Santa Paula (Saint)

Santa Paula
Other names	Layla Verion, The Lady of Death
Affiliation	Patron of Verionia, Death, Life, Fate
Symbols	Skull, Sun crown, Cup of blood, Silver staff
Countries	Verionia
Holy Places	The Cave (location unknown), Citadel of Santa Paula (residence)
Worshipers	Approximately 2 million

Santa Paula is a saint and ruler of Verionia. She is the incarnation of Layla Verion following her dead in a cave in northern Apollonia and resurrection into eternal life. Santa Paula is the main focus of a religious movement and cult on the Verionian island. The narrative of Santa Paula from the Cave of Death is an esoteric and philosophical text that is the foundational document of the cult of Santa Paula.

The Cave

To die on one self is the transition to eternity. For many centuries, it has been thought that death is a physical transition. A person lives, breaths, exists until the cloak of death transforms what once was a man or woman into a lump of flesh. Very well this may be the way of almost all men.

It has occurred to me that death however is not irrevocably a physical transformation. The Cave has shown me that this is merely an illusion. The real meaning of death is an entrance into eternal life. Oh sure, that too may not seem like a profound thought, but I will assure you that it is. You may think that I am speaking like the peddlers of religion, or the preachers who talk about the afterlife without having seen it. We have given many names to these ideas. Some Nazrene, some Catologian, some Zurvanist. I will assure you however that the eternal life of which I speak is not even remotely like the unimaginative stories of religion, which merely serve to enslave the downtrodden and deprived. The eternal life of which I speak is lived, because I live it.

Verily, I died and was dead, but now I live and I shall live for ever. Because it was in the darkness of the Cave that I was thrown back at myself. I entered the Cave as a mortal. I once was a woman of stature, exalted over a people, almost at the level of a goddess. The Cave however taught me that I was nothing. Who was to call me a goddess if they know that my self was plagued by anxiety, was haunted by the fear of my past, was desecrated by sin and was stained by my inability to break the chains of the flesh? It was in the darkness of the Cave, where there was no light, that I saw for the first time my true self. The darkness became a mirror, and the mirror spoke to me and transformed me. Nobody can look into the mirror of darkness without seeing yourself naked as on the day you were born. And when the darkness looks back into the soul, who would not shiver? The judgement of priests, yes even of gods, they fade away compared to the judgement of the darkness.

In the Cave I died. Slowly, the darkness of the Cave took away the life that was left in me. I have told you of the woman who entered the Cave. It took thirty years, and then that woman was no more. In went a proud woman of stature, high above the nations. After thirty years, out of the Cave walked a death woman, the smallest of them all. Small, Paula, trampled by the weight of an eternal gaze of darkness. But death does not kill, death cleanses. The true death that cleanses the soul of all mortality will transform irrevocably. Death can no longer kill me, for I am death. Blessed be the Cave that took my life, blessed be the darkness that took my mortal flesh, blessed be death that granted me life, blessed be the nations of Micras, for I have returned from the death. No, not I. For I has died with my flesh. Santa Paula must I be, for there is nothing that makes holy like death, and there is nothing that makes small like dying. For this, I will remain her until the day that the continents crumble and the sea shall rise. When the sun shall no longer shine its light over the face of Micras, and where the darkness shall leave its place, and shall conquer all. That will be death’s final victory. This, I speak to you, hearken the words of the one who died. Let go of your life, for in death you will find eternity.