The valley is a wound carved into the flesh of the earth, dark and solemn under the weight of a sky that has spent the day pressing down like the hand of an indifferent god. The storm has gnawed at the mountains, gnawed at time itself, dissolving it into a slow, ceaseless grey. Rain, relentless and indifferent, seeped into the bones of the world, into the bones of the self—until there was no world, no self, only the dull, sodden churn of existence, spiraling into nothing.

And then, as if some cosmic stagehand had grown tired of the monotony, the clouds hesitated. A fracture in the firmament. A divine rupture. Through the wound, light spilled like blood from a celestial beast, golden and warm, staining the valley with its fleeting mercy. The mountains, bruised and sullen, lifted their jagged spines to meet it. For the briefest moment, the earth exhaled.

Triumph. That’s the word that wants to rise here. Triumph over the storm, over darkness, over the inertia of despair. The great, silent behemoth of the Alps basks in this moment like a warrior still standing after the battle, wounded but undefeated. The light does not belong here; it is a guest, a lover, a whisper of something that was never meant to stay. But for this moment, it reigns.

And yet, what is it, really? A trick of optics. An illusion cast by a dying sun on an indifferent stage. The world doesn’t care for triumph, not really. This fleeting splendor is already unraveling, already dissolving into the oncoming night. Even as the rays reach out, the darkness is pulling them back. Even as the golden path lays itself upon the valley, it is crumbling under the inevitability of its own transience.

This is life. A brief illumination in an endless void. A moment of beauty suspended between two infinities of nothing. The storm will return. The light will vanish. And the mountains? They will remain, as they always have, silent witnesses to the futility of it all. And you? You’re just a moment too. You were never here.