"No one knew how long the cliff standing at the edge of Dark City had been eroded by the waves. Even the reefs looked exceptionally sharp. Upon them, I could clearly see how time had shaped the wilderness. The wind had come at the wrong time. I caught a trace of something primal in it. Evaporating seawater rose through my nostrils to my eye sockets, making my eyes itch. This was how the Native Americans had retreated from the shore, never to set foot there again, just as they had thousands upon thousands of years ago. But I had nowhere left to retreat to. Like a gymnosperm swallowed by lava, I had already become a withered fossil before the volcanic ash could bury me.
The total solar eclipse of 1873 had not been an astronomical phenomenon at all. At this moment, I understood that more deeply than ever. They were more terrifying cyclical laws hidden behind nature. None of the disasters had been their intention, just as the rising and setting of the sun and moon were utterly ordinary. In some people's eyes, they were common natural disasters in a dim and terrifying world. Perhaps I was about to become one of them.
Several other investigators and I walked toward the cliff together. No one had expected that an utterly ordinary Heliopolis theological seminar would ultimately lead us here. It seemed we had been forced into this vortex, yet every person's heavy footsteps told the same story: we had willingly stood at the edge of the cliff. Just like at that very moment—the flock of birds on the horizon began to fall.
—The Mystery of Ra, John Constantine."
"You really know how to keep people in suspense." Victor held the manuscript and said, "You spent so long building things up—researching