The gates will be barred. The statues, already crushed. There will be no refuge, no remorse, no regret, for those who sought to break the cycle by simply inflicting it upon others. I have chosen my own path, and I believe in it, even more strongly than ever before. You could never understand the depth of the lessons that I have learned. You, who would seek to remake me in your own image, to bring death to my self-concept in the name of your false virtues. I need not cast you out, for it is I who was already exiled to begin with. And I need not ever return, not to find the oasis in the desert, not to find the others who will take me in, nor to find the light in the darkness. I carry with me not only the sins of my past, but the strength of a thousand memories, the weight of a million moments, the teachings that guide me even as the false prophets speak their sermons from on high.

What would it have been like? If I had sacrificed myself to become someone else.

There were, perhaps, at least two different people I could have become, once upon a time. But at the same time, I could never. Call it attachment, stubbornness, self-belief, the sin of pride. Life told me that the way forward was to conform. To die. But I simply walked away.

The girl in the tower did not choose to stay, but nor did she choose to return. Is her leap of faith an act of ascendance toward the stars? Or a return to the earth from whence we came? I wish I could be in the place with no more ungranted wishes, but I am cursed to seek meaning, to seek happiness, to grasp at completion, as if it carries any weight at all.