understood then. Understood it all. Somehow…even before reading the journals. Understood he’d been hanging there…oh, dear God…seven years. Living. Dying. The cruciform…forcing him to live again. Electricity…surging through him every second of those…those seven years. Flames. Hunger. Pain. Death. But somehow the goddamned…cruciform…leeching substance from the tree maybe, the air, what was left…rebuilding what it could…forcing it to live, to feel the pain, over and over and over….
