**The Cost of Reaching**

Each time I reached into the dark,

it reached back.

Not with comfort,
nor with promises,
nor with the gentle hand of salvation.

Only with questions.

What would I surrender?

What part of myself would I leave behind
to take another step forward?

The connection grew more difficult with every passing year.

The path narrowed.

The shadows deepened.

And still I walked.

For every answer granted,
a certainty was stripped away.

For every mystery unveiled,
another piece of the familiar world was sacrificed.

There were moments I thought the cost too great.

Moments when I wondered whether devotion and surrender
were merely different names for the same wound.

Yet the darkness never demanded worship.

Only honesty.

Only the courage to stand before the unknown
without turning away.

And so I gave what I could.

My doubts.
My fears.
My pride.

Some days even my peace.

The deeper I ventured,
the more I understood:

True transformation is not purchased with coin,
nor won through force.

It is paid for with pieces of oneself.

To reach beyond what one was,
one must risk becoming something else entirely.

And though I stand changed by every sacrifice,
I do not regret the journey.

For in the silence beyond certainty,
in the abyss beyond fear,

I found not an ending,

but a door.


Penned by my hand on the 11th of Sarapin, in the year 1006 AF.