“ You don't look back at Gardener. You don't dare risk it. Instead you follow the thread, delicately, carefully, like a diver following their lifeline back to the surface.
The river whirls around you, but it doesn't pull, it isn't jealous. Neither does it understand. It is, after all, just a river. It isn't a person, a flesh and blood person, with wants, with desires, with the capacity for love and hate.

It doesn't understand you, and you don't understand it.

So you don't focus on it, you don't think about it, on what feels like such a long journey back through the dark. You set your mind on eyes instead. On hands. Things you can focus on, hold onto.

And then, after an age of crossing, you are there, settling back into the chair, into a body in a chair, and the overwhelming sensations that come with being a living thing with a rich and detailed sensorium.

For a moment you feel like you have made a terrible mistake. Who would choose this weight? This anxiety? This deep well at the center of existence.

But then you feel it. Riko's hand, gripped hard around yours, trembling a little, sweating a little. Riko's hand with its brittle bones and crumpled skin. Riko's hand.

And in that moment you understand why you made this choice. And then you squeeze Riko's hand, and you wake up.
”
Beautiful game, incredible soundtrack, full of love and humanity in a cold and hopeless world. The ending above made me cry. Cant wait for the sequel