II. The Waiting
He did not awaken to fire.
He awakened to awareness.
And awareness did not let him rest.
There was no ground beneath him, yet he did not fall. No sky above him, yet he felt watched. Others appeared and were gone in ways he could not measure. There were no clocks, but duration pressed.
At first he believed he was being spared.
Then he understood.
He was being kept.
Waiting did not feel like suspension.
It felt like being held inside a question that would not resolve.
Self-murder.
The word did not echo.
It remained.
He tried to defend himself — not aloud, but inwardly.
I meant to protect them.
I feared what they would do.
I gave myself so others would not burn.
The defenses did not vanish.
They thinned.
The longer he remained, the less certain his motives felt.
Had he trusted God?
Or had he trusted his own conclusion more?
He began to see his final act from outside himself.
A man who decided history required correction.
A man who decided divine timing was insufficient.
A man who ended a life entrusted to him — his own — because he believed he saw further.
Waiting sharpened that image until he could not look away.
He tried to escape the thought.
There was nowhere to go.