Black Lips:
You speak in riddles. Do you deny that we are bound by what came before us? Our veins are the handwriting of the dead.
White Lips:
Then what do you call the heartbeat, a signature, or a rebellion? If your blood remembers, does that mean it obeys?
Black Lips:
Rebellion against what? The script carved into my marrow? The constellations that laugh down at me, each one a frozen word of fate?
White Lips:
And if the stars are words — who still holds the pen? If fate mocks you, is it not because you keep reading its language? Can a story truly rule the one who learns to rewrite it?
Black Lips:
You tempt me with illusions of choice. But virtue, sin — if both are inherited, then purity is impossible. We are punished for existing.
White Lips:
Then who invented purity? And what use has the universe for a clean thing? If the soil births flowers from decay, does it mourn the rot beneath the roots?
Black Lips:
Then morality itself is a mirage. We chase meaning, but every horizon moves.
White Lips:
Perhaps chasing is the meaning. Would you rather stand still and call it truth? If all purpose is a mirage, then what do you call the thirst that drives you toward it?
Black Lips:
You twist my words until they eat themselves.
If all we have are questions,
how do we live without answers?
White Lips:
Who promised you that life was meant to be answered? Is not a question also a kind of prayer? Maybe living is the asking — and dying, the silence that follows.
Black Lips:
Then when the silence comes, what remains of us? When even the echoes forget our names, what survives?
White Lips:
What if forgetting is the only way to begin again? What if death is not an ending, but punctuation — a comma in the sentence of a larger soul? If you fade, does that mean you were never heard —
or that your echo became someone else's voice?
And so their voices bled together, black dissolving into white, white melting into black — until meaning itself became colourless. No victor, no surrender.
Only reflection.
For what is birth but a question whispered by death, and what is memory but the silence that answers too late?
The universe did not speak. It listened. It watched its own thoughts argue, and smiled through the stillness that followed. For every word they said became a ripple, and every silence, a beginning. We are not the ink nor the page, but the trembling space between, where creation doubts itself,
and in that doubt, becomes divine.
When the lips closed, the echo did not die. It lingered — soft, endless, unresolvable. Because truth was never meant to be found. It was meant to be spoken, and lost, and spoken again.
****************************************
****************************************
He stopped in his tracks and stared at her, his small chest rising and falling, his eyes wide like a startled animal.
"How did you know those things?" he whispered. "I didn't tell you. I never told you. Am I… really inside an illusion?"
The woman tilted her head slightly, that same calm, unreadable smile stretching her lips, but this time, it carried a weight, a dark shape hidden behind it. Her voice was soft, almost affectionate.
"Maybe yes," she said. "Maybe no. That's for you to decide, little boy. But do you want to see what comes next?"
He shook his head quickly. "No, I have to go. I need to bring it."
She raised a brow, the smile still there but thinner now, sharper. "Bring what?"
"Bread, as per our agreement," he said, as if the word itself grounded him in something real.
"From where?"
He pointed toward the old gate at the far edge of the field, the one that always stood there, guarded by two soldiers carved from sunlight and dust. But when he turned, the field was empty. The gate was gone. There were no soldiers, no shadows, no sound of wind brushing the grass. Only blankness stretched out like a wound across the horizon.
He froze. "Hunh... I saw it… I saw them. They were there every time," he murmured. "Why is it not there now?"
The woman's silence felt heavier than any answer. Then his voice broke, small, trembling, realizing.
"What I saw… was just an illusion also."
Her smile deepened into something that didn't belong to any human expression. She leaned forward and traced a circle on his cheek with her fingertip, her nail cold like metal.
"Do you want to see another one?" she whispered.
He blinked. "What now?"
Then he saw it, his own shadow, the one cast neatly behind him, began to move. Slowly, unnaturally, it slid across the ground like liquid tar, crawling in front of him. The boy's breath hitched. The shadow's shape distorted, its limbs too long, its head bending like a dying tree branch.
And then he looked up.
