As miles awoke he found himself back to his usual state of consciousness, surrounded by the thick, yolky liquid. He felt his wounds, they were still tender to the touch but beginning to scar over.
The voice returned to him.
"You have seen the depths of your damage young miles, all else since has been a reverberation of the initial wound."
"I understand" Miles nodded.
"Yet this is only the beginning. You have yet to grieve what could have been, what is and what will not be."
"What do you mean?" Miles was confused.
"To heal — fully — you must grieve, young one."
"You have been changed by your experiences, like an animal backed in to a corner you lack the capacity to trust others and even yourself. As such you have lost the very connections which are foundational to the life of a conscious being. Connection, trust, esteem. None of these have ever been yours, they were stolen at a young age."
"When something dies, you must grieve it, or else continue to be consumed by it forever. Therefore we must begin by grieving the past, the initial wounding, the pain that was endured, the loss of a proper foundation in life must be grieved. After this we must grieve the present, all that has been lost leads us to the emptiness of the present. The loneliness you feel, the isolation, the inability to maintain bonds of fraternity- least of all with yourself. This is a stark loss which must be grieved. And finally we must grieve the future. The future that will not be because of how you have been so brutally scarred. It is likely you will never grow to even like yourself let alone those around you. You may never have whole bonds or life giving communality with others and so you must acknowledge that like that cornered animal, your instinct and fear of trust may always have a grip on you and it may run deeper than you could ever imagine or even hope to heal. This is the deepest grief of all, it is the grief of the death of hope. You will heal, but make no mistake, because of the severity of your damage, you will never be boy you once were. You must grieve the future which you once imagined which has now become impossible. Only then and AFTER then will you become whole. Albeit whole in a way which was previously unimagined, whole in a broken way, like the foundation of a great building which has crumbled yet forms the base of a stronger and more immovable pile of rubble. Which has its own uses, a home for animals, a looting site, a place to source stones for new buildings. You have returned to the earth and must grieve your own death to be recycled by nature."
The space after the voice spoke was darker and emptier than the void miles traveled. His words were true but they required complete and utter death. Miles as he once knew himself must be allowed to die completely. The old miles was not a functional creature, he was broken beyond fixing. It was time to put him down.
The voice reverberated through multiple levels of consciousness. "IT IS TIME"
The echo of this phrase grew stronger and stronger until it rang so loudly that miles couldn't think of anything else.
He looked down and to his shock and horror his skin, muscles organs and bones were liquifying and mixing with the yolky liquid he was surrounded with. His whole body was being converted in to a soup of nutrients and stem cells.
The scene was gruesome but he felt nothing but a calm serenity. He watched until his corneas liquified then finally his skull and brains. The lights went out. And Miles Numan was no more.
——-
On a watery planet far far away, deep beneath the waves. There is a cavern lost to time. In this cavern there is an old imprisoned god. This god, the god of war, has been sealed away because he threatened revolution. The stifled voice of justice in the name of peace keeping had been sealed away for too long.
But this old god had reached the end of its natural life span. It took a new host, a new manifestation. A young man from a poor world found his way to the old god. And thus the immaculate conception took place.
From the rib of Adam a new being was formed, a hatchling.
With the last of his strength the old god formed a shell around the hatchling, to protect him while he gestated.
All was quiet for a long time. The old god had placed his trust and final breath in to the void.
The silence of these remote and unknown caverns was disrupted by the cry of a newborn.