In the silent darkness, Lynn seemed to hear countless winds howling in anguish. The moment the old man gave him his answer, Lynn's mind went blank, as though a piercing noise filled his ears, making his pupils dilate violently while leaving him unable to utter a word.
The long ages rolled past, through cycle after cycle of bygone days.
His face grew ever paler, white as bone, as though the truth, stripped away layer by layer, brought him nothing but the roar of wind and empty delusion.
The old man told him a story, his head raised as though gazing toward a distant past.
As though history always repeated itself with startling similarity.
He said to Lynn,
"What exactly is out there?"
He said that long, long ago, he had discovered the truth of that world. He had always felt that everything was so unreal, so illusory, because in the age he lived in, everything was far too perfect.
Stable order, cyclical laws, boundless immortality, an unchanging future and past.
Seen from the perspective of later ages,
it had indeed been a utopia in the truest sense.
"There was no birth, aging, sickness, or death, no joy or sorrow, no parting or reunion. No new beings were born, and no existing beings died. From the moment something came into existence, it never faded, never perished."
He calmly described that world to Lynn.
People knew no distinction between youth and old age.
People had no concept of reproduction or carrying on their line.
Matter never disappeared.
Souls were never annihilated.
The entire world was like a magnificent crystal frozen in place. Within that absolute, eternal order, people lived the same lives over and over, unchanged through countless years.
"Do you know what kind of world that was?"
The old man looked