, and the woman asked him what path he wanted to choose. The boy looked into her blue eyes, and he told her he felt he should go left. The woman understood, and with a final kiss on his forehead, she departed from him. He went alone on the path he had chosen for himself. He arrived in a nameless kingdom, forgotten by time, where an endless white and cold winter had its grasp. Surrounded by unfamiliar faces, he found shelter and food once more. He went to meet with the Nameless King, all dressed in grey. He proposed he fight for him and his army, as he stared into his hazel eyes and felt the hate and the burning vengeance in his soul. Years of training passed, and the boy became a man just like a bird learns to fly. His first battle came and he was on the front line. Death was looking at him and he looked back at it with the same coldness as the steel he wielded. He never looked back and with each enemy he slayed, the thirst for blood only grew inside of him. In the heat of the battle, his madness took form, as everybody he stepped on felt it was the body of the one that killed his beloved parents and destroyed his home. Battle after battle, and year by year, he stood alone without any friends or family, facing death countless times and winning. His only reminder of them was the scars that he had over his body, just like on his soul. With each enemy he cut with cold blood, fragments of his humanity left him until he became an empty shell. The cold warrior found that his only enemy would be time itself. As the Nameless King did see that the spark of life was leaving him, he wanted him to have an end with honor, and to escape the hate that never left him no matter how many families he made suffer. He made an armor fit for him, wearing the mark of the black sun on his chest. He sent him to battle alone against a vast army. He stared once more at death, alone, and with a final roar he charged at the enemies that outnumbered him vastly. He was struck by arrows, but he ripped them from his body. He was impaled by spears but he broke them. He was cut by swords but he laughed, burning against his own fate like the black sun on his chest. There was only one more enemy left on the battlefield for him, a young boy who was shaking with his sword in hand. The boy was face to face with a demon and was not ready for that battle. As he approached, he looked into his eyes, the same hazel eyes that he had. He felt that the wounds were too great and he would not make it back to the Nameless Kingdom. The black sun was losing the fire that burned within him for countless years. He thrust his cold steel into the ground. He told the boy to finish, what countless others wanted to do. He told him to give him a clean and honorable death, more than he could have asked for after all the atrocities he has done. The boy with hazel eyes did not have the courage to do it, and started to cry, shouting he did not want to be there face-to-face with him. At that moment, he gave him a kiss on his forehead and told him that his death would be the end of the innocence the boy had in his heart. He told him that his curse must end, and must be passed in the never-ending circle of life. The boy with hazel eyes continued to refuse to do it, so the man grabbed his hand with his sword. With one powerful thrust, and with the guided hand of the boy, he pierced the black sun on his chest, as he gave the boy an embrace, telling his final words in his ears. That he hopes he will break the curse and be more powerful than he was. He fell on his knees in front of the boy, and with his final strength, he looked at the grey clouds from the sky, as the white snowflakes fell on his face. He collapsed on the ground, as death embraced him and threw over him both the black lilies and white roses.

The vision ended, and the entity once more lost its grasp on your hand.

“I understand now, did you win your peace?” you ask the entity.

“I never searched for peace. It is something hard to find for myself, and I don’t think it is fit for me, but maybe just as the boy granted me a merciful death, so will you guide me towards what this peace is, as I guided you until now in this journey. There is no need to linger here anymore, we must see our home.”

As you look at the black fissure, you approach it, and it is getting bigger, enough for you to fit inside it together with the entity. You look one more time at the sky. You look one more time at your surroundings, thanking whatever made you reach this far, and without any other questions, you jump together with the entity in the fissure.

You are carried away by what seems to be the flow of time itself. You see you are surrounded by the same particles you have seen until now, but they remain steady as you are carried away by an unknown force, pulling you harder and faster with each moment you think eternity has to offer. The particles are becoming distorted as the speed is becoming more and more powerful. After what seemed to be like mere minutes, you finally reached the end of the tunnel and arrived on the other side. You can’t see anything except pitch black at first when you exit, and a strange mist is blocking your field of view. You look at what seems to be the sky, a black sky, as the cosmos and space itself, and in it, you see what seems to be a never-ending eclipse.

” What is this place? Have we arrived where we should?” you ask the entity.

“Yes…We are home.”

“What is this home?”

As you finish the question, a deep and unknown voice resonates in your mind.

“Welcome, young soul, into the Realm of the Faceless”.

(To be continued)