He woke to the slow percussion of rain.
Real rain, uneven, unscripted, water finding its own path down glass.
The sound was so fragile he lay still for minutes just listening, afraid that any movement would reduce it to symbol again.
The room was the same one he had left weeks before: books still open, candles burned down to nubs, pages warped by humidity.
The air smelled of wax and sleep.
His body ached like an old instrument retuned too many times.
He sat up; the blanket slid from his shoulders in folds that looked briefly like robes of fire before memory corrected the illusion.
He checked his hands.
The scar in his palm remained, faint, circular, pulsing softly when he breathed.
When he flexed his fingers the light faded, but the warmth stayed.
No hallucination.
A signature.
On the desk the same books waited: The Bible, Torah, Qur'an, Tao Te Ching, Beyond Good and Evil, Meditations, The Book of Five Rings, The Hermetica, The Art of War.
Their pages were no longer separate; their margins had bled into one another, annotations crossing languages and centuries.
He touched the paper and felt faint vibration, as if they were humming in the same key.
He remembered the voice of God, the classroom of galaxies, the trinity of tools.
He tried to hold the image, but it dissolved like mist.
What remained were reflexes: a steadier breath, a kind of patience that wasn't passive.
He stood, stretched, and felt joints settle into their rightful geometry.
No divine light, no chorus, just the soft ache of muscles that had returned to gravity.
He walked to the window.
Outside, the city glowed wet and indifferent.
Traffic moved in slow veins of colour.
People hurried beneath umbrellas, unaware that every drop of rain was an equation written in water, that every reflection on the pavement was a lesson in symmetry.
He smiled, not out of superiority but out of recognition.
All of it, the mess, the noise, the hurry, was the continuation of that great orchestra, only played now in human tempo.
He went to the sink, poured water, drank.
Cold, metallic, ordinary.
And yet each swallow vibrated with the same rhythm as the lattice.
He felt the Pen pulse in his left palm, unseen but real; the Sword hum quietly in the tendons of his right arm; the Word resting somewhere behind the tongue, waiting.
"Cut clean.
Bind true.
Speak what you're willing to live."
The last instruction of God returned like breath.
He exhaled it as mist against the windowpane, watched it fade.
For a long time he did nothing.
Then, slowly, he began to move through the apartment, touching objects as if relearning their weight, the spine of each book, the chipped mug, the candle stubs, the switch on the lamp.
Each contact restored another layer of time.
The divine withdrew, but not entirely; it lingered at the edge of things, like the hum left in the air after a bell stops ringing.
He sat again at the desk and opened a notebook.
Blank pages waited.
He picked up a pen, felt the quiet gravity of choice.
When he began to write, the first line surprised him:
"Every scar is a sentence that decided to survive."
The ink shimmered faintly, gold then black, as if the paper were absorbing memory.
He kept writing, not scripture, not confession, just observation.
Rain fell, lights changed, thoughts arrived and left.
For the first time in months, he felt neither saint nor scientist nor prophet.
Just witness.
It was enough.
Hours passed.
At some point he noticed the dawn leaning through the blinds.
The city's colour changed from sodium orange to pale blue.
Birds began their offbeat rhythm, the first imperfect music of the day.
He stood again, opened the window, and let the cool air roll in.
It carried the smell of ozone, of rain lifting off stone, the scent of equilibrium returning.
Below, life moved.
Cabs, bicycles, footsteps, laughter muffled by distance.
He wanted to join them, to walk not as messenger but as man.
He looked once more at his scar.
Its light had faded completely, but its warmth remained.
A reminder, not a wound.
Balance made flesh.
He whispered a last thanks, not upward, but inward.
God did not answer.
The silence was sufficient.
He closed the window, turned off the lamp, and stepped out into the day.