This is death.
His name still remains forgotten. All names were to remain forgotten and unknown, except for the name of this place...The Dark Valley, a space in the Netherworld where he had been since...how long? How long had he been here, trapped in by the high mountains of black dust, swallowed up by the sky with no stars?
Only death is true now. The Mistress spoke. Her voice was made of softness and sadness, although she was a form of twisting darkness.
Look at what your sins have brought you. The Mistress whirled about his head. Death is the only reality for you. It is your only truth. She swam down past his shoulder, and spread out above the dark grass of the dead field. You are to remain here in this valley, until your two selves can be rejoined.
His two selves? What did that mean?
The Mistress ascended into the midnight sky with no moon or any other celestial light to illuminate the scene.
He did not care. Nothing existed but the darkness and the river and the smoky sky and the Mistress.
If he could remember his identity, then why he was trapped here might finally be revealed.
From the farthest shore the Mistress spoke without voice once again. You are here for atonement.
Atonement. Blood. Sins. The living essence pours out from the body at the end of life, when all sins have been committed.
"Pain is my truth. My sins are the reflection of my pain." His voice, long forgotten, uttered those words.
The twisted dead grey trees sitting high on the mountains murmured with the cold and metallic voice of an unlikely breeze.
The voice breathed...the breathing was mechanical.
The sound was not the breathing of life, but the breathing of a life that wasn't alive. But how could that be? Dead things do not breathe. But if the breathing was mechanical, then it belonged to an artificial life form. Something that never was alive, so it could never be dead.
"A machine is not man, but a man can be a machine." Once again there was the sound of his voice.
Perhaps the strange breathing had once been his as well. But he could not remember.
"Who was I?" He called out to the twisted trees and the darkling river and the looming mountains of black dust. "Tell me!"
But no one heard him. And no one could help him.