1 Prologue

'The darkness, an omnipresent darkness, was as boundless as the cosmos themselves, stretching infinitely in every perceivable direction. A void untethered by the mundane limitations of space and time enveloped me, its inscrutable expanse robbing me of any sense of direction or relative position. This vast abyss was all there was, and I was adrift within it, purposeless, abandoned to its silent immensity.

Time, once a persistent nag in the corners of my existence, had lost all meaning, its tick-tock rhythm drowned in the absence of observable change. I had no clue how long I had been marooned in this black sea of nothingness. Centuries could have passed, or maybe less; time had become an abstract concept, as substantial as the void itself. I might have been lost in this emptiness for mere seconds, and yet the gnawing sensation of countless millennia hung heavily upon my existence.

Regrets, those bitter pills of past mistakes, were few in my introspective exile. Perhaps, I pondered, I was deserving of this spectral suffering, an appropriate atonement for my past life. And yet, amidst the barren landscape of my consciousness, one regret clawed its way into focus, its persistent echo reverberating through my being with an almost physical pain.

I missed it... my progeny, my offspring, the fruit of my existence, whom I had not had the privilege to see, to hold, to watch as they blossomed into life. An unquenchable longing filled my void, a yearning that might have been the catalyst for change, the beacon of repentance, had I considered it before stepping onto the path that led to my downfall. A path now lost in the rearview mirror of my existence, replaced by the boundless, cold void.

But lamentations and regrets have no currency in this infinite desolation. All I could do was to continue my solitary journey, an ethereal specter condemned to the undulating sea of this black abyss. My existence was now a perpetual drift, eternally aimless, devoid of destination, swallowed by the relentless, unending darkness.

In the emptiness of the void lies a lone figure, clad in chains binding him forever to himself, forever moving, forever floating and lost in the vastness of nothingness. Thrown in for crimes and atrocities that have shaken the world he was thrown out of to its core, forever affecting it for the rest of time. Yet beyond all those atrocities the man seemed sad about his recent thoughts, and yet unknown to him someone was listening.

Out of the perpetual darkness appeared a great flash of light parting the darkness like Moses parting the red sea, a figure made of light and stars appeared, indescribable to the mortal man, yet the chained man seemed to know exactly who and what this light was.

The man yelled with great anger and hate, like an inferno let loose "Father! Why have you shown yourself? Have you come to torture me, mock me?"

Nothing. The light was silent, no words were spoken, and the silence that had once ruled the abyss returned, but was soon broken by the man. "DAMN YOU, SPEAK!"

And with a flash of light the chained man disappeared and the light was all that was left in the void of darkness.

"May you learn what it means to walk among the ones you once cursed and hated, to be chained to the mortal plane, suffer like you made those who have suffered by your hand, my son."