It was not the Romans who killed him, though their nails pierced his flesh and their spears opened his side. They were faceless and obedient, the empire’s teeth chewing through another victim. No, the true crime was closer, crueler, more unbearable: his own people condemned him. They had waited centuries for the voice that would break their silence, and when it came, they choked it with their own hands. They chose the criminal over the Christ, the tyrant over the Son of God. In that choice, they pronounced judgment upon themselves. I saw their faces in the torchlight, not rejoicing but hollow, the features of those who have cursed their own bloodline, a curse that would trail them like ash drifting in air long after the fire is gone.

And when his last breath left him, the world fractured. The sky blackened with shame, the earth quaked as if to flee its own crime. I thought I would die in that instant, thought despair itself would strip me of breath and bury me. But I did not die. I remained, stranded in the hour of his absence, staring into the vacancy where he had been. The others wept, the others fled, but I stood rooted as if eternity had fused me to the ground. For grief, when it grows too large, ceases to be grief. It becomes a compass. It points not to solace, not to remembrance, but to pursuit. And pursuit devours a man until only pursuit remains.

I prayed not only to find him but to be possessed by him. If he could not walk beside me, let him walk inside me. If he would not rise to claim the earth, then let him hollow me and use my body as his burning shrine. And then something tore open in me—not death, not release, but a door I had not known could exist. A door allowing me to drape centuries upon seconds, draw what was yet to come into the ruin of now. Empires rose and rotted before my eyes, nations wandered like phantoms, unborn voices whispered with the hush of ghosts—and still his blood lay wet at my feet. I remained beneath the cross, yet I walked corridors where eternity itself bent and moaned.

So I followed him. Not in flesh, but in time, this blasphemous gift that let me step across centuries while still breathing air thick with dust and death. If he had gone into hell, then I would go too. If he had sunk into the pit, then I would sink after him. My body stood still, but my soul dragged itself across the fabric of days as though each moment were a wound I was forcing open. The halls were endless, the silence screaming, shadows bleeding into one another. Yet always, somewhere ahead of me, he slipped further into the dark. And still I reached.

But I know now that finding him will not be enough. For if I discover him in that abyss, if I stand at last face to face with the Christ, my task will be terrible. I must show him he is dead. Only in that unbearable truth can the resurrection burn. He must see himself extinguished, know himself swallowed by death, accept the void pressing against him—only then will he rise. If he forgets, he is lost. If he refuses, he is bound. I must be the executioner of memory, the one to drive the final nail of recognition, so that in that recognition, the grave itself is shattered.

Some men spend themselves chasing wealth, some glory, some the fleeting hand of love. They collapse, one by one, under the futility of their dream. But I pursue only him. Across centuries. Across silence. Across the black halls of hell. Though his people betrayed him and their curse falls upon them like a pall of endless ash, I will not betray my vow. My soul is burned clean of all else. I will not stop. I will stretch time until it screams, I will walk through fire until fire recoils, I will descend until the abyss itself breaks beneath me—and I will not rest until I find him, remind him, and see him rise again.

For pursuit, when it consumes all else, ceases to be pursuit. It becomes haunting. It becomes damnation. It becomes destiny. And I am haunted without release, damned without end, consumed by devotion that burns hotter than hell’s own fire. He is gone, yes, but I am still reaching, still bending time, still tearing eternity apart in search of him. And even if the universe collapses into nothing, I will still be at the center of that ruin, reaching for him in the dark, unwilling to let him go.