---
🌑Â
It wasn't just a reflection.
What Erikos saw in Isolde's mirrored face wasn't an image, but a truth—a memory he hadn't lived, a past that didn't belong to him, a future already being written without his consent.
Ramata was not dead.
Ramata was waiting.
**
He tried to scream, or thought he did.
But what came from his mouth wasn't his voice—
just a pale flicker of light, dissolving midair like language stripped of meaning.
Then... the mirror vanished.
So did Isolde.
So did the room.
He stood alone in nothingness.
Not darkness.
Not light.
Something in between.
A moment in which the world itself had decided to stop existing…
and stare directly at him—without eyes.
Gradually, things returned.
Ash-covered ground.
A sky the color of burned copper.
And ahead of him, a narrow path carved between dunes of obsidian.
He walked—not because he wanted to,
but because the path moved beneath him,
pulling him gently forward, like a whisper with gravity.
On both sides of the trail, statues rose.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
All of them human faces without names.
But one made him stop.
It was his face.
Worn, cracked at the left eye—
but unmistakably his.
Beneath it, in a language older than memory,
words carved themselves into his thoughts:
> "He who denies his name
shall be erased from between the shadows."
**
At the end of the path stood a door.
Not of wood or metal—
but a door made of dormant letters,
breathing softly… sighing in place.
He approached.
But the words began to unravel,
turning to ash as he drew near.
Still, when he reached out his hand—
the door opened without motion.
---
And he saw himself.
As a child.
Sitting in an old bedroom, scribbling something on the wall with red chalk.
Only one line had been written:
> "I am not Erikos. I am the one who came before."
He stepped closer.
The child didn't look at him.
Didn't breathe.
Then vanished—
like a dream you try to remember, moments after waking.
---
He dropped to
his knees and opened his journal.
It was still with him, though he didn't remember keeping it.
On the next page, without his hand touching the pen, words began to appear:
> "You arrived too late.
The name you carry is no longer yours.
The city knows you…
but you no longer know yourself."
In the margin, a single line appeared, written in a shade between black and midnight:
> "Do not look behind you.
What follows is not your shadow."
And slowly... he heard breath behind him.
**
Then a voice.
Calm. Certain.
As though the world had finally decided to speak:
> "Erikos?"
He turned.
And for the first time...
he wished he
had stayed in the original hell.