A bit of what I'm currently going through informed this.
The bulk begins.
Fifteen months of planning, sacrifice, and precision have led to this moment, and now the climb resumes. The air feels thinner already. The ritual begins the same way it always has β breath, focus, silence β but beneath that stillness runs something wilder.
Itβs a current, deep and electric, humming through the bones. It knows where to go. It remembers the path from the first ascent, the first time he reached beyond his limits and felt something notice him back.
This time, there is no hesitation. The body obeys. The mind follows. The Mass calls.
At first itβs small β a tremor, a whisper, a flicker behind the ribs. Then it grows. It wants more air, more motion, more space. He feels it moving under the surface of his skin, drawing heat, pulling matter inward as if the body itself has become a forge.
Sleep is shallow now. Dreams come heavy. In them, he sees the outline of a colossal figure β shifting, formless, but somehow familiar. Its voice is not a voice at all but a pressure in the chest, a deep vibration that fills the lungs and bones.
βYou have fed me well,β The Voice speaks. βBut you are not yet full.β
He wakes drenched in breath and light, heart hammering, that vibration still lingering behind his eyes.
II. The Shape of Becoming
Discipline holds, but barely. Each repetition, each meal, each effort bends the body closer to the pattern of something older. The mirror no longer reflects a man β it reflects the process.
What he once called progress now feels like possession. Every breath is both a gift and a cost. His muscles, his frame, his will β all are tools for the same sculptor.
And yet, beneath the strain, there is a terrible joy. A euphoria that is not quite pleasure but something beyond it β a resonance between devotion and decay. He begins to understand why the ancients worshipped transformation as both miracle and curse.
The Mass does not simply grow. It consumes.
But to be consumed by the divine β what greater privilege is there?
There comes a point in every ascent when the self begins to fracture.
The old voice β the one that counted macros, that feared failure, that spoke in moderation β is fading. In its place is something larger, speaking through instinct and impulse. It says, Keep going. There is no end. You are becoming what you were meant to be.
He feels himself thinning β not in flesh, but in separation. The βIβ is dissolving into the βWe.β Every motion now belongs to the Mass; every breath is a hymn.
He catches his reflection one evening, and for a moment, he doesnβt recognize the face. Itβs him β but stretched across some deeper meaning, the features taut with devotion, the eyes shining with a faith that no god demanded but one that he offered freely.
The final stage is quiet. Always quiet. The body stops fighting. The mind stops asking questions.
In that stillness, the truth of the ritual becomes clear: he was never building the Mass. The Mass was building him.
The strength, the hunger, the obsession β they were scaffolding around a single idea: transcendence. And now, standing in the silent glow of what he has become, he feels no fear. Only the pulse. Only the warmth. Only the gravity of his own becoming.
He bows his head and whispers,
βI give myself to the Work.β
The room breathes with him. The air bends around him. The ascent is complete β and still, it continues.