— Fable I —
— Wounded Eternity —
There was nothing strange about my life.
Until there was.
I couldn't say when it started.
Everything seemed normal at first. A normality almost too perfect.
A childhood without drama or miracles.
Days spent running barefoot on hot asphalt, laughter drowned in the heat, parents present, loving, modest.
Nothing remarkable.
Just… human.
Memories stack up without hierarchy.
The chill of winter in my bones.
Mischief shared between friends.
Secrets traded like precious treasures.
Some images linger. Others fade.
That's how memory works.
Then came adolescence—blurred, vibrant.
First times, first fights, friendships we thought would last forever.
Promises, breakups, nights heavy with useless words.
We thought we were immortal.
But it was just a game.
A normal illusion.
A step along the way.
College.
A strange in-between, halfway between dreams and resignation.
We wanted to change the world.
We learned to change the lines on our resumes.
Warm beers, hollow conversations, blurred mornings.
Nothing extraordinary.
And then… routine.
Subway. Work. Exhaustion. Silence.
Life flowing, banal.
There was nothing special about my story.
Nothing to tell.
Until everything stopped moving.
I was twenty-two years old. And something stopped following.
My reflection, one morning, seemed… frozen.
Not an illusion.
Not a fleeting feeling of nostalgia.
Just… me.
Identical.
Day after day.
Month after month.
The world moved forward.
I stayed the same.
My friends aged. I could see it.
The wrinkles, the fatigue, the slower gestures.
My parents too.
Their backs bending.
Their voices trembling.
But me… nothing.
I smiled the same way.
I woke up the same way.
My body refused to change.
And at first, I smiled too.
Who wouldn't want to stay young?
I blamed it on genetics.
A good metabolism.
An insolent luck.
But it wasn't luck.
At twenty-five, I understood.
Not brutally.
Not suddenly.
It was a slow awareness.
Soft… but impossible to deny.
Time had stopped touching me.
And it wasn't a gift.
It wasn't a blessing.
It was an invisible fracture.
Something had broken.
And I was no longer quite human.
I didn't yet know what it meant.
But deep down, a cold voice was already whispering what I was becoming.
And that voice wasn't coming from outside.
It came from within.