The four stitched letters — M. A. A. E. — remained there, intact, glowing with a faint light.
And the golden ribbon, once sewn to the sleeve, now lay loose upon the fabric, glimmering under the bluish glow of the television as if it were breathing.
"Maria… Arthur… Anthony… Emanuelle…" I whispered, and the tears began to fall from my eyes as if they had been waiting for this moment to finally escape.
How could I forget?
How could I erase the names of those who took me in after death — who gave me a new chance, a new life?
How could I forget my family?
But… what am I doing here?
How did I end up in this place?
Am I dreaming? Sleeping? Dead again?
Questions collided inside my head as I pressed the tunic against my chest, clutching the fabric as though it were a warm body that no longer existed.
"What's happening to me?" I asked, my voice trembling as I called out to the divinity to whom I had offered my blood. "Arianrhod…"
"What do you think?" she replied — her voice echoing from every direction, soft and distant like wind chimes in the fog. "You are passing through another tunnel."
Those words sliced through the air. The ground beneath my feet seemed to dissolve, and the light around me turned into a silver mist.
Another tunnel.
Another trial.
But how could I overcome it… if I didn't even know which one it was?
"Loneliness," Arianrhod answered, in a calm, divine tone. "You are crossing the Tunnel of Loneliness."
My heart clenched.
Loneliness.
Just hearing the word opened an old, familiar void within me — an echo that had never truly faded.
"How can I overcome this tunnel?" I asked, lifting my gaze. "And… who is the demon that guards it?"
"Amprodias," she said, without hesitation. "And to overcome it, you must kill what gives birth to your loneliness."
"Kill what gives birth to my loneliness?" I repeated, confused, trying to understand. "What does that mean?"
The light around me flickered, and Arianrhod's voice grew colder, more distant — almost human.
"Elian…" she said, and I felt the weight of my name echo within my soul. "You still carry the loneliness that was born from the deaths of your parents and Luciana."
Her figure began to change before my eyes. The veil fell, her golden hair darkened, and her eyes turned familiar. When I realized it, it was no longer Arianrhod who stood before me — it was Luciana.
She stepped closer and smiled gently.
"You overcame the Tunnel of Guilt because of our father and me," she said, her voice tender but heavy with meaning. "You stopped blaming yourself for our deaths. You didn't forget us, but you learned to forgive yourself."
She paused, tilting her head slightly, and the silver-blue light surrounding her dimmed — more somber, more melancholic.
"But… what about your other parents?" she asked, her gaze piercing through my soul. "You still miss them every single day, don't you? Even with a new family, you still live with your heart chained to that ancient loneliness."
Her words struck like a sentence — and I knew they were true.
"You're saying I have to kill you… and the figures of my parents?" I asked, my voice cracking under the weight of grief. Despair tightened my chest like a fist.
"Yes," Arianrhod said — wearing Luciana's face now. "You must move forward, Elian."
She paused, and the air around us grew dense — so dense that even the sounds of the house — the television, the faint movement in the kitchen — felt distant, muffled, swallowed by wool.
"Moving forward is not forgetting," she continued, walking slowly through the room, each word like a stone laid upon a sacred path. "It is not pretending that nothing happened or denying what was real."
I looked at her hands — the gentle curve of her face, the features I had seen in dreams and memories alike. Every word she spoke reopened an old wound.
"To move forward," she said, coming closer, "is to carry the past with honor. To keep what was beautiful and turn it into strength, not a prison. Nostalgia exists to warm, not to freeze the life around you."
She placed her hand on my face; her touch was warm, familiar — and it burned like iron. Her eyes, so like Luciana's, shone with a patient sorrow.
"You have a new family who loves you," she whispered. "Don't cling so tightly to what cannot return that you lose what still can bloom."
Before I could answer, her image began to fade — not suddenly, but slowly, like a painting being washed away by rain.
First the outline, then the color, until only silence remained where there had once been a voice.
The room folded around me; the light dimmed, and the air turned cold. A shadow rose from the floor — a presence that did not need to move to fill the space. It was simply there, and I felt it as one feels summer turning to winter in a single breath.
The figure that emerged had no fixed form: it was made of absences — indistinct faces I had known, memories stitched together with black thread.
Amprodias.
The name echoed without sound, directly in my throat.
It — if such a thing could be called he — took shape slowly: a tall, slender silhouette whose skin seemed woven from mist and shattered glass. From its shoulders grew withered branches, pulsing faintly with the rhythm of hearts that did not beat. Where eyes should have been were wells of night that devoured the light; where a mouth should have been, there was only a void whispering promises of abandonment.
I felt my old loneliness rise again — a tide too fast to resist. Every painful memory — the scent of blood, the screams, the empty hands — flashed through my mind with savage clarity.
Amprodias didn't need to speak; his presence alone forced me to relive what I most feared.
"That's it," said a voice — neither Arianrhod nor Luciana, but something that belonged to both. "Kill what binds you. Kill the image of what you've lost, so that memory may live as remembrance, not as a chain."
My body trembled. It wasn't only fear — it was love and rage, guilt and longing, all burning at once. I understood, with an icy clarity, that the "killing" I was being asked to do wasn't to destroy real lives — it was to sever meaning, to release the presence that fed upon my pain.
Arianrhod's image faded like mist, and the silence she left behind seemed to drain the air from the world.
I stood alone before Amprodias — a distorted shape, too tall, forged of shadow and emptiness. Its edges shimmered like liquid glass, and each of its breaths pulsed within my mind.
"It's not a physical battle, Elian. It's a spiritual one."
