He can’t see, and he can’t hear. For moments he is lost, a shard of rain. He doesn’t remember how he got here. He can’t recall anything before passing through, before he was trapped in the membrane between worlds. Memories stretch across his path like a trail of steam. He sees the chamber of dead girls, and he feels dark oil swallow him up. Black smoke envelops his eyes. He drowns in an effluvia of souls. Where am I? he wonders. There is no answer. He drifts like a kite from unexplained heights. Slowly, he regains some sense of the shattered landscape around him. He is back at the crater again. Always back at the crater. There is no escaping the inevitability of that return. It happens over and over again, a shard of time that replays like a broken machine. He hears hundreds of voices eclipsed by the sheer and dismal force of that descent. The sky turns black, scorched by flames that fall from the shattered sky. He sees a crack in the dome of night, sees the riders on their black ships.
