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Chapter 30 - Fingers

Chapter 30

Fingers

"Maybe… maybe…" he repeated, as if saying it out loud could convince him.

A twisted grimace escaped him at that very moment. There was something strange in the water. The surface, which had always been smooth and perfect, began to deform. Small circles opened, expanding into ripples that moved away in all directions.

Kaep looked down, confused. He hadn't taken a step. He hadn't even moved an arm. He had done nothing to provoke it.

His heart accelerated.

"It's not me…"

The ripples grew, clashing against each other, breaking the absolute calm that just a moment ago had seemed eternal. It was as if something, somewhere, had broken through the liquid surface and now that invisible presence was giving itself away with vibrations.

Kaep took a step back without thinking, his muscles tense and his gaze fixed on that point where the first ripples had been born.

The calm had been shattered, and with it, the certainty that he was alone.

But he soon understood: those ripples weren't forming in front of him. They were coming from behind.

His stomach clenched. He felt his throat go dry and swallowed with difficulty.

"Is it… behind me?"

The thought was a razor's edge that left him paralyzed.

He wanted to turn around, but the muscles in his neck didn't respond. The simple act of turning seemed like a death sentence: what if when he did, he saw it face to face? What if it was too close?

"Think, think, think…" he whispered, his voice trembling, while fixing his gaze on his own fingers. Two of them twitched slightly, convulsively, as if his body was seeking an escape his mind didn't yet have.

He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to inhale slowly, a long, silent breath that expanded his chest.

He tried to concentrate on that: on the air going in and out, on the beat pounding inside his ears. Anything but the certainty of the presence stalking him from behind.

He slowly opened his eyes. The starry darkness enveloped him as before, but now every point of light seemed to rotate slightly, as if observing too.

"Bad idea… no doubt," he murmured, his own voice so low it was barely audible. "But if it's behind me… then I'll die anyway if it's a monster. Or something worse."

He swallowed, feeling the knot in his throat scraping inside. His heart was pounding so hard he felt it in his temples. Even so, he forced his lungs to obey. He inhaled slowly, with forced control, as if that measured breathing could delay the inevitable.

One, two, three times.

He tried to calm his rhythm, cool his blood, order his thoughts before moving. Each inhalation was a count. Each exhalation, a preparation.

His fingers trembled slightly. The reflection in the water vibrated with the ripples that continued to form at his back. And, in the midst of that impossible silence, Kaep understood that he couldn't stay motionless forever.

Then he exploded.

In a sudden movement, Kaep spun his whole body. It wasn't a simple turn: he let himself fall, throwing himself towards the liquid surface in front of him.

The liquid surface received him with a dull, cold impact. The surface sank under his weight as if it were gelatin and then held him, vibrating with concentric ripples that expanded around him.

Now lying down, his back stuck to the starry water, he was pointing two tense fingers towards the darkness, as if they were an improvised weapon.

His breathing was wild. His eyes wide open, ready to meet whatever was behind him.

The water still trembled beneath his body. The ripples from his own movement mixed with the others, the ones that had alerted him in the first place.

And now, in front of him, was the figure from before.

This time it wasn't as distant or blurry: its silhouette was clearly outlined against the star-filled sky.

At first, Kaep thought it was a man, a human like any other. The shape was the same: the height, the shoulders, the upright posture.

It seemed… but it wasn't.

Its whole body was wrapped in a kind of dark veil, as if it wore a cloth that devoured the starlight. No fold fell naturally; it was more like a living mantle, clinging to it and keeping it in gloom.

From within that darkness, something glowed. A golden light filtered through the slits in the veil, as if beneath the cloth there was a hidden fire.

The glow was concentrated in the upper part, illuminating from the shoulders up with a growing radiance.

Kaep narrowed his eyes. That clarity was like a lantern lit in the blackness.

The young man didn't know if he was facing a human in disguise, or something that only imitated the form of one.

The figure had its hand extended towards him. The fingers, long and dark under the veil, advanced slowly towards his face, as if they wanted to grip his chin, as if the gesture were inevitable.

Kaep kept his two fingers tense, pointing straight at the silhouette's chest. His breathing became agitated. This was the moment: to shoot, to release the lightning, to force it back.

-…-

But nothing happened.

Not a spark. Not a flicker. Nothing.

The emptiness in his fingers hit him like a bucket of ice water. He opened his eyes in panic. His plan had been simple: one shot to gain distance. Instead, the only thing he had achieved was to surrender himself, to remain lying on the liquid surface while the other advanced without haste.

"No… no, no," he immediately understood the disadvantage of his situation.

The alarm exploded in his chest. He had given himself away completely. No lightning, no weapon, no escape. Now the hand kept descending, ever closer to his face, and he was trapped in the worst possible position.

The palm of that shadow was already so close he could feel it, even though it wasn't touching him yet: a cold pressure, a weight in the air, as if it were about to crush his face at any moment.

Kaep's heart raced wildly. The phrase he had heard before, that cold order, flashed through his mind: «Reason… a method».

In the midst of his fear, he let out a dry, short laugh, almost a gasp. The idea had appeared suddenly, irrational and desperate, but it was all he had.

"Of course… of course…" he murmured to himself, without taking his eyes off the figure.