Arianrhod's voice resonated inside me — distant yet firm, like the echo of a memory I was never meant to forget.
Before I could react, the shadow began to twist. Waves of energy rippled outward, molding three silhouettes.
When the forms solidified, the ground vanished beneath my feet.
Luciana.
My mother.
My father.
They stood before me, shrouded in twilight. What struck me first wasn't fear — it was love. A love so fierce it hurt. A love that burned deeper than any magic I had ever known.
Luciana was the first to move.
Her small body walked with that same lightness I remembered — the same pure smile that had once saved me from myself.
"Brother…" she murmured, and the sound of her voice shattered me.
My legs gave out. I wanted to run to her — to hold her, to promise I'd never let her die again.
But something inside me held me back.
The mana within me stirred, pulsing like a heart that bled instead of beating.
Arianrhod's whisper drifted through the emptiness:
"To free is also to kill."
That whisper was the trigger.
My right hand rose on its own.
Mana condensed between my fingers, swirling like a storm.
Stones lifted from the ground, spinning into a vortex of wind.
Each fragment trembled with my fury — guilt, love, despair — all colliding inside me.
The air vibrated; the sound roared like a thousand broken wings.
When Luciana opened her arms and smiled, the vortex exploded.
A spear of stone wrapped in wind pierced through her chest.
The impact froze time itself. Her body was consumed by white light — pure, serene — and for a heartbeat, I believed she was finally free.
But the pain came afterward — slow, venomous, absolute.
It spread through my soul like wildfire.
I fell to my knees, shaking.
Blood spilled from the corner of my mouth.
She looked at me, her eyes full of that same endless gentleness — and smiled one last time.
Then she vanished — light and ashes carried away by a wind only I could feel.
The tears came without warning.
They burned. They hurt.
The hand that killed her now trembled as if it wanted to tear itself apart.
"I'm sorry, Luciana…" I thought, but the words never reached my lips.
When I looked up again, I saw my mother.
She was watching me — with tenderness, yes, but also with sorrow.
The same expression she wore whenever I came home wounded, trying to hide my pain behind a smile.
She stepped forward slowly, her hands outstretched — and everything in me begged to run, to embrace her, to disappear in her warmth.
But I couldn't.
My loneliness lived inside her.
And I had to kill it.
I raised my arm again. Mana surged; the wind began to gather.
This time there was no rage — only grief.
The air around me darkened, and a thin, blackened blade took form — sharp enough to cut the air itself.
She kept walking, eyes filled with love, and I trembled.
The blade rose on its own.
The strike was clean. Swift. Nearly silent.
A single cut.
Her head tilted slightly, and her body fell without resistance — dissolving into silver smoke.
For an instant, the sound of my scream filled the world.
I screamed until the air left my lungs, until my body convulsed, until my soul itself screamed with me.
She was gone.
Again.
When I could finally breathe, I saw the faint shimmer of her light fading into nothing.
My hands were shaking. My throat burned. The emptiness that followed her disappearance was unbearable — as if she had taken every breath of warmth with her.
The world felt hollow.
And I… I was still kneeling in its ruins.
When I finally lifted my eyes, I saw my father.
He stood still, calm as ever.
Those eyes — steady, unyielding — were the same ones that had once taught me what strength was.
For a moment, I couldn't move.
Every part of me begged to stop.
But then he took a step forward.
And another.
With the second step, the air shuddered.
The ground cracked beneath his feet.
And I understood — he was the last thread holding me.
I forced myself to rise.
My body felt impossibly heavy, but the earth responded to me, trembling under my feet.
Heat surged through my legs, rising into my hands.
When it reached my palms, fire fused with stone.
From the ground, a sword was born — wide, heavy, alive.
Its heat warped the air around it, and its weight felt like the burden of every life I had taken and lost.
He looked at me — with pride, with love, with resignation.
And I loved him so much that hatred became impossible.
Yet still… I had to kill him.
I took one step forward.
Then another.
The sword trembled in my hands.
When I came close enough to feel his warmth, he simply looked at me and, without a word, said:
"It's all right."
The blade drove through his chest.
The sound was muted, dull — as if the world itself had held its breath.
The fire burned, and the earth hissed.
He didn't scream.
He simply held the blade, looked at me, and smiled.
Then the flame went out.
And he dissolved.
His body turned to ashes before even touching the ground.
And I stayed there — alone — holding the sword that trembled with the last warmth of my soul.
I fell to my knees, pressing my forehead to the floor.
Blood dripped from my hand, staining the ashes red.
The tears would not stop.
The sound escaping my throat was not human — it was a wounded animal's cry, the kind born from loss too deep for words.
I tried to speak, but all I managed was a whisper:
"I'm sorry…"
The wind began to blow — soft, almost merciful — carrying the ashes away into nothingness.
And slowly, the presence of Amprodias faded with them — without a scream, without defiance, only a distant echo dissolving into the air.
I stayed there, breathing raggedly, chest torn open, heart hollow.
But within that emptiness… something new stirred.
It wasn't relief.
It was peace.
Sad, imperfect — but real.
Arianrhod's voice whispered again, gentle and infinite, echoing through the ruins of my spirit:
"You have killed the pain, Elian. But love… love will remain."
I closed my eyes and let the last tears fall.
The loneliness that had haunted me for two lives finally fell silent.
And when I raised my head, the air felt lighter — as if the whole world had been washed clean.
"Goodbye…" I murmured, my voice breaking.
"Goodbye, Father… Mother… Lu…"
Silence answered me.
But for the first time, that silence did not hurt.