I drifted into oblivion, and my body was lost in tremors too subtle to be felt; as though I had been cast into a frame that inhaled the very air around it, leaving within a single breath writhing in its own chest. It was a space beyond any space, offering no point of anchor nor demanding comprehension, merely letting one fall into a slow movement akin to the weary slide of light upon the skin of water. The cold here was no mere condition; it was a multitude of tiny bites creeping along one's nerves, causing the flesh to emit a sound like glass at its first tremor. Worse still, this was not physical alone; one felt the very essence of one's being needled, an experience most unwelcome.
Though I was alone, naught but I and the Self, there were other presences I came to recognize yet never truly see; they danced in the dark—irregular signals, pulses, ripples, breaths that condensed and shattered. And then, you perceived them: incomprehensible beasts, formless as bats, writhing not with conventional wings but opening voids of curves and hollows through which they slipped like thoughts across the face of troubled waters. They came not with steady tread; they gusted, flashed, dissolved, returned and splintered, weaving rings of shadow that intertwined with the silence of the deep, as if stitching the very fabric of the night.
And because the Silence here was an entity, the inner voice became a visual spectacle. Upon the mind fell brief, vivid flashes; each imagined thought rose as a tumult of words whose silent scream surpassed any tone, transforming into visual phantasms before the inner eye. All this, beneath the constant, unyielding phrase: a cold space, isolated from all familiar concept, mysteriously silent, far from the clamorous backdrops of stories. It was no mere observation, but a pane of glass upon which every attempted utterance was cast back, shattered into smaller, stranger shapes.
My thoughts did not fall into this void without cause; they were uttered, then cowered, fearing to disturb the sole sovereign. All one's thoughts were spoken aloud, yet dared not trouble that primordial Silence—they were recorded, displayed, folded like parchments upon the steps of an ancient temple, though the temple itself was besieged by ice. I watched my words emerge as random bubbles of plasma, twisting upon themselves like the scribbles of a child. They struck a wall that neither heard nor replied, returning broken, the remnants of a melody whose notes were never understood.
In the end, motion here was not merely the movement of forms; it was the pulse of an idea summoned and paraded before one's consciousness, only to be swallowed without blood or trace. One felt a witness to an ancient dance that cared not for its audience; beasts that ravaged the expanse, a Silence that devoured sound, and one's own thoughts turned into brief scenes projected upon the face of the Void—a conditional life within a realm that showed no mercy to understanding, slowly dissolving back into the great, all-consuming Silence.
Within that silent Silence existed one sensation alone: a sense that the Void wished to give birth, then cracked… A shadow on the very edge of being, with a presence neither measurable nor to be questioned. There floated and slid, foolishly amid the Nothing, a semblance of a human shape—a tenuous image swaying like a flame-less jellyfish, unbound by gravity or weight. It travelled from Nowhere to Nowhere, as one traversing maps never drawn, without steps, without trace, as if borrowing places to sit from a Void that held no places.
Its posture was sudden and absurd in its simplicity: seated at a wooden desk, working. Upon that desk lay heaps of fragments, stones of thought, splinters of suspended time—it was a puzzle. Each movement of its hand seemed a reordering of a story's very atoms, as if this small arrangement was re-carving a line into an erased history.
This puzzle formed a picture different from the last. It had been an image of myself and the Detective and the three shadows, standing in that wretched village. But here, memory was not displayed as it was; it was remorselessly reconstructed: edges trembled, faces warped and rearranged themselves, the old scene becoming a re-coordinated version upon a slanted board. The desk lamp, which should have been in the far right corner, flickered on and off in a random pattern that nonetheless felt ordained; its pulse was like an electric heart seizing and releasing the scene's existence.
When the lamp died, the man and his desk vanished for a few seconds only to return, as if the world itself paused to draw breath. Yet he did not vanish wholly: his shadow remained, a tenant in the arm of time; the man still sat within his cloak, which hid his face, though I could not affirm he possessed one at all. The cloak rippled like ink on still water; the shape constant enough to chill, inconstant enough to defy certainty.
