The light of dawn invaded the room with an almost offensive insolence, bouncing off the peeling walls and filtering through the tattered curtain that Aiden never bothered to close. He woke with disheveled hair, a gray tangled mess that partially covered his face, and an expression of absolute bewilderment, as if he had forgotten not only where he was, but also who he was.
Then, it happened. A spark of clarity emerged from the chaos of his mind.
"If bread always falls buttered side down…" he whispered, still lying on his mattress on the floor, "what would happen if both sides were buttered?"
The thought paralyzed him. His black eyes, completely opaque, widened to their fullest as he stared at the ceiling as if observing infinity. Slowly, he sat up, crossing his legs on the mattress with the solemnity of a monk in meditation.
"And what if that's…? No, it can't be that simple. But if it were…" he murmured to himself, interlacing his fingers and furrowing his brow. Suddenly, he turned his head toward his knife, which rested on the floor, tied to its rope like a faithful dog. He picked it up and held it in front of his face, observing its chipped blade covered in faint dark stains that refused to disappear, no matter how much he washed it.
"Knife, old friend… is this the key to defying gravity itself? Or are we prisoners of a cosmic law beyond our understanding?"
The knife, as usual, did not respond. But Aiden interpreted its silence as an affirmation, which was enough for him.
Finally, he got up and went to the kitchen, where a piece of stale bread awaited its fate in a corner of the table. He held it between his fingers as if it were a sacred relic. Without further ceremony, he took a bite, and as he chewed, he lit a small stove that barely worked.
Aiden broke an egg into the pan with deliberate clumsiness and watched as the egg white slowly spread.
"If the universe has rules, who imposed them?" he said aloud, as if giving a lecture to an invisible audience. "And more importantly, why can't I break them?"
The egg white began to set in the pan, filling the room with a modest but comforting aroma. Aiden was about to serve himself when a strange pressure, like an intangible weight on his shoulders, made him stop. It wasn't an external sound, but a presence; one he knew how to recognize all too well. Then, a creak broke the silence. It didn't come from the kitchen or outside, but from the table behind him.
He turned slowly, and there he was: the cultivator dressed in white from yesterday, sitting with an unsettling calm, as if this were his usual spot. Aiden looked at him with a mixture of disdain and resignation.
"Good morning, Aiden," the man said, inclining his head with a courtesy that didn't fit the scene.
Aiden didn't respond immediately. With the knife in one hand and the half-served egg in the other, he assessed the situation with a raised eyebrow. Finally, he set the egg down on the table and sat across from the intruder, placing the knife between them, a symbolic barrier, albeit ineffective against that overwhelming presence.
"Are you the real one, or just a new chapter of my morning madness?" he asked, his tone laden with boredom and sarcasm.
The man smiled with a serenity that Aiden found irritating.
"I am very real. My name is Ethan Tian, a disciple of the Sect of the Truth."
Aiden arched his other eyebrow, feigning interest as his fingers drummed on the table.
"And what are you doing in my kitchen, Ethan Tian of the Sect of the Truth? Did you come to criticize my pan or my dry bread?"
"Neither your pan nor your bread interest me," Ethan replied, ignoring the taunt. "We have been watching you."
Aiden let out a dry laugh and leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs.
"Watching me? What kind of sect has so much free time to follow a madman with a knife and old bread?"
Ethan tilted his head, as if carefully considering his response, though his eyes showed barely contained admiration.
"We are interested in your mind, Aiden, not your knife or your bread. That hyperactive network that never rests, that whirlwind of thoughts that sees patterns where others see only void. Your functional schizophrenia, if we may call it that, is not a flaw; it is a window open to things that no one else can perceive. And that instinctive connection with everything around you, even with what others cannot feel... That is what we seek. We believe you could be the Holy Child of Truth."
Aiden let the chair's legs hit the floor with a thud, but his gaze remained fixed on Ethan.
"The Holy Child of Truth… Sounds like the title of a bad self-help book."
Ethan didn't flinch.
