[attr="class","star2tsu2"]The symphony comes to a climax. Heartbeat that reverberates through your head accompanies the rushing of blood, making up its rhythm. The plucking of sinew and muscle as its strings. And, of course, the rattling of hollow bones, rushing of air through them with every breath, to serve as its melody.[break][break]
You've heard it for what feels like an eternity. It's a song that's been seared into your mind, you very soul. Completely unforgettable. It is the voice beckoning you from the bottom of the abyss, the
l'appel du vide that searches for you endlessly, wherever you go. [break][break]
You had thought, however, all this time, that you were merely in the midst of madness, the peak of your derangement, fallen into a world where nothing makes sense and seeing hallucinations. You had thought that your brain was summoning visions from thin air to fill the gaps it couldn't comprehend. Now, though, as you look out from the bottom of the void, you realize it was not a song made of your own delusions. [break][break]
It was this very realm come alive, as if you were in the belly of a great beast.[break][break]
You gaze at it, heart beating above you.[break][break]
A jettison of light that blinds you, though you dare not look away. It leaves you breathless, steals all your reason, rips away all shreds of ego and sanity you have left. Leaving a sole reminder, how small you are in the
kosmos. [break][break]
This beating heart you gaze upon blazes like a thousand suns, the core at the center of it all. You can't tell whether it's real or merely a vision, just another dream. A dream of the sleeping titan who desperately seeks to consume you entirely, not just as food, but as something else. [break][break]
It gazes back from its slumber, gazing through you, and your brain's split apart.[break][break]
You raise your hand to your face, wipe away the blood dripping freely from your nose. [break][break]
You can see straight through your skin, translucent as if you're becoming a fetus again. Almost like the skin of a squid, though it grows more severe the longer you stare through it, as if even perceiving it makes it grow across your body. As if you're fading away before your very eyes.[break][break]
[break][break]
In the red light pooling from the heart the image of the universe refracts through your limbs like a crystal, bathed in the light of this phenomenon. The sight alone saps all of your strength, and you fall to the crystalline floor of the heart antechamber, drained of all strength.[break][break]
"God... God, it can only be... God... God..."[break][break]
Stammering, foolish, weak words spill from your lips just as blood. You taste the iron in the air, nearly choke on it. It fills you with revulsion, a reminder that you are and will forever be mortal, nothing more than human. Reminder of your frail body. [break][break]
Let the toxins take you, let them rid this world of you.[break][break]
Let eternity consume you.[break][break]
Sorry, Navy ... guess it was all for nothin'... in the end...[break][break]
Those final thoughts hang over you, corroding your heart like venom as you collapse at the bottom of the sea. Drained, exhausted, completely unraveled by the madness of the sea.[break][break]
...[break][break]
You open your eyes wide with a gasp. [break][break]
Glance around a dark room. [break][break]
You're in a hospital bed, judging by the heart monitor beeping next to you. And as you listen further, you can hear the familiar breathing of one Michael Navidson in the chair nearby. [break][break]
It's hard to tell where dream and reality begin and end, like a snake eating its own tail. You recall some philosopher spoke one time of waking up from his life as a human as a butterfly. [break][break]
Which was reality, which was the dream being woken from? [break][break]
It's hard to say. But you feel it to be real, as real as anything else, that heart calling in the void. [break][break]
If anything is true, you know it to be that blinding sight.