First, there was silence. And in that silence, Ephraim waited. He waited for what it is to come, to appear. He engaged his senses and listened. Anticipated. His patience wasn't thick nor thin, but he was eager. He knows somewhere deep within, there would be an ember that shall flare upon the obscurity of his mind—and a voice, a grumble; perhaps—will show itself and tell him about of all the things there is. Ephraim waited… painstakingly so, in that deafening silence for a sign. For an encounter.
But none have appeared. Not even the embers of the fire vessel, or the guardian slithering out of nowhere. There was no one to satiate his hunger for knowledge, for an explanation that would extinguish the building uncertainty in his mind. No one was there to tell him the barrier was successful or tell him the reason why he had self-combust out of nowhere. No one was there but himself.
