An Image Of Death
 

The hooded figure of a newborn, cloaked in black, looms over him.
Its size is enormous--like a house, and its face is decrepit and mutilated--the face of the dead. It is missing the skin over nearly the entire left side of its face, from the right side of its nose to the scalp. Its right eye is an empty socket, the flesh around it ragged, exposed and very red. As it looks down, the winds of plague blowing an evil miasma across the ground, the whisper of a stench it carries unbearable, a sense of impending and inescapable doom washed over him. It pounded like the victims of a storm begging for refuge at the door, from vile winds and merciless onslaught of rain, only to pound harder and harder in cycles dying slightly, then strengthening greatly.

Red skies seemed to rumble terribly with thunder, though none could be sure if there was sound. And the newborn swung out its god-awful arm, extended fully in the blowing winds, and from the awful blood-soaked and tattered folds of its black cloak came an indistinguishable darkness.
It raised its arm high into the air with a sudden movement, and he beheld it as a goliath rust-darkened scythe. It threatened the very heavens, a monument to true evil so cruel, merciless and bloodthirsty, as to stand alone against God, with only hatred. It was the embodiment of ruthless terror, an unstoppable tyrannical force. And then from no source at all came a voice that shook the heavens and the earth.

It spoke: "YOU HAVE LIVED, AND NOW YOU SHALL DIE. IN YOUR PLACE COMES ANOTHER."

"FOR YOU ARE NOT ONE, BUT MANY; JUST A CUP OF KNOWLEDGE FROM THE UNIVERSE."

And sheer terror became him; he was at an end. The newborn child so monstrous and unbelievably massive swung the foul blade.


Suddenly a ribbon tied around something was severed, and that something was a pool, and this pool stood on its own no longer, but spilled. And as it spilled, it was aware of its own being, as memories carried through time. And as it spilled more, it realized it was at peace. And as it finally spilled further and splashed into the Universe, it knew it would always exist.
And as it soaked into the ground of the Universe, it knew it was the Universe.

The part had returned to the whole.