(Four thousand one hundred and seventy-two.)
He didn't remember falling asleep, or waking up.  The wasteland sprawls in front of him, formless and infinite(?), stretching its countless incorporeal limbs out in all directions.  No light reaches from the firmament, no escape carved from the immutable darkness.  Snapshots of memories crawl across his mind as he walks.
(Four thousand one hundred and seventy-three.)
A flooded, empty world.
(Four thousand one hundred and seventy-four.)
A crystal, filled with hyperlight.
(Four thousand one hundred and seventy-five.)
[ VEIL ] counts his steps, uncertain of the purpose, but convinced of its importance.  Directionless, disoriented, but the key idea unchanging: movement.  It had only been [ ??? ] minuteshoursdays since his entry into the deep black that surrounds him.
(Four thousand one hundred and seventy-six.)
A monolith-castle, rising from a spectral city.
(Four thousand one hundred and seventy-seven.)
A swirling violet Oculus eye.
(Four thousand one hundred and seventy-eight.)
His steps echo impossibly outwards, suggesting some unseen architecture.  Chills pass through him intermittently as he moves through the space, and he realizes he can't feel his cloak around him.
(Four thousand one hundred and seventy-nine.)
A hungering sword, cast from the Deep.
(Four thousand one hundred and eighty.)
A flash of dark blood.
(Four thousand one hundred and --
Out of the impenetrable darkness comes something familiar: the feeling of hyperlight transfer, space unwrapping around him, displacing his atoms slowly, then all at once.  And he beheld a great and terrible skull, pierced through by thousand-point glass.  Suspended, sundered, sublime: the final likeness, plucked from a heap of broken images.