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body {
    --image-width: min(var(--main-content-width), calc(100% - var(--main-content-side-margin) * 2));
    --image-height: calc(var(--image-width) * (684 / 1024));
    --blur-height: 15rem;
    --blur-anchor: calc(81% - var(--image-height));
    @media (max-width: 600px) { --blur-anchor: 81% }
    
    overflow-x:hidden;
    background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom in oklab, #000000, #000000 calc(var(--blur-anchor) - var(--blur-height)), #FFFFFF calc(var(--blur-anchor) + var(--blur-height)), #FFFFFF);
}

#page-content { padding-top: 0px; }

div.page-rate-widget-box span.btn>a {
    border-bottom: none;
}
:root {
    --basalt-main-text-color: 192,192,192;
    --rate-module-background-color: 0,0,0;
    --rate-module-info-background-color: 0,0,0;
    --side-bar-background-color: 0,0,0;
    --button-outline-color: 0,0,0;
    --button-text-color: 192,192,192;
    --header-logo: var(--logo);
    --logo: url("https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/theme%3Abasalt/basalt_scp_logo-for_darkmode.svg");
    --search-icon-color: 192,192,192;
    --header-title-color: 192,192,192;
    --header-subtitle-color: 192,192,192;
    --scrollbar-track-color: 30, 30, 30;
    --header-background-color: 0,0,0;
    --top-bar-link-color: 192,192,192;
    --header-border-color: 99,107,96;
}
.spacer { flex: 1 1 auto; }
.spacee { flex: 2 1 50%; }

```
display: flex
```

border: none; width: 100%; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; padding-bottom: 0px

border: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;

```
border: none; padding: 0px
```
```
color: #101010
```

```
spacer
```
```
spacee
```
```
spacer
```

=====
[[include component:preview text=There is a bleak and boneless dark, which stretches slithering through the caverns below.]]
=====

[!-- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Babia_G%C3%B3ra_-_wsch%C3%B3d_s%C5%82o%C5%84ca,_20230304_0638_3123.jpg --]

[[include :scp-wiki:theme:basalt hidetitle=a]]

[[module css]]
body {
    --image-width: min(var(--main-content-width), calc(100% - var(--main-content-side-margin) * 2));
    --image-height: calc(var(--image-width) * (684 / 1024));
    --blur-height: 15rem;
    --blur-anchor: calc(81% - var(--image-height));
    @media (max-width: 600px) { --blur-anchor: 81% }
    
    overflow-x:hidden;
    background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom in oklab, #000000, #000000 calc(var(--blur-anchor) - var(--blur-height)), #FFFFFF calc(var(--blur-anchor) + var(--blur-height)), #FFFFFF);
}

#page-content { padding-top: 0px; }

div.page-rate-widget-box span.btn>a {
    border-bottom: none;
}
:root {
    --basalt-main-text-color: 192,192,192;
    --rate-module-background-color: 0,0,0;
    --rate-module-info-background-color: 0,0,0;
    --side-bar-background-color: 0,0,0;
    --button-outline-color: 0,0,0;
    --button-text-color: 192,192,192;
    --header-logo: var(--logo);
    --logo: url("https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/theme%3Abasalt/basalt_scp_logo-for_darkmode.svg");
    --search-icon-color: 192,192,192;
    --header-title-color: 192,192,192;
    --header-subtitle-color: 192,192,192;
    --scrollbar-track-color: 30, 30, 30;
    --header-background-color: 0,0,0;
    --top-bar-link-color: 192,192,192;
    --header-border-color: 99,107,96;
}
.spacer { flex: 1 1 auto; }
.spacee { flex: 2 1 50%; }
[[/module]]

[[div style="display: flex"]]
[[div class="spacer"]]
[[/div]]
[[div class="spacee"]]
[[table style="border: none; width: 100%; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; padding-bottom: 0px"]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;"]]
+ ##C0C0C0|BELOW##
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border: none; padding: 0px"]]
[[>]]
[[module rate]]
[[/>]]
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[/table]]
-----
There is a bleak and boneless dark, which stretches slithering through the caverns below. The wounds we give it are forever fleeting, scabbed over with earth and healed in our wake. Thus we are ever blind to our own footsteps, our past passings unknown except in lamplit memories of a place carved out within the black.

There is no rest below, for rest is the setting-down of lamps, and the stilling of limbs. Rest is when the stomach untwists and feels its emptiness, when the tongue rasps on bone-dry teeth, when we sit and fall and feel the stone grow around us, a calcification of the air and the skin, the sweet eternal embrace of the earth.

There is a Resting-Priest beside me. It walks with us, wearing our clothes, wearing our skin, but it has no lamp, and by this I know it to be a Resting-Priest. Here is one who stopped -- who nestled into a smooth comfortable curve of granite, who felt the stone cup and cover, until it grew slow as a stalactite over the limbs and mouth and eyes. Here is one who was swallowed by the earth, and was spit out again, a hollowed emissary, an earth-born poison, an ever-present reminder of //you don’t have to keep going// following forever. Beneath that ashen skin is dust and diorite, and in those eye-sockets turn only marble, blind as death.

“Stop,” the Resting-Priest says. “Rest.”

Its voice is the whisper of sand falling through cracks, the shiver of gravel shifting -- the sounds of eternal equilibrium momentarily disturbed.

We do not stop. We do not rest.

Instead, we tell stories.

It is the crooked one who begins, voice dry, cracked, heavy and brittle as slate.

“Once upon a time,” he says. “There was a young boy, who lived near a forest.” The words wash over me, press their meaning into my mind, and I try to feel what the crooked one is saying. A forest: A place where the darkness is cast by living things, where in every direction is life upon life upon life, where light falls from the sky and dapples on the soft green moss. A forest is unimaginable. To us, to me, after an aeon here below, after uncounted miles of hunger and thirst and lamp-cast shadows flickering across hard stone walls -- a forest is heaven.

