Death is but a stepping stone, a passage through the shroud. The moment of death is a rite of passage marking the end of one journey and the the beginning of another, a path available to us at any time.
The thousands of things undone, the millions of roads not traveled, the longing and regrets; they do not die with the body. Instead they linger on and take a life of their own. They become ghosts. They become Shadows.
Trapped between this world and the next, wraiths are lost in the immortal gloom of Damnation. Held together out of pure misery, they are trapped by their past, their longings and their fear.
Many of these wraiths are the product of sudden, violent, or cruel deaths. They are bound by a sense of crucial deeds undone, of unsaid words breaking in their hearts, of a life cut short by fate. Others are consumed by a tragic longing for happiness and fulfillment denied them in life. A few are driven on by sheer bitterness, anger, or passionate ideals.
They all have some essence of meaning left to express or excise. All existence is expression, especially in the underworld, and the dead fight to survive. Clinging to whatever shreds of memory and passion they have left, they build castles out of flotsam in an attempt to keep the foul waters of Oblivion out. They are hermits and artisans, forever polishing memories until purity exerts its own small resistance against the forces of entropy.
Transcendence of an sort requires passage into the void, the very heart of Oblivion. The inner darkness of the shadow must be embraced, nihilism denied, fear spurned, and passion embraced. The past must be abandoned; the future must unfold. Those who do not grow, who cannot overcome pain, who do not feel, or who do not exalt their own existence despite the fear are swallowed whole by the darkness.
Author
Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 745889 times)