He had been awake inside the coffin for some time. He tried to bend his legs but couldn’t. His arms were cramped and immobile, heavy as lead. And then, like vomit, an incorporeal thing spilled out of the casing, which he realized with horror was his soul. It had no age, no face, no body. It was a specter flying through hazy landscapes, like those vast marshlands shrouded in eternal mist. The morning air’s haze covered a sickly sun, which lingered on the nape of that world. It drifted uncontrollably in random directions, searching for a Path. Along the way, it panicked, stopped, and heard voices calling. Like a thousand mouths of sighs wailing his name with lamentations: “Anelaos… Anelaos… come close to us… here is your road… come to the land of nonexistence to see the world that seeks you… the world you sought and imagined with fear…” It shivered. If a soul could shiver. Its enormous eyes widened, unbelieving its own hearing. Then, colossal phantoms began to appear on the horizon, moving toward …