In the Depths Where Light Never Was
At the bottom of a world never lit,
beneath layers of earth even roots refuse to touch,
breathes a place named Irkalla—
not merely the underworld,
but a black hollow that holds everything rejected by heaven
and swallowed by earth with reluctance.
Irkalla is not a place of punishment.
It is not Hell, for Hell demands judgment.
Irkalla does not judge.
Irkalla forgets.
It is the final womb—flat, dim, silent.
Where souls go not for sin,
but for having once lived.
Where names evaporate,
prayers decay,
and only the hollow echo of existence remains.
🜃 The Land of Ash Without Light
The land of Irkalla grows nothing.
No fire, no ice,
no pain—because even sensation has died there.
Ash layered upon ash,
soul layered upon shadow,
and every step sounds hollow—like bone scraping bone in liquid darkness.
The gods do not touch it.
The angels do not know it.
Only pilgrims know the path.
And those pilgrims... do not come by will.
They are summoned.
By the remnants of betrayed litanies,
by the fragments of illusion that resurrection only comes
after one touches the bottom of death.
🚶♂️ Pilgrim to the Unholy Ground
This pilgrim wears no white robe.
His steps are not the rhythm of faith.
He walks hunched,
carrying a pouch of ash from those who once dreamed,
each grain a hope burned before it could bloom.
He brings no offering.
He is the offering.
Not to God,
but to something older than prayer:
Irkalla itself.
With each step, he mutters names never to be repeated—
names erased from the tombstones of heaven,
names that make the air recoil.
"I am the way to the place unpromised.
I am the ash from a flame that failed to become light.
I am the remnant of a ritual heaven revoked."
The Black Hollow: Where All Is Lost
Irkalla is also known as The Black Hollow—
a dark cavity where all meaning dissolves.
It does not devour,
it absorbs—
making your existence part of a silence older than time.
There is no escape.
But also, no destruction.
For destruction requires resistance.
Irkalla does not resist.
It accepts.
And for that,
it is more terrifying than any hell ever conceived.
Ash Beneath the Feet
The pilgrim knows
he walks on the ash of generations who failed to reach Eden,
on the remnants of fallen angels' wings,
on the memories of prophets whose prayers were voided.
Each grain of dust is an untaken decision.
Each step is a ritual,
tracing the edge between the mortal and the forgotten.
When he finally reaches the core of Irkalla,
he finds no throne.
There is no throne.
Only a black mirror—
and in it, he sees himself,
not as he is,
but as he will always be:
silent, nameless, part of the darkness.
And Still… The Land Lives
For Irkalla holds all that the world has denied:
Failed love.
Retracted prayers.
Forgotten gods.
Songs never sung.
And the last pilgrims,
who do not walk to return,
but to remember what the world must never remember again.
Irkalla is not dead.
It waits.
For a day will come…
when heaven is too full,
and hell is too aflame,
and the only place left for wounded souls
is that black hollow.
Et ne nos inducas in oblivionem…
sed libera nos ab silentio eterno.