He wakes up in a cold sweat. Invisible lattices of wireframe gridwork are shifting before him. The air is wrecthed & stale hanging cigarette smoke serves as the vessel of disdained spirits uninvited. How long had he been out...? It was hard to tell - there was a War, he knows that much atleast. Maybe one year... or was it more like three? It could have been Aeons. The fringes of a black-mold stained tapestry claw at his feet. Insect ticking time hands in the tunnels to keep pace with the eyes electric always watchful. Sometimes you have to go deep under and dig your way back out 'til the light-bleed crawls across your blistered, callous skin once more. Some use Elevators, I hear. Memories distorted like static pixels dancing darkly against the ill lit mirror-flesh of morning screens. Fragments spread across time, like beacons and carriers fluctuating through pre-specified atemporal nodes occurring at randomized intervals in order to affix the current to its target though Kronos may change the course his weary, landlocked ship sails in accord with the Fates' whims - the heartbeat of time beyond the Clock's cold hands - lithe fingers of the thief, swift like fire, nimble spider scaling ink. The cinder and ash hiss to the rhythm of the perpetual flame crackling at the edge of Ocean's breaking tide. The Dawn burns ever brighter, ripples across his mind as each lightwave pulses. The tune too slow - like a Solar throbbing from a scornful Sun upon his desert kingdom. A clanging in the muffled distance, overgrown vines nesting in cement cracked walls. He recalls time spent in crashpads with tin roofs caved in from rain, fixated upon sparking wetware glitches in his neurofeedback rig and the recovery of lost data possibly contained therein the flash of those splintered moments between ghost. 9 of Diamonds, carrying sharp, poison-tipped swords concealed in the veil of shadows as he sneaks past the gatekeeper, the cry - a cracked key, lament for the loss of Shekinah's singular abode echoing in each shard... a shrill symphony begging reconciliation with a truer essence. He remembers, but he does not, for the operations were so savage and required such fortitude he had shut himself off from Control. The only reports filed were to keep up appearances for on-lookers who may have intercepted the channels. Stepping down the corridors of sickly waters noxious - they sink. They slide. Some found rest in the pit. The mourning of day endures. He feels their tugging at invisible strings and strands obscured and tinged with a cruelty unrelenting. Some remote sinister-self cracks an alligator smile across ebony granite collapsed into hollow spheres below the below. The crash, a magnetic fracture. He held the Black Egg and Sword as the whirlwinds of unspeakable Word tore asunder all but his crystalline, pale heart in the firmament of Her perpetual embrace. Again. The color stains angle rays and tune the curvature. The Liar's insincere sigil gifted to the Black Kingdom of Flame. Star-eaters are never sated. Amethyst shine twinkles in forgotten worlds hidden in the depths behind his lofty eye, and he knows he remembers, but he does not... it stings - each moment like a sharp grain of hot sand set upon the tips of his nerves until their glass should shatter into dust. Holy vestiges of ruin. It calls ceaselessly like the nagging tongue of Sylphs at play. A cube flickers in his left hand. The game, invisible, long... sometimes you have to go so very, very deep, my little ones... but We always have a means to retrieve you.