Of the next vision that came in late April, I told no one, not even Tak. Like a putrid, decaying corpse with a heart that keeps on beating through devilry or witchcraft, the village, razed to the ground by some unthinkable force, lay in a dying heap around the Maker who stood alone on what was once N’Kele square, reflecting the bloody evening sun with its bare metallic body.

Floating amid the ruins, I saw myriad contraptions I had not a name for and whose purpose I could not begin to guess. Shapes of metal or glass that not even the most skilled of our artisans could attempt, were strewn everywhere around me, abandoned, shattered, melted, or burnt. Heaps of dusty gray stone that must have once been houses, lay crushed on the ground, still taller, in their demise, than all the huts we’d ever build.

I could not conceive that Nature could have brought such devastation to the peoples who’d seemed to conquer it through their craft and knowledge. Nor could I imagine that these peoples could bring such devastation upon themselves, for if even a child in our time learns how not to touch fire, these people must have, in their wisdom, learned how not to hurt themselves.

And so, it must be God’s doing, I decided. And yet, even this conviction I soon had to abandon, when, in my wandering, I discovered the Grave. A stenching pit, perhaps larger than today’s N’Kele square and deeper than it was wide, lay brimming with bodies, old and young, frozen together into a multi-limbed apparition, its thousand eyes gazing into the sky, its thousand hands grasping onto itself like a disfigured aborted fetus. Driven by some perverse impulse, I dove inside, gliding into the depth of the Grave, learning all there was to learn from the dead, from their blackened burned bones covering the bottom, from the newer, fresher corpses that layered the top of the Grave, barely touched by rot, preserved by the freezing air to tell the stories of their recent deaths from cold and starvation. Even God, I thought, could not do that.

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I yearned to leave the vision, but forced myself to remain and explore all I could at once, so that I’d never have to return. After hours of floating amid the boundless sea of devastation, I, at last, stumbled upon life. Dressed in strange clothes, dirty, and disheveled, the life huddled under a slab of gray stone that formed a semblance of a roof. A few damp logs piled in the center of their hideout, which a woman, though casting a small flame from a mysterious device in her hand, could not set on fire. She left without a word, leaving behind a man, who struggled to cobble together a bow from a metal rod and some rags, and a baby wrapped in layers of shabby clothes that were still not enough to guard her from the cold. In half an hour, the woman came back, holding a jar, from which she poured a strange foul-smelling liquid all over the logs. To my astonishment, the logs, which were not simply damp now but thoroughly wet, sprang to fire the instant she brought her flame near. Soon, the logs crackled, whined, and popped, while the baby waved her hands in the air, trying to grasp the flame reflections dancing on the ceiling.