Darkness, darkness after the light. It was as if a massive hammer made of light and sound had struck him. An overwhelming rush of sensations swallowed the last of his consciousness.
In that final moment before he lost consciousness, it was hard to tell whether he feared the unknowable fate ahead or felt relieved to escape the sight he couldn't bear.
Of course, that had nothing to do with his own will. His wishes couldn't save his vision from being swallowed by darkness. A ringing buzz replaced the layered roar of the waves, and at the cost of surrendering control over his life, he found temporary release.
Adrift in a darkness that seemed destined to last until Judgment Day, he thought of death for the first time. He thought of the meaning he'd never had the energy to consider during a lifetime of endless toil and numb routine—the kind of life where he returned to his shack at night too exhausted to think.
An existence unlike anything he'd ever seen had overturned the worldview of a soul that had spent his life going back and forth between the Salt Tide District and the harbor. His parents' faith had shaped him from childhood. When people died, Priests spoke of another world, and on the rare occasions he entered a Church, he knelt beneath its towering dome.
Brilliant light streamed down from windows pieced together with jewel-toned stained glass. How could anyone not believe the stories they heard of the heavens, when they were conveyed through such splendid materials?
Behind the figures, halos assembled from bright yellow glass marked them as beings above ordinary mortals. Below them stood gray-black stone demons, with horns curled over their heads and batlike wings growing from their backs. The devils had extra fangs in their mouths