An inexplicable darkness took over his heart. Not the sweet darkness that he would at times  embrace. Neither was it the darkness that would on occasion tenderly embrace him. 

But it was a darkness that seeped out of the corners of his thoughts, a dark, thick oozing emptiness that forced life out of things, emptying people, walls, streets, human interaction, all things, of all magic and suspense. 

Then, rather than seek to escape, he leaned into it, as one would lean in to a treacherous, overhanging cliff, sinking his bleeding  nails, and knees and toes deep into its mouldy walls.

 And it was then that he could hear the faintest  echo of his ancestors, in his moments of terror and darkness, telling him  they have been where he is and that he too will survive. It was. They explained his  way back to them.