Still falling, I soar through the strange, seemingly endless tunnel of meat surrounding me that winds left and right in gentle shifts and turns. But somehow always without touching my body or breaking my fall, save for the sparse grazing of dead fingers reaching for me as I pass by. Where am I going? I fall further still, this place reminds me of limbo. But rather than floating, suspended in the ether I simply descend further and further. It is pitch black now, it is impossible to see anything. Only the sound of rushing winds past my ears keeps me aware of my descent, only the sensation of the gale pressing against my face as I spiral downward into some new nothingness reminds me that I am still alive.

  The tube that is the serpent has ended now, having led to some deeper, darker pit that I now hurtle downward throughout, my body spinning wildly as I crash. How long have I been falling? I don’t know. How long does this go on for? I don’t know. But all the while I sink deeper and fall further and wonder as I do so, is this really where the path leading up begins? From all the way down here? Surely at this rate I’ll end up at the very bottom of the dungeon again. Surely at this r-

I die, having reached the bottom suddenly.

  As if by some great cosmic joke, my spirit leaves my shell and blasts up and off to that place so high up once more. In a flash of an instant I pass everything by, everything I saw and was in this last life is left behind myself to fester with the rest of the bad-water, as I breach into limbo and am nothing once again, only a spirit that feels the sensation of being watched. By who? By what? I don’t know.

  Icy finger wrap themselves around my core with little to no delay now and I feel my soul compressing under the weight of its crushing, witchy grasp that smashes me down into a fine paste so that it can jam me back in to some new thing as I am rebor-

Purity.

  Fire represents purity. The purity of the purge. Of burning. Everything turned to ash. Ash is pure. It is simple. Dust. Dust. Everything is returned to dust and in that, there is purity, there is beauty. No judgments, no malice, no disgusting bile and glibber. There is only the sanctity of cinder. Only fire. Only ash. No ice can grow where the scorch has left its mark, no eyes can see what the blaze has consumed. There is only fire and then, after that, there is nothing, just as it should be. Just as it should always have been. Erasure. Closure. Quiet. It will be dark and it will be quiet. It will be perfect.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Think if you have a fallen tree in the forest. The trunk, it becomes infested with worms, with maggots. With rot. With fungus. They all grow inside of it. They eat the dead flesh and nest inside of the dry, flaking skin of the tree. It’s disgusting. But now think about a fire. A grand, all-consuming fire that swallows the dead tree whole. It swallows the maggots. The rot. The fungus. It swallows it all and it makes it into a single, homogeneous ash. Pure. It is cleansed. All of the secrets of the tree, all of the little whispers, those corruptions shared with another, all of them are burnt and made to nothing. All of the eyes are shut.

  I waft around in the small pit of coals as I watch the things move around myself. The unclean. The wet. That’s fine. That’s fine. Everything returns to ash eventually. Returns to dust. Everything. Be it by fire or by time. Everything. Fire needn’t burn fast. Fire can creep and it can take in the dead of night. Everything burns eventually.

  Looking down to my hands I admire them. They are scorched clean. There is nothing left. Look at them. Aren’t they perfect? Aren’t they so light? So free from burden and sin? No clothes. No blemishes. No tarnish. Only blackened bones, cooked by the raging heat of the pit. I look up, my bones never moving. They are mine, but I have left them. I simply stay near them now to admire their purity. The fire isn’t hot enough here to burn bones, which is a great sadness. But at the same time, it makes me happy. Because I get to see the slow smolder. How long will it take for my bones to crumble to ash in this heat? What a delight. What a delight. I rise up, my hands stroking my face. Neither of which really exist. I am nothing but fire. Fire and soul.

  Fire shifts around myself as the burn of the orange flame licks the spectral entity that I am, as I pull free from my old body. It begs me to stay. To let it burn me too. I wish I could, I wish it would. But there is work to be done. There is purity in work, you know? In the pursuit of a goal. There is a fire there too, a fire inside that burns just as hot. But the fire is different. The fire inside. I look at my hands that burn so bright and so hot, but not with a red intensity. The fire is dark. It is black and toxic fumes rise up from my body, tufts of poison smoke that rise up high above myself. Deadly vapors that obscure any eyes that look my way. Unclean things. Unclean eyes. They are wet. They are disgusting.

  A howl leaves my body and I begin to move away from my skeleton, as the last strand of my old being that connected me to it is severed and the string of fate connecting us pulled awry. There is no churning metal here. No rushing water. No flowing magma. No breezy forest filled with sunlight. There is fire and there is smoke and it is beautiful. It’s so warm. I feel so warm.

I wish I had something to burn.