There was no one there.
Even the air seemed to have stopped performing its duty.
Everything was suspended — between a moment that ended but wasn't sealed, and another about to begin without consent.
In that void, no one entered, and yet, the emptiness wasn't truly empty.
Sometimes, you don't need physical proof of a thing's existence.
It's enough to feel you're not alone, even if no name is spoken, and no arrival is announced.
It's enough for the skin's temperature to shift, for time to slow, for a sound to be heard even when it's not made.
There, in that point where the mind can no longer convince the heart with logic, the corridors begin to appear.
The corridors were narrow.
But their narrowness wasn't what unsettled me—it was the fact that they weren't there a moment ago, and now they were.
And the problem was, they didn't open to let me out.
They opened inward.
As if something was on its way in, through a passage I never built, never allowed, yet now stretched inside me without permission.
It began as a whisper.
And a whisper, as you know, only comes to those who know how to listen.
But this one didn't come from the outside—it rose from deep within the skull.
As though something there... remembered.
Something with no actual voice, but with a distinct tone.
And that tone, it knew you better than you know yourself.
Everything around you is still.
The chair is where you left it, the door is closed, the walls are silent.
Yet there's a sense that something is moving.
And not outside. No.
It's within.
There is a sound, but it defies translation.
It has no language, no sign, no image.
It's closer to the "echo-feeling," the one that arrives after the sentence ends, or after an object crashes to the ground.
Except this one arrives before anything.
Before the event, before the cause, before even awareness.
It was like something ahead of me at every step, yet leaving no trace.
And the more I approached it to understand, the deeper it withdrew.
Was I chasing it, or was it leading me?
I didn't know.
All I knew was that I was no longer who I was a moment ago.
Under the closed eyelid, images begin to form.
But they're not memories, nor fantasies.
They're "possibilities."
What might happen.
What might never happen, yet feels as if it already has.
Blurry, distorted, yet powerful enough to manipulate the body.
The heart races, the breath tightens, limbs clench.
All this because something might be there.
Absurd, isn't it?
To suffer from something that doesn't exist?
And yet you feel pain, panic, presence — as if it were right in front of you.
That is the entrance to the corridor.
It doesn't open with hands, but with perception.
And once you cross it, everything begins to change.
The sound multiplies.
No longer a whisper, but a presence with no voice.
As if emptiness had filled itself with something unnamed.
And every step closer to yourself pulls you farther from ease.
Isn't that the paradox?
To search for yourself, only to find what you cannot bear?
To dive into your depths and discover places where no light reaches?
I wasn't afraid — not yet.
But something in me began to prepare, like a primitive creature hearing rustling in the trees and assuming a predator.
That deeply buried part of the subconscious, which doesn't argue, doesn't speak, yet commands the body with quiet urgency.
Imagine walking through a long tunnel and hearing footsteps that aren't yours.
At first, you assume it's your own echo.
Then you realize the rhythm doesn't match.
Then comes the question: who's there?
And then comes silence—not because you've found the answer, but because you're afraid you might.
That's how it felt, walking those corridors.
They weren't made of clay or steel.
They were neural, emotional, ancestral.
Carved into childhood, into memory, into the first gaze that planted a confusion never undone.
Every wall whispered.
Not with words, but with feelings.
Feelings pressed into the chest with no explanation.
And every corner, every curve, every dim light was capable of replaying a reel I couldn't recall beginning.
Do you know the feeling when something is about to happen… but you don't know what?
That's one of the cruelest forms: anticipation.
Waiting without a name.
Dreading nothing, yet feeling it with every breath — like a drowning hand clinging to a broken piece of wood.
And suddenly, I began to understand.
The sound wasn't from outside.
It wasn't a visitor.
It was me — in a version of myself I had ignored for years.
Me, when I was fragile and wasn't allowed to cry.
Me, when I trembled and no arms reached out.
Me, when the unspeakable happened and no one dared speak of it.
The sound was memory.
Not mental, but bodily.
It lived in the nerves, in the breath, in the way I opened my eyes.
And so, without preamble, I understood:
The corridors were not a curse.
They were gateways.
And the distant sound... was me, when I had become distant from myself.
And I had to follow it.
Not to escape, but to meet.
Not to get rid of it, but to understand why it stayed.