"Why do you think I'm cursed?"
"Well, if you weren't, you wouldn't be in the Darkness right now," the voice snapped, pure irritation sharpening each word. I was already getting used to it. Annoying.
"In what kind of Darkness?" I shot back. My patience was definitely thinning. I knew it, I could lose it any moment.
"Am I whispering to the wind? What a stupid creature!" This time it truly crackled with frustration. "In the Darkness! The Darkness. The Great Darkness itself! Are you completely dumb or just pretending? Don't you know what Darkness is?"
Of course I knew. Everyone did.
The Darkness. The borderland between the Abyss and the River of Oblivion.
A place no one had ever crossed and returned from. Or at least we'd never heard otherwise. Because that place was spoken of like a myth, anyone who entered it became exactly that: a myth.
If I'd died normally, I should've gone to the River. Maybe crossed to the other side. Unlikely. No celestial welcome committee would've been waiting. I was dust in their eyes.
So maybe the River would've absorbed me, sent me to Purgatory for demons to peel apart my sins. But I didn't think I was that bad. Not from what little I remembered.
Or perhaps I should have simply… waited. Just another lost spirit in the endless queue, awaiting judgment. Eternity in the unknown.
But Darkness?
How had I ended up here?
Because of a curse?
"Well, finally, you started to think!" The voice's sudden approval startled me. "Oh! If my praise helps you think faster, take more of it. I have plenty. But I beg your dumbness, vanish! Decide your Fate already!"
Decide my Fate?
In the Darkness?
That was new. Again new. New riddle. New problem.
Well, I needed to understand what had happened first. Then decide anything.
"So figure it out," the voice groaned. "I'm tired of watering the desert."
"How do you expect me to do that?! I barely know who I am or what I did my entire life! And now you want me to decide my Fate? Do I even have one?" I wasn't used to feeling angry, but right then, it flared like a forgotten instinct.
"Oh Celestian Stars, what a stubborn creature! Helping you is like teaching a phoenix to knit. Beg me for help already!"
"Sure, sure. My humble plea is yours…" Not that I wanted to. But fine. Let me go with this ridiculous flow. "Imagine me on my deepest knees, praying for a miracle so the Great Absolute may bless you with enough enlightenment to shine upon my pitiful existence."
"Miserable. Pathetic. No pride, no willpower… what garbage."
He had to be joking.
Those exact words… I'd heard them before. The same tone. The same cold contempt the monks used when they thought I wasn't listening. And the same unpleasant, tightening feeling.
"Understand how you died and where the curse came from," the voice insisted. "You didn't just drown in a knee-deep pond, did you?"
"That's what I need to do now?" But was I really expecting a decent answer? At least I hoped so.
"Exactly! It's a hint, you fool. A hint! Your refusal to learn is like a scholar ignoring a celestial library."
"Oh, a hint. Very well…"
"What do you remember before plunging into the Darkness? What happened while you were still alive, I mean your final moments?"
"Last moments… last moments…" I repeated. It did sound logical. Uncomfortably logical.
"You really don't remember what happened before you came here?" the voice pressed.
The irritation had thinned; something like confusion or caution crept into its tone now.
But… what had led me to those icy waters I still felt tingling on my imaginary fingers?
And why had I woken up here?
"YOU REALLY DO NOT REMEMBER ANYTHING?"
*Thx for reading.