With a quick movement, he swiveled his firm fingers 180 degrees. They went from pointing straight at the figure's chest to pointing at himself.

The gesture was so unnatural that for an instant it seemed time stopped. The figure's hand remained suspended a hand's breadth from his face. Kaep felt the liquid surface tremble beneath his back.

It was a crazy plan, but it was a plan. And, at that moment, it was his only method.

Kaep contracted his right arm with all his strength. His elbows closed like springs, bringing his fingers towards himself.

From his perspective, everything became a tunnel: the fingers advancing ever closer, the golden light of the figure behind them, the enormous palm like a shadow opening to capture him. Every centimeter he gained with his movement seemed to stretch time.

More… more… ever closer.

Until, from one moment to the next, the palm that occupied almost his entire view was eclipsed by his own fingers. An inverted, desperate gesture that covered everything.

Then came the sound.

A wet, sharp, dry snap all at once. An unmistakable noise: flesh piercing flesh. The echo of something stabbing where it shouldn't.

The starry world seemed to shudder at the same time as his body. Pain exploded in his skull like thunder, a white light crossing his senses.

***

[In a room, on an unknown floor]

"Hah…" The sound came out choked, more a gasp than a word.

Kaep opened his eyes abruptly. The starry sky had disappeared. Above him, a wooden ceiling with dark grains.

He was breathing fast, almost uncontrollably, trying to fill his lungs as if he had been holding his breath for hours.

He remained like that, motionless, looking at the planks above his head, not yet daring to move. He felt his heart beating irregularly against his chest, his skin sticky with cold sweat.

Bewildered, he tried to make sense of what had happened.

Had he returned?

Had it worked?

Or was he simply dreaming...?

He blinked a couple of times. The sensation of moisture on his face made him slowly raise a hand…

He sat up with a start, almost without thinking. His body responded clumsily, trembling, but he managed to sit up.

With both hands, he grabbed his face, feeling it urgently: his forehead, cheeks, cheekbones. His fingers moved quickly, searching for any hole, any sign of damage.

Everything seemed to be in place.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm the tremor in his hands. Then he closed one eye and moved a hand in front of it, following the movement with the other. He repeated it with the other eye, changing hands.

"I see…" he murmured, incredulous.

He did it a third time, just to be sure.

"I see…" he repeated, almost laughing, between relief and confusion.

His heart was still hammering, but little by little his breathing stabilized. The pain he expected didn't come.

No blindness, no open wound, nothing to justify the memory of the sound that still echoed in his head.

And yet, the feeling that something had happened remained.

Once he convinced himself everything was in order, he let out the pent-up air and let his arms fall onto his legs. His weight gave way little by little until he ended up reclining completely on what he finally recognized as a bed.

The mattress was uneven, with the rough texture of an old blanket, but after what he'd experienced, it seemed the most comfortable place in the world.

His pulse, once racing, began to stabilize. Each breath became slower, deeper. The tension dissolved, drop by drop, leaving only the echo of weariness.

"What a scare," he thought, closing his eyes and turning slightly onto his side.

For a moment, he allowed himself to simply feel the contact of the cloth against his skin, the human warmth of the real world.

But his mind gave him no respite.

"Could it be… that every time I sleep or lose consciousness… I'll return to that place?"

The idea weighed on him. It didn't sound like a dream. Not after what he felt there. And if it was something more… something waiting for him with every loss of consciousness, then sleep was no longer rest. It was returning.

He was thinking about that while letting his gaze wander around the hall.

The silence persisted, broken only by the faint crackling of candles on the walls. The light was scarce, orange, casting long shadows that moved with every flicker of the flame.

Around him, the scene was a mixture of forced calm and exhaustion. There were several other people, distributed among improvised cots and old beds. Some rested with heavy breaths, in acceptable but still fragile states.

Further away, against the walls, others sat or lay on the floor, wrapped in blankets or covered with parts of their uniforms. None were fully asleep. Some kept their eyes open, lost in the ceiling or in nothingness; others simply huddled, trembling with their bodies curled into balls.

The sheets covering them didn't seem to belong to the place. They were pieces of cloth, half-clean, "decent" only by comparison. Remnants of what they must have found in their haste to provide shelter for the wounded.

The air smelled of damp wood, dried blood, and smells he didn't recognize.

Kaep observed in silence. The place seemed to have calmed down… but the stillness held something tense.

In the midst of all that silence, one figure stood out.

The man with blue hair was standing, motionless, in front of the room's single circular window. The candlelight barely grazed his profile, leaving half his face sunk in shadow.

Kaep watched him without saying anything. It took him a moment to notice what had puzzled him: the pounding of the rain was no longer audible.

The storm had ceased.

No thunder, no wind, no roar of water against the window. Just the muffled murmur of the interior, the distant sound of breathing, and the occasional snap of melting wax.

For a few seconds, Kaep listened intently, as if expecting the noise to return. It didn't.

He sighed.

He lay back again, letting his body sink into the bed. The floorboards creaked with the movement, but no one seemed to notice.

"Enough for today…" he thought, letting the weight of his eyelids fall.

Fatigue enveloped him before he could finish the next phrase in his head.

The silence of the room, warm and strange, accompanied him as sleep closed his eyelids once more.

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