The sun, that enormous, golden eye in the sky, began to shrink. Its light dimmed as if being strangled. The air cracked like thin glass. He could hear it, a sound like bones breaking underwater. The woman held out her hand and the dying sun fell into her palm like a small, trembling ember. She tossed it upward; it hung in the air for a heartbeat before falling back down, and behind it came darkness.
Not night, but something older.
Darkness rolled across the horizon, swallowing the ground, the trees, the clouds. The air filled with the sound of distant chanting, voices overlapping in languages that scraped the ears. From the blackness rose shapes, burned buildings, shattered houses, and forests of bone. The trees twisted, their bark bubbling as faces emerged from them, screaming, crying, whispering prayers that made no sense.
He just stood there, frozen, staring at the scene before him, his mind unable to accept what his eyes were seeing. The world had turned inside out, and even the air felt wrong, too heavy, too quiet, too alive. Then, with a crackling sound like a dying scream, the branch above him, the one where he had once sat beside her, snapped.
The noise broke his trance. Slowly, trembling, he turned his head toward the sound.
What he saw drained the breath from his lungs.
The tree, where both of them are sitting, once alive, once green, was now black as coal from side. The bark shimmered faintly like molten glass, its roots crawling with red veins of steam that pulsed and hissed, like the tree itself was trying to breathe. It was like burning from the inside, not in fire but in agony. The red veins twisted upward like arteries of a living corpse.
And yet… the darkness that surrounded everything did not touch it. Where he stood, light still lingered, fragile and thin as though the shadows were afraid to come closer. That realization hit him like thunder. The darkness was alive, and it was fearing something.
He stumbled backward, dhup! and fell to the ground, his body trembling as if caught in a fever. His breaths came short and sharp. Then something else hit him a faint memory, something he had forgotten. A shape, a sound—
Suddenly, a head emerged right in front of his face. Not appearing, arriving. Hanging upside down, lifeless eyes open wide, lips trembling with a whisper that carried no sound.
He screamed, a raw, long roar that tore through the still air, and then everything went black.
When he woke up, his body felt heavy, his chest sore. He blinked through dizziness, and saw her.
The woman stood before him, her hair floating as if underwater. In her hand, she held the sun, small, like a fragile glass orb, which she kept tossing upward. Every time it rose, the darkness recoiled; every time it fell, the dark crept closer again. The world pulsed with the rhythm of her motion, light and dark breathing in and out like lungs.
She extended her other hand toward him."Wake up," she said, her voice echoing like from inside a cave. "It's just an illusion. Nothing to fear. If you collapse in this small thing… how will you survive the real one?"
Her tone was soft, but it cut through him. Slowly, shakily, he stood. His legs were trembling, but he managed to meet her eyes, deep, endless, like mirrors reflecting another world.
"Look behind you," she said.
He turned, and froze again.
Behind him stretched nothing but darkness. In front of him, a circle of faint daylight, where he stood. The boundary between light and shadow was so sharp it looked carved by a blade. He stared at it in disbelief, unable to breathe.
"Don't faint," her voice came again, from nowhere and everywhere. "I have something to show you."
Then she stepped forward, into the dark. One hand still held the sun, glowing softly, while her other hand stretched out, long, thin, and covered in night itself. Her body vanished completely into the veil, until she was nothing but two opposing forces, light and shadow, both alive.
And then he saw.
Beyond the edge of light, where darkness reigned, the ground began to move. Not dirt but faces. Charred, blackened shapes emerged from the soil like smoke from a dying fire. They weren't people anymore, but memories of agony their mouths opening, not to speak, but to scream.
The earth was burning from within, and its pain sounded like the heartbeat of hell itself.
From that trembling sea of darkness, a voice rose brittle, wrinkled, ancient, like it had crawled out from beneath centuries of dust.
"Come… choose… or go."
The boy froze. That tone, that warmth hidden behind the cracks, struck him deeper than any nightmare could. He knew that voice. He remembered it now. A sound once soft beside a hearth, whispering stories when storms howled outside.
It was that grandma.
For a moment, his mind refused it. His lips parted, trembling. The dark swirled, and her voice came again, clearer this time.
"What are you going to choose, boy? You have to be ready for that."
And then, from within the black veil, she emerged.
