Bright, shining, like precious metal. A cosmic mystery, embedded in the center of the universe. I reach out to touch it, to be one with its magic. But like similar magnetic poles, it repels me, pushes me back whenever I get close.
“You can look,” it taunts, “but not touch.”
But I’m unable to look away. Within its boundless folds is something vital, something necessary for my soul’s survival, and it is my mission, my life’s work to get at what’s inside.
Like King Arthur quests for the Holy Grail, I quest for Truth. It can repel me all it likes, but I will never take my eyes off the Light. It calls to me with its divine and supernatural song, a chorus of elysian notes that has long since conquered my weary, downtrodden heart.
For now, it will remain out of reach. But I know that in the fullness of time, my quest will end. This mortal shell will fall away. The universe will unfurl to reveal its cosmic fruit—immortal, transcendent—and on that day, my soul will rush forward, swelling with anticipation, and be one with it at last.
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I can feel my spirit return to dry, dusty bones; I can feel the mass of the Earth itself rush forward to fill the vacuum left behind by my long ago demise, to reconstitute a body that hasn’t known life since the world was just a ball of glowing primordial slag.
I was the beginning of all things, and I suppose it is fitting that I should also be the end.
For ages the world has spun, making endless revolutions around the sun like a dog chasing its tail. A shining cosmic pearl, it was yet tarnished by war, famine and disease, so that upon its blighted, darkened surface, life of every kind has wallowed in suffering without end, never capable of perceiving the supernal mysteries that have underpinned the world’s foundation since its very inception.
This darkness was inevitable, of course, even necessary; it’s been the fire that’s kept the world in a perpetual state of motion and change. But it was never the purpose for which the world was built, and now that time itself draws to a close, I am ready to rise from the ground and render judgement.
Behold, I will plunge my sword of fire deep into the Earth, until it splits down the middle like an overripe gourd. Mountains, oceans, whole continents will be swallowed and destroyed, so that the world in its newest incarnation will be nothing like the old.
I will separate the wheat from the chaff; the righteous from the unrighteous. The Earth will burn in one final fire, the hottest and brightest it has ever known, and the impurities wrought by wicked hands will be incinerated, so that the world can be made forever pristine and without blemish.
Those of you who have done no harm, rejoice, for when your wailing has ended and the Earth has been remade, you will find eternal rest. Those of you who have caused great pain, beware, for my wrath is everlasting, and the agonies you experience today are but a preview of the horrors yet to come.
Prepare yourselves, for the world you have always known will pass away.
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