I cannot see any obvious way that these things could have been composed into a frame in a substantially stronger way, offhand.
The processing seems strong, you're emphasizing the things you want emphasized, which is great.
Therefore it must be the elements! Absent the title, the image feels like it's trying to convey something (which is great -- well done) but that something is ambiguous. It could be a funeral, it could be.. I dunno.. Black Guards with a Battering Ram. It could be a metaphorical path leading to heaven or freedom or light.
There is, I think, a definite sense of "two rows of dark figures alongside something lighter". I don't get a strong feeling that the lighter thing they're alongside needs to be viewed as a figure or even an object (although obviously it IS an object, it feels like it could be interpreted otherwise).
Now that I'm thinking it through more, I'm not sure about my previous opinion. It's evocative of ideas, for damn sure, and that's generally all I demand of a photograph. Somehow I just feel like I want the sharpness and clarity (not necessarily of a single idea, but something more open-ended about clarity) that the title brings to the image, and I want the image to do that by itself.
Now I'm mixed about how I feel about it (that's normal, for me, I waffle back and forth on photographs, if they're any damn good, as my normal state).
I probably didn't say a single coherent thing, but maybe that stream of consciousness contains something useful?