It was a dark sky.
Darkness was the world's very tone, as if every inch of space had been filled with darkness as its origin.
The vast black expanse seemed cloaked beneath a sky even darker than darkness itself. Countless enormous, pitch-black stars drifted beneath it.
On one such enormous star, a young man walked slowly through the darkness.
His attire resembled a monk's. Beads hung from his neck and hands, but each bead had been forged from a dark star.
The dark stars forged into prayer beads did not seem entirely dead. From each star-bead came endless sounds: wailing, whispers, rejoicing...
He was like a monk of profound discipline, silently turning his prayer beads. Whenever his fingers passed over one, the sounds within it fell silent.
He wore a simple black robe, and no shoes. He seemed to have nothing on him but that robe and two strands of beads.
He walked across darkened soil, waded through a pitch-black sea, then approached a forest of black trees.
Every tree in the forest was immense, rising from the Dark Giant Star and stretching upward, as if joined to the entire dark sky.
The young man stood before the thickest tree. He remained silent for a very, very long time. It seemed that space vanished in response to his silence, and time drifted away.
Silence seemed to possess some ineffable power. The entire giant tree fell.
Then that power of silence split the tree open and hollowed it into a coffin.
The young man remained silent. Suddenly, the Dark Giant Star beneath his feet cracked soundlessly, turning into a skyful of black clouds. They shifted shape, compressed and drawn together, until they became a piece of black firewood.
The black firewood entered the coffin.
From beginning to end, the young man