All limbs felt ice cold. Kara saw faint amorphous lights writhing like worms all around her.

What is that? What’s happening? They’re phosphenes. Either my eyes are closed or I’m in darkness. I must have fainted, but I'm wide awake now. But I can’t open my eyes.

Your eyelids are crusted in blood. Try harder to open them. Hurry, or you’ll die. Fight!

Kara painfully forced her eyelids to open. She saw blood on the visor of her helmet and tasted it in her mouth. She looked around and her helmet illuminated the upper half of Chris’ body drifting next to her. Below the rib-cage his torn intestines had frozen solid in the vacuum of space. His eyes and mouth were wide open as if gasping for air. He must still have been alive a couple of seconds after the explosive belt ripped him in two.

Try to get a hold of something and work yourself towards the shining one.

I’m sorry for what I did. I loved you. I didn’t know this would happen. I’d rather just die than forgive myself. How can you still talk to me?

I’m dead, but part of me still lives within you. What you did was the only possible way to continue existence. I’ve come back to you as promised, to forgive you and lead you back into our kingdom. You’re almost at the end of the path. Don’t falter now. Hurry. You must leave before Tecumseh and Andrea get here.

Right. So I’ve totally lost my mind now. Never was a fan of that giant mind-fuck called reality anyway.

I’ll lead you to what lies beyond human reality. It can’t be explained or achieved here. There are no words that can close the distance, only your actions can do that. Hurry!

Kara gently pulled the torso of Chris close to her, then pushed it away to thrust herself towards the bright blue hyper-crystal. It now appeared to her as if having a sort of white fire burning inside it. When she caught it she noticed again how cold and numb her limbs were. Something else felt strange.

But everything is already different somehow. It’s like… I’m not really me anymore. Like I’m seeing, feeling, judging things from another perspective than my own.

Kara had the impression she was beginning to understand something, although not fully.

I promise you’ll understand everything when you’ve reached the end of the path. You must get to a certain location inside this reality to leave it.

Will you take me back into Solomon’s Song? I want us to be there again, like we were.

It will be there. Everything will be there. This universe, and all the others. Kara wondered if the place Chris was talking about is the mirror. Yes. What you think of as the mirror was the beginning, and will be the end of your journey.

How will we get there?

The shining one is an open pathway. I’m already at your destination, speaking to you through this conduit. Go with the path and you’ll be saved. We’ll be like one again and you’ll understand.

Kara was still suspicious. Who made this… path… or conduit thing… and everything else here?

The same who created the shrine and us. They made the shrine to be eternal, but you are not, at least not where you are now, not yet. You have to choose your path to save yourself, through will, and through deliberate action. This is the way we’re meant to be. You must choose now. Time is running out.

So what else would I possibly do?

Kara straddled the fiery blue flowerbud’s shaft and wrapped her arms around it, aligned with one of the three sepals so she wouldn’t slide off.

Come with me.