If you can choose what others see, what happens when reality slips out of your control?
That morning, Lila had woken up with a question she already hated.
Who had added the third figure?
The image kept coming back.
Two figures injected. Three on screen.
The night before, at the foot of the Wall, the spotlights had turned the Fissure into a set. It had been lit, framed, cleared of anything that stuck out. It had to be turned into a spectacle, because on air, emptiness wasn't enough.
While Aria and Sophie were falling asleep far away, Lila had taken her place in front of the cameras again.
Three... two... one...
Her face immediately rearranged itself: neither warm nor cold. Just the exact expression needed to make everyone on the other side of the screen feel concerned.
"We're back on Mission Detective. In front of us: the Fissure, the breaking point, the place where the world... seems to waver."
The camera moved toward Kaël.
Kaël Orvelle wasn't pretending to be brave. He was pretending to be seen. In his eyes, excitement and fear coexisted beneath perfectly controlled confidence.
"Kaël is ready," Lila continued. "The team is safe, with reinforced protocols and drones providing cover."
Then she added:
"For some time now, rumors have been circulating. Images, whispers... 'presences.' Some are even talking about nature spirits."
In the control room, Idriss monitored the raw feed from the Fissure: infrared, thermal, spectrum, slow motion. Throughout pre-production, he had searched for something.
He had found nothing.
No figure. No entity. Nothing but interference and emptiness.
So they had decided to manufacture what the audience expected to see.
In her headset, the FX supervisor's voice whispered:
"Your overlays are ready."
Kaël hadn't been told, but he had understood that something was being prepared. Deep down, he still hoped something real would happen. Uncontrollable proof. A moment that wouldn't depend on editing.
He stepped toward the Fissure.
One step. Then another.
Nothing.
No supernatural whisper, no spectacular vibration. Only that strange feeling of standing at the edge of something that refused to reveal itself.
Lila gave him a look.
Stay in character.
"Kaël... what do you feel? Do you sense... something?"
He could have answered: nothing.
But nothing, on air, was a failure.
So he tilted his head slightly, as if listening.
"It's... strange. As if it's watching me."
Lila gave a faint smile.
"As if... it's watching you."
In the control room, the FX supervisor murmured:
"Now."
Idriss triggered it.
On the screens, two shapes appeared near the Fissure: blurred, luminous, ambiguous enough for everyone to project whatever they wanted onto them.
Then a third shape moved.
Lila saw it.
She didn't step back. Her face remained perfectly composed in front of the camera.
In her earpiece, Maya whispered:
"Lila... that one's not ours."
This time, Lila's surprise was real: a blink, a slight step back.
"Did you see that?" she whispered.
Kaël felt his stomach tighten. He knew the first two figures were fabricated. But behind them, something had actually moved.
He froze.
This time, Lila didn't need to ask him to act afraid.
Kaïssa Valdor was watching the live broadcast from her living room. Engagement and retention graphs scrolled across a secondary screen. The numbers were rising, but her gaze remained fixed on the third figure.
In Lila's earpiece, her voice came through:
"Keep going. We want a strong ending. And fast."
Lila understood.
Kaïssa had seen it too.
She turned toward the camera.
"If these presences exist, then our story... may be greater than what we've been taught."
For once, she wasn't making everything up.
Kaël stared at the Fissure. A few minutes earlier, it had still been nothing more than a set. Now, it looked like a real boundary.
And he stood before it, torn between the shame of having taken part in a lie and the fear of having caught sight of something real.
Yet when the camera returned to him, he smiled.
"I'm ready."
Idriss restarted only the planned effects.
The third figure didn't reappear.
Lila concluded:
"Whatever lies behind the Fissure... one thing is certain: we have just crossed a boundary."
A silence.
"Join us again tomorrow. This is only the beginning..."
The feed was cut.
Within minutes, the microphones, spotlights, and cables disappeared. The drones left the area, and the Wall returned to silence.
Kaël remained alone facing the Fissure.
"You were perfect," Lila said as she approached.
He turned around.
