The frozen lake cracked beneath his feet.
He no longer knew how long he had been walking there.
The cold, sharp wind cut through the skin of his face like a knife slicing through a dry sponge.
The opaque sun was the only landmark he had to orient himself.
Through the thick mist, it served as a lantern, obscured by a thick veil of frost, pointing onwards like a beacon beckoning him home.
His eyelashes had crusted together like blades of grass in winter’s morning dew. He could barely keep them open.
Step by step, he had walked for days without pause, slurring his words to himself in a tired mantra of unintelligible mumbling. They no longer soothed him the way they once did.
He had to go on.
At times, he would imagine himself walking on the other side of the surface. Beneath the ice.
He would imagine that he was under the waves, in the cold currents flowing beneath his feet.
He would think of the storm grasping him, freeing him from the resistance of burden. He would float weightlessly, like milfoil woven through the solemn drift of the water.
He would imagine the thunderclouds high above him disappearing, their threatening bolts of lightning no longer crashing in his mind.
He would dream of the endless calm death would bring.
The void.
The cold.
But he would also think of the stars.
And how they shone high above him, freckling the night sky with wild, lustrous splendor.
The rare treat came when the mist would fade, and he could finally see the heavens above.
The moon would take the sun's place, completing their dance in the Aether—a dance they performed without a song anyone could hear but him.
He heard the way the winds sang their melodies to the world, bristling through the treetops like fingers combing through a horse's mane.
How the wolves in the hills would greet these stars too, with their eerie howls, discordant yet harmonious, fading in and out during the dusk.
However.
He wanted to forget it all.
He wanted to forget how the mountains grasped at the celestials.
How the lands curved beyond the valleys.
He wanted to forget the sound of snow.
How the world felt.
He wanted to burst through the ice and step into the void.
To walk where the living dare not trespass.
He would swim through flame and dirt.
Taste the very fruits at the dawn of life.
Awake under a tree that never grew.
He would wash life from his heart.
This longing. This yearning.
Would finally end.
Yet he walked on, hearing the frozen lake shift beneath his feet.
Singing its ghostly ballad of creaks and cracks.
The lake was a dance floor for ballet. A moonlit sonata in the cold.
A spectacle unseen by any audience.
He truly was alone.
Alone.
Alone.
But the fractures in the ice relieved him for a mere moment.
Was it truly time?
He stood still and saw the fractures form beneath him like cobwebs.
Endlessly grasping outward like invisible claws.
Disappearing into the walls of mist at the edge of his sight.
He took a deep breath, stood still, and clasped his fists.
Cold air burned through his sinuses.
His pupils flared from the sudden stimulation.
He felt his mouth freeze dry.
And then.
He was engulfed by water.
So, so cold,
that his skin went numb.
In the abrupt chaos, the waves felt almost warm to the touch.
He was shaken and thrown about while thick sheets of ice plummeted like spears into the depths.
His ears filled with the pressure of murky water clawing deep inside his brain.
His skull trembled beneath his flesh.
Soaked and heavy, he sank, watching the sun's rays break through the fractured ice.
Water bubbles encased the cascading shards sinking around him.
He was but a speck in the midst of the spectacle.
Surrounded but alone.
The violence was silence.
No one would ever know how long he had awaited this moment.
Slowly, he embraced the unfolding of death.
The days he had walked collapsed into mere seconds, and in those seconds, he was hurled into the abyss.
An abyss like starlit skies.
Serene and cold.
Beautiful and arcane.
Eldritch and untold.
The light faded, and the ice floe returned to the surface.
He was encased in a liquid tomb.
Cold and alone.
Eldritch and untold.
His grave went unmarked, much like his travels.
Forgotten and lost.
In search of answers unseen by the living.
The sun still caresses his unknown monument to this day.
Above, it dances still with the moon.
And every night, when the mists gather once more over the waves.
He watches them sway from his cradle of milfoil and eelgrass.
Eternally at peace, his empty shell lies at the basin’s bottom.
Dancing with them high above.
Entangled and shrouded by leaves and mud.
While his mind wanders endlessly through death.
Beyond, where the living cannot tread.
Enriched are the answers, the mysteries of the end death silently keeps.
With dead, frozen lips, the end emerged from the void.
It greeted him with a kiss.
And swallowed him whole.
Beyond, toward the stars far beyond.
Behind the sun and the moon.
Beneath the surface of life.
Cracking beneath his feet.
There were nebulas of color there.
And a current unknown.
Dancing like eelgrass.
In the vastness of space.
Where cosmic thunderstorms flickered.
At the edges of the horizon.
Where stars gazed like pupils in the peerlessness of the dark.
A depth without bottom.
Cradling his soul in the vast beyond.
Beyond, where the living cannot trespass.
Beyond, toward the stars far beyond.
In an abyss of colorful space.
Beyond the cracked ice shards.
Beyond the serene and the cold.
Beyond the beautiful and arcane.
Into the eldritch and untold.
He had to go on.
When the frozen lake cracked beneath his feet.
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