And Emma is there, smiling at her son, proud and full of joy, rare laughter creasing her face. They embrace, and laugh, and cry.
“Mum,” says Asher, “I’ve messed everything up.”
“No, no,” she answers, stroking his hair as she did when he was young, “everything is going to be okay.”
“The Leviathan is free, my friends are dying, and it’s my fault.”
“We only do our best,” she answers him, “but now you must set it right.”
“How?” he asks, trembling in the black.
“You already know,” she answers, “the father creates the mother, the mother crowns the daughter.”
“Yes,” he says, “I do know.”
And he does.
His song still whispers in his ears, whirling around the cosmic emptiness all around, and deep within he finds the spark, the trace of holiness that burns within him.
And just as the turning of the key creates the lock, and the door, and the palace, the seed creates the womb.
In the palm of his hand, the shards of crystal begin to hum and vibrate, glowing with the inner light that is starting to shine in a time beyond time. As the fractal goes down and down without ending, so too the crystal shards contain the spark of all there is, each fragment has the DNA of the whole, and now Asher pours the energy of life through it.
Radiance, emanating all around. A spark engraved in a ring of no colour at all, and the Palace of Understanding begins to be reborn. Crystal sprouts like grass, bursting all around and spreading and not spreading to the ends of all things.