Not walking, not materializing, appearing, like time itself allowed her back just for that instant. Her form was faint, flickering between ash and flesh. The wrinkles on her face carried the texture of a thousand burned leaves. Her eyes were white, yet warm, the only piece of comfort in that suffocating abyss.
He stared at her as if seeing a ghost that wore his passed time memories like a mask.
"Grandma?" he whispered.
She nodded faintly.
He still stood motionless, his body half in shadow, half in the trembling light that surrounded him. Then she stepped closer and reached out with those cracked, trembling fingers. She shook his shoulders once. Twice. Her voice rose, each time shattering through the illusion like thunder.
"Boy…"
"Boy…"
"Boy…"
"Boy!"
"BOY!"
The fifth shout tore through his skull like a storm breaking through a dam. The world twisted again, light bled into shadow, sound into silence.
He blinked and suddenly everything around him shifted. He was holding her. Grandma. Flesh and warmth. He wrapped his arms around her fragile frame like a drowning child clutching driftwood. His tears soaked into her faded shawl.
"Where were you all this time?" he gasped. "I… I was so scared. What is this place? Where's Mala-sister? Why did I forget about you? How did I forget in just a few moments?"
He struck his own head again and again, desperate, trying to wake himself from the madness. But she caught his hands, firm, cold, trembling.
"She was dead twenty years ago," the old woman said quietly.
He froze. The words didn't land at first, they hovered around him like dead moths. Then they sank in, slow and brutal. His chest tightened as though something had crushed his heart between two stones.
"What?" His voice cracked with crying. "Dead…? Are you kidding? No… no way. That means… you— you also died. You both died twenty years ago!"
He stumbled backward. "No… no, I'm seeing another illusion. This is fake. It's all fake—"
His vision blurred. The edges of his world bent and folded like melting paper. He was about to fall again to sink back into that endless dark.
But her hand shot forward and caught him by the collar. Despite her frail body, her grip was unyielding, iron beneath silk.
"It's all right if it's an illusion," she whispered. "Do you want to see her again?"
The boy stopped breathing. His voice trembled. "Yes…"
Her eyes glowed faintly, not warm now, but hollow, as though reflecting the sun she once prayed under. "Then you must fall again into the illusion," she said.
He looked at her in confusion, desperation swelling in his throat. "Isn't there any other way?"
"Of course there was," she said, and smiled faintly. But her smile didn't reach her eyes. "But you are too weak for that path."
"I'll become stronger," he said, clutching her arm. "Stronger than before. Tell me the path, Grandma. Please."
Her gaze softened for a moment, like embers dying under snow. "Then first, tell me… what do you want to choose?"
He hesitated. The air itself grew heavier, thick with whispers of the dead. The darkness rippled like water waiting for his answer.
"Is there no other option?" he asked, voice cracking.
She shook her head slowly.
"No. There are only two."
Her voice deepened, hollow and trembling like a temple bell echoing through a void. "The sun, radiant, devouring, burns all who reach too close. And the darkness, swallowing, merciful, takes without pain. Only they have the right to choose another path. Not a lost punk like you."
"So tell me," she said again. "Do you want to repay something… or run away? You've seen it, this world is illusion. If you choose to run, the dream will end, and nothing will touch you again. But if you choose to repay…"
She looked at him with eyes that seemed older than gods. "You will fall again. Deeper. Into the illusion that eats souls. There will be no waking."
He stood in silence, staring at her. The air trembled around him. The tree above hissed like a dying beast. From somewhere deep within the earth came faint wails, of children, of mothers, of all who had fallen before.
His lips quivered.
"I want nothing from you. You are just an illusion. You can't give me anything. Even if you show me truth, it's not eternal."
The air cracked like splitting bones. The grandma if she was still woman, smiled faintly, her lips trembling like burnt paper. Her eyes rolled back, veins glowing faint gold and black beneath her skin.
Then her voice changed. It wasn't hers anymore.
"Who was inside of you?" the tone snarled, layered, inhuman, echoing from the marrow of the air itself. "How dare you destroy my play?"
