I call upon the threshold.
I open the gate not to flee, but to fall
into the crucible I once feared,
into the chamber where illusions dissolve
and every false name I carried crumbles into dust.

I enter the underworld not to escape,
but to meet myself.

This is the place I say yes to.
The place where I do not bargain.
The place where no one can follow.
Where no one saves.
Where no god speaks unless I scream.

Here, every brick of my false tower collapses.
Each stone engraved with a name I was given,
but never chose.
A belief I inherited but never questioned.
A mask I wore so long, I forgot my face beneath it.

I surrender to the descent.
I offer my false identity to the fire.
I walk into mirrors that do not flatter.
I face the ones I loved and harmed, and the ones who harmed me.
I see the faces I projected onto others, and the ones they painted over me.

I do not look away.

This is the dark night that does not end with dawn,
but with inner ignition.
This is where I find the match.
This is where I become the flame.
This is where I rise, not with borrowed light,
but with the fire that was always mine.

I rise from the ashes,
with a torch in my chest,
with the sovereignty I reclaimed from the wreckage.
No longer bound by sacrifice, shame, or inherited silence.

From distortion to clarity
From illusion to truth
From fragment to whole

I return.
I return.
I return.

Not to who I was
but to who I have always been,
beneath the forgetting.

And so it is.