The cadence of his being was strange: the man himself was unsteady even in his work—shifting between insignificance and grandeur in a single undulation. One saw it with a clarity left cruelly exposed, as before a living paradox: He is too vast. He is too small. He is silent. He is screaming. The two contradictions held no difference when existence itself is a riddle. Every action he performed, however simple it seemed, echoed through the expanse like a sound stretched without beginning.
He asked for nothing, desired naught but this small piece of world; he did nothing but craft that puzzle—and in that sole act lay all his ritual. Then, without further drama, he laid his hands upon the final piece and completed the picture. The moment the last fragment settled, the very space groaned in a manner no ear could hear: an image had been finished, a memory extracted, a door shut—and the Silence of the Silence returned, victorious, yet this time laden with a new sense of finality.
A pillar of fire erupted from the puzzle, swallowing the silent space around me like a ravenous beast. It consumed me, merged with my very spirit, and whispered into my heart with a voice that echoed relentlessly in my ears, repeating a single phrase until madness threatened to claim me:
"O FIRE… TAKE ME WITH YOU…"
A strange voice, far removed from anything human, coiled about me then faded. I opened my eyes to find myself still upon the village threshold, and the night had now broken.
The groaning swelled. Weeping and cries rose, threading through the alleys long after Merdain's presence had vanished. The priest continued his oration, but the people's terror only grew, as if they were struggling to understand who led them through this chaos—as if leading a flock of panicked sheep were ever an easy thing.
My gaze drifted to the Detective. He stood motionless, staring at the spot where Merdain had been. Lagrita was the one standing there now, somewhat terrified yet resolute. Castor and Ancaeus made no move to comfort her; they murmured strange words in a tongue I did not understand, an incantation meant for the unseen alone.
I approached Lagrita and placed a hand gently on her shoulder, my voice measured, devoid of threat or command: "Are you unharmed? What did you see?"
Her body trembled beneath my touch. "I know not… I saw nothing. I know not what I saw… or if I saw anything at all."
The Detective took a step forward, his language crisp and factual: "Ancaeus. Can you analyze her memory?"
Ancaeus ceased his murmuring with Castor. He gave a curt nod and extended a hand toward Lagrita. His palm gleamed with a arcane circle, the light glowing for a few seconds before he withdrew.
"It is entirely sealed… from the moment we beheld Merdain, until his departure."
I drew a sharp breath, trying to grasp Ancaeus's words as if they were shards of ice lodged in my chest before melting. "So… was it Merdain? Was he the entity Simon met in the forest?"
The Detective gave no reply. He said nothing. His glass-like face, devoid of features, devoid of any indicator, was but a silent mirror reflecting my queries, granting me not a single answer.
"No trace of Merdain lingers in this world," said old Castor, his voice wooden, as if reading from some preserved tome. "He has departed."
My thoughts stumbled under their own weight, heavier than any open-heart surgery I had ever performed. But here, we moved upon a pencil's edge. Precision and peril were multiplied, and every minor error sufficed to rend reality itself.
The Detective still gazed at the spot where Lagrita stood… at the place Merdain had occupied. His body was silent as a statue carved from void, unmoving, unblinking, doing naught but stare at an empty space, as if observing something I could not perceive.
Lagrita swallowed with difficulty, her lips trembling, her eyes glistening with confusion and fear. "The strangeness is… I sensed no magic breaching me… nor do I feel it now. I comprehend not what has caused this sealing of my memory…"
A silence settled upon the place, an entity in its own right, pressing upon us, forcing every part of our beings to bend with caution. Then Ancaeus spoke, his voice low yet firm, his tone aloof and coldly procedural: "Let us simply proceed with what we were to do before."
He gestured toward the villa, our original destination, as if this simple motion carried more weight than any physical force.
My steps advanced, each one akin to plunging into unseen, murky waters, where every motion sent ripples through the very air, and each breath left a trace like a phantom fading before it could be touched.
We resumed walking in silence, a silence thick as a layer of ash fallen from a fire extinguished moments before. The buoyant mood that once accompanied our strides was gone, dissolved, transmuted into something far darker. The Detective walked ahead of us, his staff absent, his hands clasped behind his back in a classic, measured gait… a calm that provoked more unease than it soothed.
