Into Forbidden Lands
The Seventh Hall

In an instant, Illiom’s world – all that she had known her entire life – changed.

She could make no sense of her surroundings.

She seemed to be on the inside of a sphere of vast dimensions. A gentle but relentless force was drawing her forward. She stumbled, but came up against some kind of barrier that prevented her from falling.

Her gaze was transfixed upon a radiant golden sphere in the distance.

She drank in its divine light.

Sudra’s Orb.

The Golden Dawn.

The Orb of Full Light.

She recalled these names, yet none came close to what she experienced, to the sweetness that filled her heart.

This was like being with Sudra.

The Orb hung suspended before her, its power immense.

Utterly captivated, Illiom found it impossible to look away.

It was some time before she managed to wrest her gaze and study the enclosure that enveloped the Orb.

It was enormous.

She could not fathom its dimensions.

She recognised that she stood on some sort of balcony. To her left and to her right, above and below, stretched countless identical balconies, curving away into the distance. An infinite number of rows and tiers.

Was this the Seventh Hall?

She looked down at her hands and found them resting against a balustrade of stone.

Illiom looked behind her to see where she had come from, but found only blank stone. There was no door, no opening, no sign of the shimmering wall of power through which she had passed.

Through which they had passed.

Where are the others?

The balcony had no entrance.

And no exit.

Yet Illiom felt no fear.

Gripped by a sudden clarity of purpose, she climbed carefully over the railing and allowed herself to feel the pull of Sudra’s Orb.

She paused there, holding on to the balustrade with one hand, savouring her last moment of choice.

Then, with pure delight, she let go.

Behind her, the balcony receded as she slowly fell.

No, she was not falling; it felt more like she was rising.

Drawn gently but powerfully by the Orb’s magnetism, Illiom felt neither fear nor curiosity. A deep serenity pervaded her being as she drew closer to the Orb of Full Light.

She set her gaze upon the luminescence ahead.

Its radiance was neither hot nor cool and, as she drew near, an even deeper stillness claimed her.

She tingled with aliveness, with awareness, with inescapable expansion.

Her eyes wide open, her mind empty, Illiom reached out towards the Orb of her Goddess. She observed her hand and arm stretching beyond what was possible for a physical body.

This close to Sudra’s Orb, even space seemed to warp.

But even this observation could not distract her.

Nothing within Illiom questioned the experience.

Then her hand reached the Orb and, here was an awareness unlike anything she had ever experienced. Awareness of breath, of heartbeat, and of blood pulsing through her veins.

Then...

Peace.

Stillness.

She was distantly aware that even the spherical hall was now gone.

Suddenly…

A rush of power. Of light. Of knowing.

An inner explosion.

An internal expansion which felt so intense that her mortal frame struggled.

For just one moment, Illiom’s mind attempted to comprehend.

In the next instant, a profound surrender.

To the presence that was erupting inside her.

To the ascent of Full Light into her being.

Great waves of energy poured into her.

Illiom felt wide open, and vast.

A sudden onslaught of sensations and images hammered into her and she laughed.

And the whole universe laughed with her.

Everything quietened.

There was nothing here.

Nothing mattered.

There were never two.

There was no Illiom and Sudra.

No Illiom or any other.

There was always and ever only one.

Only one.

Someone smiled.

Someone who once might have called herself Illiom.

The smile deepened.

The world smiled.

All the vastness and everything in it smiled.

Something opened.

Something flowered.

Something grew and spread.

A sensation.

A vibration.

A tremor.

And then…