GREG OPENED HIS EYES. He was back in the room, almost halfway to the Throne. Something inside him was beginning to fragment into distinct portions of consciousness: his soul was melting away like a handful of sand at the edge of the sea, as if his very being were slipping through his fingers.
He tried to get his thoughts back on track, before he ended up forgetting that he was once a man, but...
Who was Gregory Evans, really?
Could it be a set of bitter experiences that were capable of distancing him, further and further, from a happiness that was rightfully his, or perhaps it was someone who believed he had control of his own life?
Her only certainty was that she was more than a hundred meters below the earth, in an underground city whose origins were lost in the annals of history... And also that Candice was preparing to climb to the fourth step, the one ruled by Venus, the goddess of love and lust.
However, something stopped him and he didn't know if it was the voice of his conscience or the fact that he saw Candice placing one of her feet on the Mars step.
He looked up. The answer to his prayers lay just a few steps from the platform. The Ark's radiance still floated in different directions, like a golden sea inside a glass tank. He placed one foot on the second-to-last step, Jupiter's. Candice climbed with him.
— Life is short — they say. And now Gregory Evans knew why.
His gaze met Candice's, who inclined her head submissively. With that gesture, she wanted to tell him something, perhaps to warn him that the final step had to be climbed with humility, which is why he adopted a more reverent and humble attitude, looking down, like hers.
What awaited them was the most dangerous of all steps: Saturn, the primordial symbol of the door of darkness — for the alchemists — through which man must pass to be born again, in the light of God.
His internal struggle had been going on for a long time and he had to say something.
That's when he remembered the lodge's password, encouraging the neophyte to remain silent. He also recalled the final sentences of Fulcanelli's philosophical compendium, which urged the disciple to remain faithful to his vow of silence. "BE SILENT": thus ended The Mystery of the Cathedrals. Was it a warning?
Greg had a new opportunity to change the past, and he seized it. He looked his father in the eye, and though it took immense effort to restrain himself, he decided to remain silent out of respect, swallowing his pride.
He was back in the Throne Room, on the seventh step of the staircase. They had succeeded. Defeating pride was the last of the trials they must overcome, and perhaps the most risky and turbulent. Overcoming pride meant triumphing over all other sins, since there was no offense anyone could do to others or to themselves that pride did not participate in. By remaining silent, he had used the key to the lodge, becoming a true Freemason, a free man. He had achieved redemption.
Before him stood Candice, and between them, the Ark. They approached it with some trepidation, holding hands to reassure each other. And then, certain that they were about to experience an experience unparalleled in human history, they sat on the Throne of God.
When someone reflects, plunging into the unconsciousness of darkness and silence, they are confronted with the creatures of their own nightmares.