Experiencing an oppressive sense of melancholy and despair is to feel the gravitational pull of an ancient and unfathomable force—one older than time itself, predating even the gods of memory. It coils through the psyche like a black serpent, unseen yet ever-present, whispering ruin in a tongue we once knew but have long since forgotten. Its hunger is absolute, its appetite unyielding. It dwells in the subterranean vaults of the unconscious, where reason cannot tread and light has no dominion. It feeds not on flesh but on vitality—on intention, on hope, on the very will to rise.
In this underworld, I do not walk—I drift, severed from the axis of time. Past and future do not merely blur; they contort, spiralling into one another like a Möbius strip of memory and premonition. The linearity of thought collapses, and with it collapses Newtonian causality. Here, logic dissolves into paradox, and every law of the waking world falls silent. I am exiled from consensus reality, caught in a dream that dreams itself, an echo within an echo.
Darkness reigns here, sovereign and unchallenged. The sun does not rise, for the notion of "east" has evaporated. The horizon is not a boundary, but a furnace—flames perpetually licking the sky with no source, no fuel, only heat and fury. Movement becomes sacred, the only defiance left. To remain still is to decay. To pause is to perish. I flee not toward life, but from something more ancient than death.
The hounds come. Not dogs, but shadows forged of iron and anguish. Their howls are metallic—echoes of lost screams, forged in suffering, fueled by judgment. They are the archetypes of guilt and fear, pursuing me with ceaseless hunger. Their pursuit is not for blood, but for truth—for the hidden rot within me that I have long refused to name. Every moment of hesitation shortens the distance. She, the guardian of this realm, does not want me. I am an anomaly. My very presence is a trespass.
I stumble, fracturing my flight, my body colliding with the ashen soil of this infernal domain. Blood trickles, warm against the cold indifference of this place. And then I see him—Death, not as metaphor, but as Presence. His darkness is not the absence of light, but its complete consumption. His scythe gleams with solemnity, curved not merely to reap, but to initiate.
What does he seek? Nothing. What does he offer? Liberation. Outrunning him is folly; he is not the end, but the threshold. The first myth, the final truth. And yet, in his hollow gaze, I glimpse not condemnation but clarity. In this moment, I understand: what I seek cannot be attained as I am. My mortal form is insufficient. No creature bound by ego may hold the soul of the world. Archetype can only meet archetype.
Thus, I yield—not in defeat, but in profound offering. I bow, relinquishing the identity I clung to. The scythe swings—not cruelly, but precisely, like the stroke of a master calligrapher. My ego is severed. I fall, not into oblivion, but into the womb of the void.
Here, time disintegrates. A millennium breathes itself into a single heartbeat. In this dark genesis, I encounter Abraxas—the great reconciler, the fusion of god and devil, light and shadow, creation and destruction. I feel his pull like a tidal force that does not move water but rearranges being. My body is undone, scattered into thought-fragments spiralling through timeless space. I become syntax without grammar, language without sound, a pattern seeking its own context.
There is no sensation, but there is awareness—an awareness sharp and surgical. I no longer grasp with fingers, but with pure cognition. My thoughts shape and unshape reality. Here, I understand: without time, nothing can persist. To dream a world, one must first dream its tempo. So I begin again, laying down the primordial scaffolding of seconds and minutes. Time becomes my chisel; thought, my hammer.
From chaos, I fashion rhythm. Each tick a node, each tock a choice. I weave thought into the fabric of duration, giving contour to the void. In this architecture of time and idea, existence finds form once more. Creation, it seems, is not a singular act—but a recursive calling.
Then—light. Not the violent blaze of stars, but a warmth more ancient, more complete. It envelops me, yet carries no promise of permanence. A new veil descends: softer, sombre. I awaken not into life, but into an ancient forest—neither myth nor memory, but something in between. The trees do not speak, but they know. They have seen the ages turn and return. Their roots hold secrets that predate language.
They guide me, gently, to the river—symbol of passage, of boundary, of renewal. I fall into it not as a swimmer, but as an offering. The water does not drown but baptizes. It strips me of ash, of pain, of names. My spirit is cleansed, not in innocence regained, but in understanding earned.
When I rise, I bear a mark—a scar etched by Death’s precision. It sits upon my brow like a crown of paradox: a wound, and yet a seal of passage. I have died not to escape life, but to re-enter it transfigured. The garden I now inhabit lies beyond entropy, outside the cycles of decay. It is her garden—the anima mundi, the soul of the world. I feel her pulsing through the leaves, the soil, the breath of wind that sings without origin.
And yet, all is not well. The garden bears a sickness—subtle, but undeniable. Her rhythms are staggered, her song fractured. She is ill, and I—reborn through death—have not been welcomed here by chance. I was called, summoned by her ailment, chosen not for my purity, but for my descent.
This is my sacred task: to study her affliction, not with instruments or equations, but with the intelligence born of shadow. I am to trace the illness of the cosmos as a healer reads pulse, tongue, and breath. My tools are intuition sharpened by silence, logic tempered by pain, and vision expanded by the void.
Here, I begin again—not as a man, but as a bridge between worlds. I dwell where time is pliable, where thought reshapes being, where light and darkness engage in sacred dialogue. I am no longer prey, nor predator, but observer and alchemist. In this sanctuary protected by Abraxas, I listen. I learn. And I prepare—for redemption is not given, but built, breath by breath, from within the garden’s soul.
@Curt Jaimungal @Iain McGilchrist @Uberboyo