"Faith is to
believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you
believe." — Saint Augustine
Dan's soul burned
orangish red, swirling like oil on fire. For a moment, just a flicker,
something blue pulsed beneath the surface. Human. Fragile. Drowning.
The Confrontation
"The fuck do
you even want?" Dan's voice cracked, not with fear but with the exhaustion
of a man who'd been running from an answer he already knew.
The Crowned-Deep
didn't respond immediately. The canal pulsed around Dan—teeth glaring, patience
carved from consequences Dan had spent thirty years pretending didn't exist.
Each fracture of conscience bore a name he refused to read.
When the voice came,
it was intimate yet subtle, black.
THE CROWNED-DEEP:
"Better to drown in hell than rule in a heaven where hell is."
Dan's laugh was a
broken record. "That's not an answer, that's a riddle."
THE CROWNED-DEEP:
"I want non-existence, Daniel. I want the conversation God refuses to
have. I want Him to look at this monstrosity he birthed through seeking
worship—" (the canal convulsed, brittle tar smells, along with the taste
of Dans first kiss filling out the spaces between). "—and admit: he should
not have made suffering a requirement for love."
Marietta's Vision
Miles away, in the
ruined church at Sorrow Creek, Marietta convulsed.
"It's like...
he's being born, but the mouth is full of teeth. They're not cutting
him—they're just... there. Watching him squeeze through."
Anne Faith's face
went pale, her hand instinctively moving to her head... "Not a birth
canal. A mirror. He's seeing every choice that led him here, and the teeth are
the consequences he ignored."
Anne Faith's pendant
burned against her skin. She saw, that wine and bread filled Dan's stomach, and
turned his insides, inside—out. (sacrament of the body of the Eucharist Dan had
taken in his waking life, a Eucharist that he had eaten worthily at the time.)