These opening pages are written from the underside of consequence.

Collapse is not treated here as spectacle, but as the place where illusion gives way to truth. Freedom is reconsidered. Hope is tested. Memory is no longer allowed to protect what sin has cost.

This first movement begins in confinement, but it does not begin in despair alone. It begins where many true prayers begin: when a man can no longer hide from himself and discovers that God is still there.