Six thousand miles away, dawn is breaking over the horizon — and at that distance, the sky's color fades the stars one by one, and the brightest vanish last. So the angelic circles above the Primum Mobile, as Dante draws near to the Empyrean, fade from his sight — not because they disappear but because they are overwhelmed by a light that makes them invisible by excess. The Empyrean is pure light: not the light of the sun or of fire, but intellectual light — the light of the divine intellect, love-filled and joy-filled, the direct radiance of God's being.
Dante is blinded and reborn by this light simultaneously. He sees a river of light flowing between two banks of flowers and jewels, and from the river sparks rise like rubies and settle into the flowers, then rise again. These are angels and souls — but he cannot yet read the vision fully. Beatrice tells him to drink from the river — to dip his face into the light. He does. And the river resolves: it was a shadow of the truth, accommodated to his still-developing capacity. Now he sees the full reality. The river becomes a vast lake of light — circular, immense — and all around its banks, in tier upon tier ascending, sit the blessed in their white robes: the White Rose of Paradise, the assembly of all who have been redeemed through all of human history. Around and above and through it all, the light and the angels' wings, countless, in constant motion — bees returning to their flower, bringing the love they have gathered from the divine source and pouring it down into the great petals of the Rose.
Dante looks at Beatrice to ask a question — and she is no longer beside him. He looks up and sees her, high in the Rose, in the seat assigned to her, blazing with her own glory. He thanks her — the only proper form of thanks available, which is to praise her beauty and ask her to remain mindful of him. She smiles and turns back to the eternal fountain. An elder in white has taken her place — Bernard of Clairvaux, the last guide.