The Falling Die
The heavenly strains of Raoul and Christine's love song floated across the terrible emptiness to where Erik stood on the edge of his small kingdom, where glorious power met unrelenting iciness. His mind screamed that this could not be happening, and his heart begged him with a desire beyond endurance to throw himself into the cold waters and swim after the young couple. But his throat couldn't make the sounds he wanted so badly to vivify, kept inside the agony he wanted to voice to the world above and below. His eyes burned as he watched them sail away, but he refused to close his eyes, knowing that if he did, he would wake up screaming in the darkness.
"Say you'll share with me each night, each morning…"
The words, brilliant as sunrise, fell upon his ears as Christine turned around to gaze at him. In another time, she might have been saying those sweet words to him. But as she wrapped her arm around Raoul's back, it further etched the truth deeper. Besides echoing Raoul's love for her, she was singing to Erik the truth of what would never be.
The realization hit him as their eyes locked, moving him enough to speak.
"You alone can make my song take flight…"
These words had been his love song to her, the mantra of his hope, and now his words of farewell. The overwhelming desire to run crashed down upon him at that instant. Farewell to Christine, to Raoul, to Madame Giry, to Andre and Firmin, and the world at large…
Blinded by his devastation, he turned away and strode over to his mirrors, his morbid comfort and his source of agony. Crying out his farewell, he picked up a nearby candlestick and, hesitating only to tighten his grip on it, smashed the mirror in front of him. Glass flew outward in all directions as he pounded his silent cry of loss into all the mirrors. Pieces cut into his hands, making them bleed unconcernedly as he was swallowed by grief and pain.
He knew he had found the secret passageway when the backing of the last mirror shattered, revealing a narrow corridor of absolute blackness—his path to follow. Courageous enough to look back one last time, he turned away from the world he had known since childhood, his head releasing the curtain back into place as he made his way into the infinite darkness.
He could not breathe, so he could not cry. A new phase of his life had begun with the shattering of the mirrors and the exposing of the secret corridor. Whether this journey would end in life or death, heaven or hell, had yet to be seen.
I've let her go and she's gone. She cannot make me cry, cannot make me ache, cannot hurt me anymore…
I can only beg that Heaven will unite us together again…