He came to her, that night, as had been predicted. She awoke in a plain of black stone and salty water beneath an empty sky. To all sides, the horizon was perfect, yet the stone beneath was marred, stained by sin, yet no fault. Like red veins in black marble, the world stretched to infinity, a heart of good and evil beating in a rhythm that drove her into one direction.

When she followed that direction, she saw statues emerging from the ground, cursing their presence in this place. They were all branded, some on their forehead, some on their chest, some on their cheek. But then, she came across a being that was branded on the back, with a crown of red strokes above the head. This one did not curse, no, this one did accept and look to the distant horizon where she knew He would wait.

The other figures around that one sought its closeness, its comfort and its forgiveness. This sinful majesty exuded the air of a cycle, a cycle of sin and forgiveness, which no mortal end could free one from.

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She set out towards the centre of the hearbeat, where all sin was driven, where all wrongness came to unite. The figures emerging from the ground grew older and stretched more and more into eternity as she came closer to Him. The ground sloped downwards, at first unnoticeable, but then increasingly so, but the salty water remained the same.

She was walking up to her ankles in the salty water, then her knees, and when she finally saw Him, her hips were drenched. Further and further towards Him did the ground slope, like a funnel sucking everything down.

He knelt there, broken and faultless. He cowered in regret of something He never did, from cracks in his black stone body poured the tears of a thousand sins and His heart beat with anticipation of a punishment that would never come and last forever.

She stood before Him, salty water up to her waist and took one last step to swim before Him. Underneath His face, cradled in His broken hands, she finally understood what it meant to sin and to be punished.

She understood and she forgave Him and He forgave her.