"The first two... that was you?"
She paused.
"You already know the answer."
"And the third?"
This time, Lila didn't answer.
"Lila... what was it?"
She could have lied. Yet no words came.
"What exists, Kaël," she finally said, "is what people remember. And what they remember... is what we choose to show them."
"That's not what I asked you."
For the first time, Lila looked away.
Kaël had always wanted to become a hero. He had never wondered what he would feel the day he could no longer tell what was real from what he was being asked to play.
Lila briefly placed a hand on his arm, a gesture that was almost tender, or professional.
"You did your job, and I did mine. Now we're going home. We'll see tomorrow..."
Then she left.
Kaël remained facing the Wall and the Fissure for a few more seconds. For the first time, he felt as though an abyssal emptiness was invading his entire body.
Far away, far from the spotlights and miles from there, in the virgin forest, the morning light was softer.
Here, the world didn't shine to be seen. It shone because it existed.
Neris Valdor walked alone.
Her boots made almost no sound. She had adapted her movements to the moss, the roots, the dampness. A discreet, efficient way of moving, as if she were apologizing for being there.
Around her, the air smelled of wet earth and something else, a light fragrance she hadn't noticed before.
Neris stopped.
Between two ferns, a mark caught her attention. Not a human footprint. It was too regular, too precise. A geometric pressure, as if a harder material had pushed the earth aside without crushing it.
She ran a finger along its edge.
It wasn't an animal.
"Thirty-two seconds," she murmured, almost despite herself.
Her haptic watch vibrated gently. She raised her wrist and activated a mini-swarm.
Three micro-drones emerged from her case like metallic insects. They rose a meter above the ground, just high enough to scan the surroundings without giving her away.
On her screen, the map took shape in real time: terrain, humidity, thermal anomalies. In the middle of the forest appeared a trail of irregularities, like a small scar.
Someone had passed through there, or something.
Neris thought of Kaïssa. Of her way of wanting to control everything, monitor everything, keep everything in its place.
Had she already sent her guards after her? Did these tracks belong to whatever her mother had detected the day before? Or to those Neris herself was looking for?
Here, however, nothing seemed to obey Kaïssa's rules.
No protocols. No badges. No earpieces.
Only the forest.
And strangely, Neris didn't feel threatened there. She, who always moved with her guard up, protected behind her machines, felt an unusual sense of peace here.
She took a deep breath and continued walking.
The drones moved ahead of her, returned to her, then moved off again. Little by little, Neris let the tracks guide her.
In a clearing, she discovered another one: a broken branch, but not by accident. The break was clean, angled. On the bark, a friction mark showed that a smooth material had slid against it.
Neris froze. Her mind calculated a thousand hypotheses. Her heart had only one.I'm finally going to find them.
Those who had crossed the Wall. Those who knew. Those who had managed to leave the illusion.
She looked around.
"Who are you and where are you?" she murmured.
The wind moved through the branches.
For a second, Neris had the absurd impression that the forest... was listening.
Her drones suddenly returned. A silent alert appeared on her screen.
Movement at one hundred meters.
Weak thermal signature. Too low for an adult standing upright. Too stable for an animal on the hunt.
Neris held her breath. She shut down the drones and placed a hand on her case. Her reason told her not to move.
But something deeper inside her whispered the opposite.
It's not a trap. Go.
She took one step forward, then another. At the edge of her field of vision, between the ferns, something moved.
She couldn't yet see what it was. But she understood one thing.
Her mother was constantly manufacturing reality.
Here, in the forest... it was different.
Reality itself was preparing to enter the frame.
The Guardian Angel: Humans shape what they want to show, sometimes to the point of forgetting that the world does not need them in order to exist. They can manufacture images, control narratives, divert attention... but some truths always end up revealing themselves.
Thank you for reading me.
And you... when did you start to doubt what was real? 👀
New chapter every Sunday
Follow the story so you don't miss what comes next.
Elea
More echoes from the Worlds Reconciled universe:https://linktr.ee/worldsreconciled