People often go missing, it happens all the time. Some people run away and start a new life. Some are kidnapped. Others disappear in dark unsolved mysteries that spawn horror stories of unfound corpses, skeletons in the walls, and bodies ground into grit and smeared in the shadows of some hideous lair.
This story has many beginnings, and many ends. It's almost the same every time, like the story of Peter Pan. It begins not with children in a nursery, but with some lost soul. A old businessman who never found time for family, a lonely widow who's husband left for a young woman, a starving child on the street. The forsaken, the lonly, the victums of circumstance. Once upon a time, a person went missing.
It beings with a thud like the bursting of a tire felt from a distance. A low, dull impact which resonates the meat surrounding your lungs. Startled, you look around. Behind you stands a man, behind him a door. A striking figure, like a lone tree on a hill his presence changes the atmosphere. Distant sounds fade to silence. The lights drop low and one lamp brightens.
His facial features are indistinct, but wierdly familiar. The expression he wears is one of profound sobriety. With a voice as heavy as mountains he addresses you, by name. Frozen in an otherworldly fear, you gaze into his cold eyes. You ask who he is.
"I, am the passing of time, I am the bringer of hope, cast away your fears for I mean you no harm. I am the mover of lost souls, from one world to another, not the 'next world' as you might say, but a new one alltogether. I am the only sympathy, the only consession, the last hope of those, who have lost hope in living."
"
This cosmos is empty, but for the people here, those who cast you out, the earth people you know. In a parallel world, you can have a new chance, be reborn to a new wolrd
and live a fresh life. Be warned, however, there's no no garantee, there are many worlds, mortal, and in all of them grief. There is no great solution, there is no great cure, the suffering of life, is ever life's to endure."
"But... but perhaps you would stay? Perhaps
you can change that? There may be some way. I have been between worlds since the birth of the stars, I have seen love joy and pain of uncountable souls. Perhaps earth could change? Perhaps it could stop? Perhaps you could be happy? Perhaps everyone could be happy? Perhaps even I could be happy. What a thing to imagine. What an idea to suppose. But how could you do it? No body knows."
"So follow my steps, to try a new place, a new world, a new people, a new race. Come through my door to an unknown world, to try one more time for a happier life. Or stay. You could stay and help, you could help find a way."
