What is shown to be in the one who sees, my love?
The voice spoke to me like a tender mother. A gentle father.
“The one who sees, sees light,” I said, but my voice was silent because they’d gagged me.
And I was seeing darkness because they’d bound me to a horse and tied a hood over my head. We’d been traveling for hours, up the Divide and across, followed by the muted thunder of two armies who crushed the ground underfoot. It was night and cool. Jacob was on a second horse behind me.
My poor, beautiful Jacob! How my heart broke for him. I found myself doubting the decision I’d made to give myself up for Samuel. What had I been thinking? Nothing! I’d only followed my heart, just as Talya told me to.
Just as I knew I must.
The comforting voice kept me sane, reminding me always of who I was when it whispered through my mind, but then I would hear the rattling and crunching of the massive army marching me home, and tears would fill my eyes.
They were going to destroy my home. The home I would expose to them.
Tell me again what your journey in this life is. Whisper it to me.
“The Third Seal,” I said. “Seeing the Light in Darkness is my Journey. And then the Fourth Seal: Surrender is the Means to Seeing the Light.”
And when you surrender to see the light, what do you see?
“The First Seal,” I said. “You are infinite and can’t be threatened. You are the light in whom there is no darkness.”
What else, dear one? Tell me what else you see.
“The Second Seal. I am the Light of the World. Inchristi is me and in me. I’m also beyond threat, one with you, only temporarily in an earthen vessel, like a costume.”
My sight shifted and I saw light there under the hood. Immediately my anxiety vanished, replaced by the tender embrace of that light, which was love. It was as though I was breathing a power beyond this world, so that each and every atom was infused with that light. When the light came into darkness, it came into all of it, down to the tiniest electron. It came into it, not next to it.
For long minutes I forgot all of my concerns.
Then I saw darkness once again and my jaw began to quiver.
The Fifth Seal would have saved me from my wavering. But I wasn’t there. I was still vacillating.
When Yeshua was on Earth in a body, he came into alignment with the light through his suffering, just like you, daughter. This is written. Even your elder brother had to learn that obedience. And he cried out to me, begging for the cup to pass. It was then that he finally surrendered his own will and became the way for you to follow, as written. I gave him comfort as I comfort you now. Then they hung him from a tree.1
“Am I going to die too?” I was shaking.
Death is no more. It is finished. That’s what happened and that’s what you’re learning to see, my dear one.
A calm settled over me. In that moment, I loved Yeshua as I never had. He was my elder brother? Justin was my elder brother? He understood my struggle because he had experienced it! The thought pushed me far away from the army’s incessant clanking and crunching.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Why? Because death is only a shadow. There is no fear when you realize it is finished.
“There is no fear in love,” I said in silence.
There is no fear in love, nor darkness in light. Death is only a shadow.
Held in that embrace of comforting light, my heart soared.
Thirty minutes later, I was sweating in fear.
And so it went. Mile after mile. No one spoke to me. No one offered me water. No one eased the ropes that dug into my wrists and my ankles, bound together under the horse’s belly.
Talya had told me there was a back way into the Realm, a full day’s journey from the Elyonite city. They were taking me there so the armies could enter. I was a thin place, and my presence would lay the Realm bare to be seen by all.
Then destroyed.
So why had I given myself for Samuel? I was only following my heart.
After many hours, exhaustion finally overtook my aching joints, and I found myself dreaming.
Once more I was Rachelle on Earth. Thomas was with me, guiding me, giving me courage. Vlad was in a panic. So then, I might still find the Fifth Seal there before the Realm was destroyed here.
There was still time! The 49th Mystic could still fulfill her role by finding the Fifth Seal there, maybe at the World Security Summit. Anticipation shortened my breath even as I dreamed.
But I had dreamed there as well, and in that dream, I’d become this me, being led to the Realm of Mystics, bound and gagged. I’d dreamed it and woken with an urgency that shook my bones.
We were both rushing headlong into a final showdown that would bring either light or darkness, love or fear.
The sun was hot when I woke on the horse. I could see light filtering through tiny pinpricks in the hood. But something else had changed. I slowly sat up from where I’d slumped over my mount’s neck.
Our stopping had awakened me. Not just me, but the whole army, silent now.
I jerked my head to the right as if doing so might give me sight.
I could hear flies buzzing. A horse grunting. Someone behind me coughed. Jacob. Then the clopping of hooves as someone approached me.
“Let her see,” Ba’al rasped.
Fingers untied the cord around my neck and the hood pulled free. I squinted in the bright sunlight as my eyes adjusted.
We’d stopped on a wide swath of rocky sand between two towering cliffs. Ahead, more wasteland surrounded by cliffs. And above . . .
A huge vortex of slowly circling Shataiki hung high above the wasteland. They’d followed us the whole way. And the wasteland was the Realm of Mystics, now masked by a desert landscape.
I twisted in the saddle. Jacob sat on his mount ten paces behind me, gagged and bound. But he was defiant, his eyes steady on me. A shallow nod and I knew he had no remorse.
Behind him, a sea of Horde and Elyonites, awaiting their orders.
“Now we see, witch.” Ba’al sat on his mount to my right, lead rope in his bony grasp, eyeing me with gray eyes. “Prove your sorcery to us.”
I don’t do magic, I wanted to say, but I was still gagged. Even if I hadn’t been, I was far too distracted by thoughts of what awaited me to exchange words with someone as blind as Teeleh’s high priest.
“What he means to say,” Aaron said, pulling his mount abreast on my left, “is that the time has come for you to show us what you’ve been hiding for so many years.” He looked at the wasteland. “If your power fails us, I will tear Jacob limb from limb in front of you.”
Qurong was mounted ahead of us next to six of his commanders, eyes forward. “Lead her.”
Ba’al led me like a lamb to the slaughter. Past Qurong and his men, through the wide canyon, toward the mouth that opened into the Realm of Mystics. The others fell in behind, a slow and wary procession. They didn’t know what to expect.
But neither did I.
I am everywhere, daughter. Everywhere.
“Please give me strength. Please . . .”
I ride on the horse as you, one in light. Nothing can threaten me. Nothing.
My saddle creaked beneath me. We drew closer, closer, only a few horse lengths from the end of the canyon, and I was praying that nothing would happen. If nothing happened, the Realm would be spared.
If so, Jacob would suffer. Then what should I hope for?
A new thought filled my mind. Could the Realm even be destroyed?
We were past the canyon’s mouth, stopping on a rocky strip of sand, gazing at the towering cliffs that encircled the massive sinkhole. On the far side up high was the ledge where Talya had opened our eyes. I was a thin place, he’d said. My pulse was pounding. Maybe I had to be up high. Maybe it didn’t . . .
A faint, crackling hum filled the air, and the scene before us began to shift from wasteland to forest, rolling out like a scroll from where I sat toward the center of the sinkhole.
Ba’al’s mount startled and reared.
I watched in wonder as the depression transformed from wasteland to forest in the space of three breaths. It wasn’t just any forest, it was a colored forest spotted with lush green meadows and stunningly bright flowers. A waterfall thundered on the cliff to our far right. And though I couldn’t see it from here, the village rested near it.
My fingers were shaking. I had exposed the Realm of Mystics.
Above us, the swirling mass of Shataiki surged eagerly, screeching with either delight or rage—they were the same now. None of the others could see them, but I could, and I knew they’d been waiting for this day a very long time.
For a full minute my escort stared at the lush valley in disbelief.
Ba’al was the one who gave the order, twisting in his saddle.
“Bring the armies!” he cried. “Crush every blade of grass and slaughter every living soul.” He shoved a shaking fist into the air. “Burn it to the ground!”