Death beckons, I feel the cold touch of its hand as if the sensation is an inevitability I cannot escape from. As these words are read Death and I may have already parted for the next realm. Whichever realm that may be. Who could know?
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Vibe music to listen to while reading. It's just ambience, no words.
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I stand upon a grey shore and the tide begins to slowly ascend against the once dry sand. The water beckons me to return to a place I do not know but somehow feels like home. An ache in the mind that urges me to finally rest. It feels like a heavy weight. The kind one feels right before slumber.
The tide is warm around my bare feet. The soft roll of an endless ocean's waves promises a quiet my mind has not known before.
All that is fades around me. My eyes grow heavy. In the faded vision of my failing sight I can see the outlines of my people, Ilythirii. They rise from the water arms outstretched. Ancient robes flowing down from ethereal forms. I can hear them call to me. Tell me it is time to rest. It is time to be quiet. They call me sister.
The touch of my people is warm upon my skin as they guide me deeper into the waves. I look back and see that Death watches from the shore. He has guided me home. He is expressionless as he observes and I cannot help but find a fondness. How many I have given to him before now.
As the water rises past my chest I feel my broken breastplate fall from me. It feels as if I have shed the weight of a thousand boulders. My metal greaves fade. My cloak. My blade. The water rises to my chin and the light whose source I cannot see begins to dim as my eyes lower beneath the warm water.
The water is like the touch of a family member. Familiar and soft. Carrying with it a bond that cannot be spoken. A wordless promise of kinship that can only be felt in the soul but never uttered. Far too deep is it, too primal, the words of a mortal tongue could never convey the feeling accurately.
I feel my hair rise in the water above my head. As if the strands reach to escape. Like a drowning person might struggle to keep their head above the waves. But they do not escape and instead follow me into the depths. I sink and breathe in. Water fills my lungs. It is warm and I do not struggle.
There is no air now. There is no effort. What once was an eternal sensation of a beating heart has stilled. My mind manages to carry on if only for a moment. My red eyes open. I feel my corpse now weightless amongst the waves as I am pulled deeper into an eternal ocean. Still the hands of my kin guide me but they too begin to fade.
Darkness begins at the perimeter of my vision. The light from above no longer reaches me. I try to breathe but cannot. I surrender. At last, defeated.
My ears are filled with nothing. The last of my vision parts and all goes black. I feel the flicker of my flame of life waiver and then go out. Like the absence of flame I become smoke. I become nothing. I disappear into the endless ocean. All I was and desired to be fading into an infinite tide.
Is this all there is in the end?
I am now the endless tide. There is no thought. No feeling. No presence. No desire. There is no ambition nor pain. There is no tragedy nor triumph. There is no victory. No defeat. There is no love, there is no betrayal. No tears, no warmth, nor even any cold.
There are only the endless rolling tides. A grey ocean against a grey sky. Grey waves rolling against grey sand. What little contrasts exist seems there only to mock what once was full of life. In this place, there is nothing.