“The boy’s elders warned him not to tarry in the evening woods,” the crooked one says. “But the boy, being young and foolish, did not heed their words.

“Soon the darkness came, swift as a rockfall. The boy could not see, could not walk, could not find his way home. He stumbled over roots and scraped himself on branches. It seemed to him like the trees had woken from a long sunlight-dappled sleep, and now, having woken, they were //hungry//.

“In the distance he heard howls, and screeches, and other stranger sounds. He ran, blood pumping in his ears, stumbling and tripping in his haste. When he caught himself on a tree trunk, he felt the bark move beneath his hand, and when he pulled away he left a layer of skin behind.”

I wince. This story is different than usual: too dark, too close. Beside me, the Resting-Priest’s footsteps are heavy.

“The boy kept running, shielding his head with his arms, until his forearms were bloody from the hungry whipping branches, and his breath scraped in his throat. The boy ran until he could run no more.

“And then he stopped.”

The crooked one pauses for a moment, to catch his breath, or to let the tension build. In the silence the darkness presses in, but the light of my lamp, and the lamps of my fellows, carves us a small, warm place, a sanctuary against the weight without.

“He stopped, hands on his knees,” the crooked one continues. “And then he fell, into the curve of root and trunk, cold and hard on his back. The shape of it cupped his spine, and held his arms, and rested his tired legs.

“The boy felt the tree’s branches grow over and into him, and he knew that the forest would accept him here, now, defiant and exhausted, just as it would have accepted him if he had gone willingly to its embrace.

“The tree's roots grew over his body and under his skin, and at last the boy could rest.”

I am staring at the crooked one, agape. He meets my eyes, and I see the cold earth behind them. His lamp -- light, warmth -- falls to the ground and shatters.

“Stop,” the crooked one says. “Rest.”

One by one, more lamps fall to the ground. I run. What else is there to do? Rock flashes beneath my feet, black and grey and brown, erratic beating footsteps like a failing heart, pushing texture and pressure and pain through my nerves.

Behind me the stone is moving, slow and patient as nothing else is. I run faster, terror slipping silver-quick down my spine. My breath scrapes its way through my throat, feeling already half gravel. I am outpacing them, for now. I am alive -- quick, they called it, long ago -- not stone, not yet.

Anyone can outpace the earth for a span of time, for a day, a year, a century. But not forever.

I do not know how long I ran for. It doesn’t matter, in the end. Run as you might, the earth is above and beneath and around you, and it bears your weight and the weight of your footfalls with inexorable patience. There is no running from it, just as you cannot run from your own skin. It is the world. It is the end.

I stumble to a stop. Behind me, my footprints stretch back and back, dull iron-red in the dust, fading before my eyes into the ever-hungry earth. Before me—

As it turns out, the world has its own end.

Before me the darkness deepens, yawning back, jaws unhinging. The light of my lamp cuts into it, and dies. The air moves against my face, stirs the hairs on my skin. I shine my light up, down, to each side, and see it fail in the black whichever way I point it. Here is the void at the edge of the world. Here is the last darkness. I breathe, and hear the stone move behind me.

But out in the void, far, far, away—

Slow footsteps echo behind me. The sound travels into the dark and vanishes.

“Stop,” the crooked one -- the Resting-Priest -- says. “Rest.”

I turn to face it as it walks toward me.

“The boy was lost in the forest,” I say. “He ran and he ran, but he could find no respite. The shadows followed, tireless.”

The crooked one stops, and looks at me with blind stone orbs. There is nothing behind them, not will nor heart. Its movements are only an inevitable consequence of the shape of the world. Each step is taken without expenditure, as a rock rolling down a slope, as an object moving along the path of least resistance. I speak to no-one and nothing.
@@ @@
@@ @@
“He ran until he could run no more. He stopped, and felt the forest shift around him, wrapping root and vine about his limbs. He felt the cold shadows draw near.” A smile spreads across my lips, a warm and unfamiliar feeling. I take a step back, the rocks sharp beneath my bare feet. “But he did not die,” I say. “For in that moment—” I raise my arms, and grin.
@@ @@
@@ @@
@@ @@
“In that moment, when all was already lost, when everything was over, the struggle, the flight, the outpacing of the earth. He saw it.” I take another step back, feel the void opening up behind me, feel my body tip away from the world. This earth, this sloshing squirming darkness, these caverns below: they will not have me.
@@ @@
@@ @@
@@ @@
@@ @@
[[div style="color: #101010"]]
There is a curious warmth on my back. A breath of change stirs the air. A strange cast on the stone and the light. Old memories rise unbidden to my mind, of things I had thought lost long ago. The wind, the clouds, the sky—
@@ @@
@@ @@
@@ @@
@@ @@
I take another step back, and fall. And as I fall:

“Behold,” I say.

“The
@@ @@
[[=]]
rising
[[/=]]
[[>]]
sun."
[[/>]]
[[/div]]
[[/div]]
[[div class="spacer"]]
[[/div]]
[[/div]]
[[image sunrise.jpg width=100% size=original alt="A sunrise over blowing snow on the peak, and misty valleys below"]]
@@ @@
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]]
> **Filename:** sunrise.jpg
> **Name:** Babia Góra - wschód słońca, 20230304 0638 3123
> **Author:** Jakub Hałun
> **License:** CC BY-SA 4.0
> **Source Link:** https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Babia_G%C3%B3ra_-_wsch%C3%B3d_s%C5%82o%C5%84ca,_20230304_0638_3123.jpg
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]

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