The universe stretched around Arthur Carey like ink poured into water — vast, endless, terrifyingly beautiful. The light beings surrounded him in silence, their forms fluid and radiant. They didn’t speak, but their presence vibrated through him like ancient music.
He floated weightlessly, drifting through a black rift where stars bent and broke around invisible currents. It wasn’t a void — it was the beginning of something, and he could feel its heartbeat like the echo of a god breathing.
Then the visions came.
Shards of memory flickered around him like broken glass catching light. A throne of marble. Armies at his feet. His staff gleaming in the twilight of a dying world. The Kohinoor — not as a jewel, but a radiant pyramid of living light — pulsing like the heart of the universe.
He