Before he could even breathe, she threw both her hands forward. The world convulsed. One hand burned with white-gold light, the other bled shadow like liquid tar. Both slammed into his chest.
He didn't move. He stood there, small and frail, his arms hanging by his sides the body of a child, but the stare of something older, something broken. The twin forces spiralled into him, searing through bone, shredding through the borders of reality. The sky cracked like a glass mirror, bleeding sun fire and black ink.
Then came silence.
When he spoke again, it wasn't just his voice.
Two voices came out of him, one deep and ancient, one human, trembling but certain.
"Now," he said. "It's repaid. We have no issue from here. He is free. If you try another trick, I will come out and kill you."
The world shook. The wind itself seemed to bow. The woman's eyes widened, then dimmed.
His body went limp. He collapsed like a puppet cut from its strings.
She stood still for a long moment, trembling. Then, as if someone whispered through her hollow bones, she spoke again, quieter, broken.
"It's her order… I didn't want to do it. Even if I wanted it…"
Her words dissolved into air. Her body hardened, turned grey, then black. Cracks formed across her limbs like veins of coal. She froze mid-motion, hands raised in a blessing mudra, her palms facing the fallen boy.
Time passed.
Not hours, not days but something beyond the reach of clocks.
The forest rotted. The fire died. The bones grew moss. And still, she stood, statue of shadow, her eyes long turned to hollow pits. From her stone palms, two faint lines streamed: one black, one gold. They flowed endlessly into the boy's chest, feeding him, preserving him.
A thousand nights could have passed. Or none.
When I say "long," I mean time itself forgot to count.
The boy's body never changed. His skin remained untouched by decay, his lips sealed, his hair tangled like dried roots. He looked neither dead nor alive, something in between, something abandoned by gods and demons alike.
But one thing was certain: his eyes stayed closed.
And the light, that weak golden shimmer, never faded from his chest.
Then, something shifted.
A whisper and a vibration beneath the soil.
His eyelids trembled.
At first, it was small, a flicker, a sigh. Then, suddenly, his fingers twitched, his ribs expanded with breath for the first time in centuries. The black and gold lines pulsed violently, shooting up his veins, drawing veins of light and dark under his skin like serpents fighting for his heart.
He opened his eyes.
The world was a blur.
He blinked once. Twice. His vision swam, distorted figures, melted trees, shapes of writhing things just beyond understanding. He closed his eyes again, gasped, then opened them once more.
A face was staring back at him.
He screamed.
The scream tore out of him like a blade being ripped from flesh. He fell backward, panting, trembling, his chest rising and falling like a drum.
He was there. Again.
The same place. The same unholy quiet.
He looked around and everything returned like a nightmare waiting at the edge of sleep.
The forest was nothing but skeletal remains, black branches like burned fingers clawing toward the sky. The earth pulsed faintly beneath him, like something buried just below was breathing.
He turned and there she was. Grandma.
Unmoving.
Frozen in that same mudra, hands extended, her stone palms still feeding the endless stream of dark and gold.
But behind her —
The river.
He blinked. The water was no longer water anymore.
In that unholy darkness it was colourful as red. Thick. Pulsing.
The river flowed like a vein of the earth itself had been cut open. Within it swam things, shapes that once might have been animals, now twisted beyond form. They rose, dipped, and surfaced, drenched in the crimson liquid, gnawing on floating scraps of flesh.
One of them climbed to shore, a malformed beast with too many jaws and too few eyes. Blood dripped from its mouth, steaming as it touched the ground. It stared at him. Growled low.
Behind it, others emerged, half-rotten, half-born. Some dragging themselves by exposed ribs, others crawling on limbs that looked more like roots than bone.
They shrieked, laughed, tore at each other.
One hurled a clump of flesh across the river. Another caught it, bit into it, screamed as its mouth split open wider than a skull should allow.
And still more came. Crawling. Slithering. Bursting from the red river like wounds reborn.
The boy's body trembled. His breath came in shallow gasps.
He whispered to himself,
"This… this can't be real…" But no answer came...
He stood there, mouth open, lungs heaving as though the air itself had turned into fire.
His eyes—wide, unblinking—took in the nightmare that had spilled before him.
