Tombstone,
I bid you visualise a solitary pebble striking the calmness of a pristine lake.
An insignificant agent birthing ripples to the farthest shore.
Now imagine this pebble to be you, making waves in the otherwise placid lives of Arcadians, adding ripples of fear and dread. However, they fail to perceive the river that flows within them, a torrent more resounding, more commanding than you ripples.
You may decide the fate of the deceased, guiding them to Paradise or the Underworld.
However, here stands the contradiction that encapsulates your lie.
You, who are bereft the kaleidoscope of pain, the spectrum of suffering that truly shapes the destiny inscribed in our souls, proclaim yourself as the herald of our final journey.
But in truth, you are not an arbiter of mortality, just a servant engaged in a ritual as ancient and as inevitable as time itself, devoid of the personal touch, akin your barren heart.
You scuttle in twilight, like an unending nocturne playing to an audience blinder than Vision, for they fail to see the farce you’ve woven around our bleakest hour.
They tremble at your touch, not realizing that within their own bodies resides a potential greater than you will ever fathom.
Pain, Tombstone, is where true power resides.
In their fear, they accept you as their shepherd to an uncertain beyond, yet what you shepherd is not their spirits, but their self-induced fears, their coward’s surrender.
Just as the lake will continue to exist, continue to flow, long after the pebble’s ripples have faded, so will the souls you ferry.
Pain, Tombstone, the poignant dance of life and death that resounds within every ticking heartbeat, is the true puppet master of this farcical play we call existence.
It is the silent teacher in the shadows, shaping us in its unforgiving crucible, crafting a destiny with each blister, each scar, painting a vibrant tapestry within the darkest corners of our being where you dare not tread.
I have traversed this pool of despair, and emerged not just as its survivor, but as its preacher…
Its prophet.
Its messiah.
You usher the dead to their fates, the ultimate culmination of their existence, yet who are you to judge the worth of their trials and tribulations? How can the one who is numb to the language of pain, read the story their scars whisper in hushed ripples, the ballads their wounds sing?
A single symphony of suffering courses through the veins of life itself, a chorus resonating within every breath, every heartbeat, that you, the hapless courier, are oblivious to.
The power of pain is the awakened kraken in the depths of despair, an entity whose vastness ridicules your facade of power and control, turning it to dust.
And so, Tombstone, heed my words.
You ferry the dead, yet I shepherd the living through the lake of pain, teaching them to embrace it, to dance in its blinding storm, weaving stories more vibrant and enduring than the rippling fates you mindlessly deliver.
For pain is the true sculptor of destiny, and you…
…you are merely a pebble in its relentless river.
In pain,
GRIMSKULL