It was dark as Avere waked ahead, his bare feet touching the endless ocean of silver stretching out into the horizon that seemed to be just as infinite and unfathomable as the depth of the sea he was striding across with such ease.
Maybe it was because he wasn't entirely himself right now, but he felt himself not sinking, he felt screams, he felt cries of ecstasy, he felt the fear of a child in the dark, he felt oil being sprinkled atop him, he felt the horrible surprise, he felt the burn that came shortly after the accident as he knew, he felt many more things, with each step he took, each one of which caused great waves to spread out into the infinite widths of the ocean.
Truth be told, it was both the most gruesome and the most horrible thing he had ever experienced, as if he was getting a massage while getting stabbed with a tiny needle in his bare foot, but all over his body, and much more extreme.
He had walked like this, not really thinking, not really understanding, just gliding across the surface that seemed to be made of the same material as everything else in this, to be fair, quite beautiful world, not caring about a single thing in his life, or his lives, to be exact.
After a few hours he had come to some ideas, some conclusions, and he had heard a faint voice slowly reigning him into a certain direction, but he had not grasped any idea, he had not grasped any feeling, he had not had any experience, he had simply been, and he was simply wandering continuously, now led by a voice that was no voice.
In this place there seemed to be no sense of time, nor sense of hunger, nor sense of self, nor anything, and so he walked, not really being anyone, not Cades, not Leyk, not Avere, not Arges, not Rondel, not a person, just a machine led by the voice of something he knew what it was but could neither understand nor articulate, nor even remember the identity of.
There was no way to determine how long it had been until Avere finally became aware once more, feeling his mind slowly start to truly think and understand again, beginning to comprehend that he was near the so-called great pillar, so much so that this might have been the very voice, if that had truly been called a voice, that had been leading him slowly to this place, a place where there was something amidst otherwise eternally calm but liquid silver.
On a great cross made of the very same blood-red material that had once restrained Arges for what seemed to have been over eighty years, there was nailed a young man, silver hair besmirching a spotless face, quite literally, as he did not have eyes, he did not have a mouth, he did not have anything that made him a person aside from the shape of one, he did not have ears, or at least not the holes needed to truly hear, he did not have the slightest stubble, nor did any hair grown on his face at all, it was simply a blank slate of caramel skin.
The body of the man was long, lean, about 6'4, it was covered in scratches and healing wounds, but did not leak any blood, simply dry gashes open to view the insides that looked like flowing silver, as if the sea itself had awoken and used the body as a mere puppet to use as it wished.
On the other hand the cross was about twelve foot high, making Avere stretch his neck to see the top, not that that was something that was on his mind right now as he finally heard a voice resound from deep within his head where he had thought that only the deepest of secrets would lay buried, definitely not the voice of a god he had never met before.
"So we finally are able to talk..." the serene but flavourless voice announced, as if simply being a monotone robot reading a poem without understanding what had been written in even the simplest possible way.
"Are you the great pillar of experiences?" Avere asked, taking a step back, walking around the nailed body, seeing the silver writhing liquid, and growing a bit nauseated, though he still found himself to be oddly apathetic towards it all, not even being all that nervous or about to break down despite facing what seemed to be a nearly omnipotent being.
"I was never much of someone who favoured the pillar-title, but yes, they do call me such." the voice replied, still monotone, but slowly changing to contain some semblance of humour to convey Avere to try and calm down further than his odd current mentality had already forced him to do.
"The messenger... he said you had a contract for me?" Avere asked.
"Yes, I do." the voice replied, seemingly waiting for something, Avere almost feeling as if eyes from all around were now staring at him and only him, ascertaining what he had done, what he had felt, perhaps even what he was destined to do soon.
"Do I have to do something else?" Avere quickly asked, hurrying himself to not be stared at by what might as well have been an eldritch horror any longer than he had to be, though he was still oddly without feeling.
"Normally yes, but I see that you have already reached that stage without even realizing it yourself." the voice replied, now sounding slightly surprised, though that surprised also felt as if it had a hint of bad acting woven into it.
"What did I achieve?" Avere inquired, forgetting for a short moment who it was he was dealing with, and quickly regretting it, despite remembering what Adelius had said one should do when talking to a great pillar.
"You became selfless, or at least close enough to that to actually count as such." the voice replied coldly.