The red river.
The crawling shapes.
The moaning, whispering carcasses that still remembered pain.
He wanted to scream, but his throat felt dry, sewn shut by terror itself. The words that came out were strangled—half breath, half sob.
"Ahhh… ahhh… what is this… what are those black shadows inside? What am I seeing? What are those…?"
The world didn't answer. The shadows twisted. Some looked at him. Some didn't.
Their forms weren't fixed, melting, merging, re-forming like smoke caught in a storm.
The ground beneath him pulsed. Something beneath the dirt… moved.
Panic took him whole. His heart began to slam against his ribs, louder and louder until he thought his chest would split open.
He didn't think—just ran.
He ran through the fields of grass, over soil that squirmed beneath his feet like it was breathing. He didn't look back. The world warped around him, the red light bending, stretching, and twisting into unfamiliar shapes. Sometimes it felt like the sky itself was reaching down to grab him.
And then—
He stopped.
He didn't know why. Maybe his legs had given up. Maybe he had already been running in circles. But he stopped.
And for the first time in what felt like eternity, there was silence.
Then—
A touch.
A soft, wrinkled hand on his shoulder.
He froze.
Slowly, he turned.
And there she was.
Granny.
Smiling.
Her eyes gentle, her lips cracked, her face worn like old parchment—but smiling.
"My boy," she said softly, her voice trembling like dry leaves. "Why are you sleeping on the ground? I have to come again and keep you here, hm?"
He blinked. "I…" His voice cracked. "I was… running."
"Running?" She tilted her head slightly, as though she didn't understand the word. "You are standing here whole time when you started to run, sit here. What are you going to do now? Do you want to talk with me?"
He stepped back, confusion crawling up his throat. "Who are you…?"
The smile deepened, though it didn't reach her eyes. "We will meet again in the future," she said quietly. "For that… just wait. Come let's sit under the tree."
Something about her tone, half motherly, half commanding—left no room to refuse. He nodded weakly and followed.
And then he saw the tree.
Half of it was dead, its bark scorched black, its branches dripping tar, its roots clutching the earth like veins trying to crawl back into a corpse. On those branches sat things. Not birds, not beasts, something between. They tore at each other, whispering and gnashing, their flesh twitching and reforming like worms devouring worms.
The other half of the tree was alive, bluish-green, luminous, and still. Moss spread across it like delicate skin, the air around it soft with mist. A broken bench leaned beneath that side, shaped by time, half buried in roots.
They sat there.
He kept his eyes down, afraid to look at the dark half of the tree.
He whispered, "Am I… still in the illusion?"
Granny shook her head. "No," she said, "it's the boundary. Between the place of gods and demons. You crossed it."
He stared at her blankly. "Boundary…?"
She nodded, looking into the distance as though the horizon whispered secrets. "If you go past this line, the river you saw, you'll find the Demon Sects. There are nine of them, each older than the bones of this world. I never went that far. I am… only a keeper."
He swallowed. "A keeper of what?"
"The balance," she said simply. "The half-dead tree, the half-living. I live within it. I listen to it breathe. It tells me when the world forgets something important."
She turned back to him, her smile softer now, almost kind. "Don't worry. You don't have to stay. I'm only following an order… from someone very close to you."
He blinked, puzzled. "Someone close…?"
"Yes," she said, leaning forward. "Do you remember anything? When, or why, you came here?"
He hesitated. His mind was fog, his thoughts broken shards. He searched through them like a child trying to remember a dream fading with the morning.
Finally, he whispered, "…I'm finding my mother."
The old woman's expression twitched. Her smile wavered. "Your mother…" she said softly, "died… many—ahh, never mind." She waved her hand, almost regretfully. "You'll know when the time comes."
He looked down at his hands. "Then why… why do I still feel like she's calling me?"
"Because," she said, "love is louder than death."
The way she said it made him shiver.
Silence fell again. The creatures on the dark branches chattered softly, their whispers blending with the wind.
After a long moment, he looked at her again and asked,
"Can I… ask something?"
She nodded.
"Can you tell me…" His voice was small, childlike again. "…what is my age?"