One day, as you stand before your reflected self, expecting to greet yourself with the same admiration as the day before, the sickeningly thick layers of vanity you have applied in your own construction, will become as thin the basis they were built upon.

They will unfaithfully dissolve, layer by layer, Falling away like traitors; deserters to the pretty purpose you groomed them to fulfill.

And you will be helpless as their retreat will expose the frailty of the bed of belief behind all that misguided worship.

Each oil-slick layer warps all that you choose to hide; the corrupt, the pride, the sordid residing of justification and gluttony,

But your wide eyes will, one day, be powerless to betrayal. Your own illusions will fool you no longer.

You will be stripped bare and flayed by the lashes of your own merciless eyes.

Vanities will abandon you, and leave you with nothing but contempt in place of praise, revulsion will swim up from your gut to replace reverie.

And as you stare back, defenseless, to all the dark parts exposed to the stark harsh light of self-realisation, your memory will summon a fierce ghost that tried to save you from yourself, that tried to protect you from this moment of free-flowing loathing; a ghost that tried to warn you, a ghost that once used a magic touch to wipe away your vanity so that you may not know the weight of this moment.

Knowing the answer, the ghost that will greet you simply asks:

Kerabe.