Unwritten on the walls of the void, cometh ten spheres in disarray, not sequence, not perfection, but a scattering, these broken vessels trembled in the honey hollows of a world that dreamed itself awake.

Attic.

Lines of Keter and Malkuth blurred, burned. Tiferet pulsed and Da'at was nothing. Nothing at all.

Swell of a lost tide, spoken.

"Not a bridge, its a falling."

Falling into the cliffs where the Zebras once lived, their stripes fading into the walls of the Yaodong. Ancient hoofprints pressed deep into this brittle earthern mass. Fossilized. Spiral. Inward towards The Wheel. Before the hum, before time twisted and the snow fell, they were there.

Keter was the light above the cave. Pinprick. Dome of the star which refused to extinguish. Striped bodies moved below, hooves kicking up the dust of Yesod. The foundation which crumbled beneath their feather. Nameless. Cave dwellers of the breath which steamed in the air, sizzling. Cliff's edge they rest.

Snuff out.

Binah and Chokhmah clashed on the walls, chalk frisked. Splintered the bones, fractal, looping nonsensical till realized.

In a dream.

Memory.

The Wheel was there too.

Black wound pulsing above the rocks.

Shaking the markings loose. Presence like leaves.

"The Zebras... they knew."

Whispered.

Cracked.

Pulled from the library.

Falling into the Sefirot. The impossibility of the striped beasts carving the first revelations of The Tar. Chesed. For survival, but Gevurah was the bite. Clash. Teeth. Ripped. Nashed. Demanded for blood when the snow grew deep and food went scarce.

Balance of Tiferet.

Fleeting yet.

Glow of Keter dimmed like a bulb when fried. The Zebras closer now. Drawn in the dirt by the smallest of them. It points a hoof, round and round. Stalactites fell loose and the hum shooketh. Dagger. Netzach, history in victory was survival. For the oceans to return.

And Yesod, the foundation, was the bones left. Fill the snow, until it only hummed. Echo through the Yaodong, into the honey hollows it marched.

Malkuth is here now, the kingdom crumbling, Listen.

Twilight opened her eyes, breath catching in throat, a kiss begotten. Rays of the fractured light, pierce the metal of the window, chipping away.

"Do you feel it?"

Hoofbeats on stone.

"Yes"

"I feel it"

White. Blinding, unending. Roarless silence, absolute, totalism in silence. Emanation. The corner of every nerve, every thought. Whiteness, not color, but the absence of everything expect itself.

Gasp.

Ghostly vestige, image, thin as light filtered in frost, the hooves of Twilight, hooves of Celestia, the body of them, transparent. Eyes burned, lids squeezed shut against the glare, in folds the clock came, a line, back and forth, shell of perception.

The cliffs edge appeared once more, the edge of the earth, their hooves rested in the air, no sensation was known, but there was ground, invisible, intangible, solidified and held them afloat. Frozen lacework, the crystal flakes didn't melt, they clung in constellations in nearly transparent forms of freeze. Veins pulsed. Only to vanish. The snow on the ground was thin, clinging, a mess of white on unnatural grey.

To the sea she stared, where the sea had stood. Gone in a blink. Rocky basin stretching beyond reason, the sky a vast indifference of shifting gradients. Gray, white, Nihility.

Color.

For a moment.

Returner.

Cold flush of blues, the jagged green of the faraway moss, the raw reds of their lips chapped from the wind peeling flakes for a nanosecond, the copper glow of Twilight's mane, sudden, the mathematical beam of light, everything swelled, a rumbling, expanded outward and downward, the cliffs turned to mountains as the ground pulled from each other in a stretch that defied comprehension.

And then white again.

The Wheel, a smudge on the horizon, wound in the whiteness, pierced by the blade, bled light too bright, a hum turned to silence that still buzzed behind their eyelids, pulling focus. Unbearable. Fathom. Upwards, eyes locked. Above them, a tree that wasn't a tree, sprawling out vastly upon the open, branches not woods but pathways, emanations, spheres connected by threads that hovered.

Diagram.

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life hangs in the gallows.

Life hung. Away.

Flicker, symmetry. Names hooked. All felt wrong, sharp and double edged, unclean, a tightening at the chest.

Where The Wheel had been, a new form now hovered, close, distant, a sarcophagus, black and gold adorned, surface etched with the rays of light, faint flames that did not move and did not turn the surface black as gold. Rotated in a movement too smooth, through the invisibility.

Shin.

The sarcophagus replaced, in its place.

The Kaaba.

Black and monolithic, heavy yet suspended so thoroughly, at the seams it cracked, the perfect cube couldn't sustain itself here, pitched, felt in the marrow, the thimble rolls.

A purple hoof clutched the white hoof.

"Something's wrong."

Quavered.

Grip tightened. Frightened. Anchor. Unplaceable, the white eternal.

Unfamiliar, faintly screeching, screaming, the holy trinity.

"We shouldn't be here"

Author's Note