Finally, I broke the silence:
"So… do you believe Merdain is the enigmatic entity Simon encountered in the forest, and the cause of the collective memory seal?"
The Detective continued without turning. His steps made a soft sound upon the earth before he spoke, his tone factual and direct:
"He may be connected to the memory seal phenomenon… but he is not the same entity that was in the forest."
I narrowed my eyes.
"And why separate the two? Is it not logical they would be one and the same?"
He shook his head in denial, slowly, deliberately:
"No, Thomas… And why do you assume Merdain sealed the people's memories?"
I thought for a moment, or at least tried to order my thoughts amidst this confusion:
"To hide his presence… to create evidence of absence."
"You are correct that he is hiding something," he stated firmly, "but he is not hiding his presence. Would you call what he did today 'creating evidence of absence'? He revealed himself to us willingly… This means his presence is not what he seeks to conceal. It is something else."
I fell silent. The Detective's words coiled inside my skull like hot iron.
"Yes… but perhaps he knows that with us are the Shadows, and he cannot hide from their perception."
A light chuckle escaped him, brief, yet sufficient to shatter the ember of tension in the air.
"Ah, Thomas… You assume the forest entity and Merdain are the same, yet you also think he cannot conceal himself from the Shadows. Then how do you explain him doing so the first time? And then…" He half-turned toward the three Shadows, "…it is evident Merdain is beyond their ken. Did you not see how they tensed at his appearance? How they assailed him with questions? They were fundamentally incapable of perceiving his presence… Merdain's appearance today holds one meaning:
He does… not… care."
Castor's body gave a visible shudder at this sentence. Lagrita lowered her head, as if wishing not to be seen. As for Ancaeus… well, he was, by his nature, indifferent.
"Then… why do you suppose Merdain came here, Detective?" asked Ancaeus, his voice measured, yet carrying the tone of one who does not wish to hear the answer.
We passed through the village gate, skirting the outer wall. The villa drew nearer, growing clearer, and behind it appeared a cluster of small white houses, like a miniature hamlet for the wealthy. I still did not understand why we walked. The sorcerers could have transported us in an instant, but the Detective's intent was clear: he wished us to arrive while thinking… not merely to arrive.
A half-minute of silence passed. The Detective did not answer Ancaeus. He was waiting for an opinion from us. So I decided, as usual, to offer myself as sacrifice:
"Perhaps he came to support the priest… to gather new followers for the church?"
"That is possible," said the Detective, "but it is not so. Merdain stated he did not come of his own volition… but that something drew him during his prayers. Or, as he said: he possesses no purpose in coming. Reasons are for mortals… not for the Lord."
Castor growled, his voice dripping with noble disdain:
"And you take his words at face value? It is plain he came willingly! One does not find oneself spatio-temporally displaced from one locus to another without cause!"
I shook my head in agreement… logically, Castor was right.
But the Detective replied with his chilling calm:
"In fact… it is entirely possible. Just as Simon translocated his manor to another point of my existence… there may be something else here that drew Merdain. And he named this something… 'the Lord'."
The three of them halted instantly. I looked at their faces… and though inscrutable, in human terms they were shocked. Terrified.
"'The Lord'?" said Ancaeus, his voice coldly appraising. "Are you suggesting a Sanctified Sorcerer was here?"
I stopped as well, not comprehending the source of their clear horror. But the Detective did not stop, forcing them to hasten after him. A shade of darkness seeped from them, flooding the air around us, extending black tendrils toward the Detective's shoulder.
But before they could touch him, he said in his cool voice:
"No. No Sanctified Sorcerer was here. Merdain referred to 'the Lord' as a very specific entity. Mortals believe in many gods, and the Sanctified ones always use the plural when speaking of deities… not the singular."
Then he lifted his head slightly as he added:
"Since when has the Church preached the singularity of God? Since when do they use a 'singular' word to describe the divine?"
The three of them froze completely.
They needed but two seconds to understand…
Yes.
The Church now worshipped a single God.
Merdain… had altered human religion.
And… no one had noticed.
And I… felt an unnatural coldness spread along my spine.
Not because the answer was frightening.
But because the true question had not yet been asked:
Why would he do such a thing…?