The dark shoreline spread out on either side of him, black sand stretching out as far as he could see and farther than even that, he knew. Infinite. Ageless. Something that had been here since life first stepped out into the universe, took its first breath. The waters did not ebb and flow, for there was no tide. The ocean was still and calm, stars reflected in the water but not from any identifiable source, as the sky overhead was dark and lifeless.
Occasionally a star would fall from that dead sky, shooting for the waters below. There was no splash when it collided, no explosion, the light would just sink into the depths to join the others. This was where the journey ended, he knew. Where life came to rest. Perhaps it looked different for other people, but for him it had always been this. This endless sea of stars.
He knew there were others on that shore somewhere, things like himself who were not allowed to pass the Veil, who lingered on the span between life and death. He'd tried, numerous times, to step into those obsidian waters and he hadn't been able to ever place more than a foot in it before the water would recede. A clear message; this is not meant for you.
So he sat and he watched the stars fall. The honorable and the wicked, the old, the young. Those who had been found worthy of death and embraced it and those who had feared it most sincerely. This was the gift they all shared in, the one that had been guaranteed the moment they'd been created. It was a gentle darkness that embraced all, that gave peace at the end. It was the final act of love the universe could offer.
He knew somewhere in that endless sea was Tavien. Was Elenria. Was Izlynn. Was Al’arien. He knew that the sea had been made bigger by his hands. Sometimes he imagined he could pick out specific stars, that he remembered their faces or voices. Their laughter or their rage or their begging or their screams.
Perhaps sitting here was his punishment, perhaps this was what the universe had known from the beginning. That he was unnatural, he was a snag in the weave of the world that would be forced to watch, time after continuous time, to only ever be allowed to stare at the gift that had been denied him. To watch those he had loved go on without him. To know that they would never come back.
That he would always be sitting here, alone, until there were no more stars to fall.
