[ It feels impossible to move from this spot, standing, frozen in part both horror and awe of the expanse of galaxies spread out all around him.

Both paths — the dark and the light — tug at him but he remains where he is, staring up, watching as, slowly, lights in the distance begin to blink out, one by one. Witnessing it drags up a gut-twisting sensation of dread. He feels as though he's seen this before. He may have. This place feels familiar enough. In a vision, perhaps, once upon a time, but when? Why? Or is it all in his head? ]

They're... they're dying. Why are they dying?

[ He asks in a hushed tone, speaking as though in a church and not wishing to interrupt anyone else. He yearns to know why, why are the lights going out, but, at the same time, he wants to reject any answer that may come.

This isn't real, after all. It can't be. It's only a dream. He needs to wake up. ]

[ Nothing is more traumatic than being hit with the realization that your world is gone. His home, his family, he can't even feel the magic from the miracle anymore, and all three of those crushing realities hit him as he breaks through the crystalline shell and lands wetly on the cold, stony ground of the shrine. That he's lacking in clothes of any sort doesn't break through everything else rushing through his head just yet because all he wants to do is curl up and keen like an injured animal, arms covering his face and fingers threading through his damp hair, gripping clumps of it simply for the sake of having something to hold onto as sobs wrack his small, narrow form.

Things were about to be better. He finally got to go home, for real, to be a part of his family again, to be a part of everything again. There wasn't going to be any more hiding, no more isolation because of his visions, no more... he was finally going to be happy... and now, it was all gone.

It would be sensible to try and figure out what's happened, where he is, anything at all besides weeping in despair, but he can't even consider it right now. It's too much for Bruno. To have everything he could have hoped for one moment and then have it senselessly destroyed the next. ]

[ Let's be honest here, in the state he's in, Bruno was and is an easy mark for the Kenoma, and one would think his despair over the loss of his family would make the odious sludge they've forced down his throat do its work quickly, only therein lies the dilemma. To accept the better universe the whispers offer, one has to desire continued existence in the first place.

Bruno will spend several days pressed against a corner, trying to hide — and failing, there isn't really anywhere to hide. There, he leans against where one wall meets the other to form that corner, legs drawn up to his chest as if trying to make himself as small as possible. Easily done, as he is already a truly small man. There, he sits, still, staring off blankly across the vast room, black ooze rimming his eyelids and slowly dripping down his face.

Sheer misery is all he projects as he's forced to go over and over again everything he must have done wrong in life to deserve this. He was the one who caused trouble. He was the one people feared. Maybe they had been right after all. Why is he still alive, why is he here, why isn't he dead and gone, too? He would at least be with his family then, if he, too, were...

Safe to say, it isn't a fun time to be around him. The thoughts he projects are grim ones, to say the least. ]