"It is not an empty title, Aiden. It is a path. An invitation to transcend, to reach a power that defies the limits of what any mortal can imagine. Join us and cultivate under our teachings. You might discover that reality is nothing more than a canvas waiting to be rewritten."
Aiden watched Ethan in silence for a moment, feeling that intangible pressure again. The man's calm seemed to hide something deeper, an almost uncomfortable devotion that irritated and, at the same time, intrigued him.
He took the knife and held it up to his face.
"What do you think, knife?" he asked, turning it slowly as if expecting an answer. "Should we join a sect with such a ridiculously presumptuous name?"
He tilted the knife slightly, as if waiting for it to whisper in his ear. Finally, he nodded as if he had received a concrete answer.
"It says I'll think about it," he stated, locking eyes with Ethan. "But I don't like to rush these things."
Ethan stood up with the same calm with which he had arrived, giving a slight bow. Aiden couldn't help but notice that, although the man tried to seem serene, his eyes shone with what seemed like a mixture of respect and poorly concealed fascination.
"Do it, Aiden. Join us and cultivate under our teachings. It is the clearest path to what you seek. But don't take too long... Truths do not wait, and neither do we."
When he left, Aiden finished his breakfast in silence, occasionally making comments to the knife.
"Truths? What kind of truth needs a sect? Good truths don't need chains. The best ones are those you discover for yourself, stumbling and falling, don't you think?"
The knife, as always, did not respond, but the strange pressure that lingered in the air made him feel that, in some way, Ethan had not completely left. So Aiden decided to go for a walk to rid himself of that strange pressure.
---
Life in the market buzzed with vibrant energy, a symphony of shouts, laughter, and the aroma of spices, fruits, and freshly baked bread. Aiden walked through the crowd with his peculiar carefree air, the knife hanging from its rope as he greeted acquaintances with exaggerated hand movements.
"Aiden!" shouted an elderly flower seller from her stall, adjusting the flower hanging above her head. "Not walking anything strange today?"
"My knife is unbeatable!" he replied, raising it like a trophy.
A group of children ran up to him, looking at the knife with curious eyes. Among them, the smallest one took a step back, as if something had unsettled him for no apparent reason, but his eyes quickly fixed back on the shiny blade.
"Why do you carry a knife on a rope?" one of the children asked.
"It's because it's alive," Aiden replied with a conspiratorial smile. "And if it misbehaves, I take it for a walk to teach it manners."
The children laughed, but Aiden noticed that the smallest one, the same who had hesitated a moment before, stopped when he looked at a nearby stall. A man, with a gaze so impassive it seemed almost out of place, was arranging some boxes, seemingly unaware of anyone else. Aiden watched him for a moment, not understanding why his presence felt strange, but... something about the man's stillness didn't fit. He didn't give it more importance, however.
With a playful smile, he continued on his way, greeting a nut merchant.
"Some nuts today, Aiden?" the vendor asked, offering a bag full of almonds.
"No, just bread today," Aiden replied, giving him a pat on the back as he moved on. The man smiled and watched him leave, though his gaze lingered a little longer than usual, as if something were on his mind that he couldn't quite understand.
Aiden didn't notice, but a slight shiver ran down his back when he passed near a charm shop. The old man running it looked up, his eyes shining with a strange light. He said nothing, only watched in silence, and for a moment, Aiden felt as if he were under scrutiny, something he couldn't identify but, for some reason, couldn't ignore. He decided to keep walking without stopping.
"Today is a peculiar day, don't you think?" said the old man, but Aiden barely heard him, simply smiling without giving weight to the words.
As he advanced through the market, something in the air grew denser. The people's voices felt distant, as if the bustle that normally gave it life was now pushing him to an invisible periphery. In the distance, a man in a gray cloak walked unhurriedly through the crowd, his steps relentless, as if everything around him faded while he remained steadfast.
A child, almost lost in the crowd, turned toward Aiden in a moment of strange silence and, after looking him up and down, turned his gaze toward the man in the cloak. Aiden didn't notice that look, or how the child quickly lowered his head, clenching his hands at his sides.
Aiden kept walking, feeling something that wasn't entirely clear. The pressure in the air became more palpable, and although he saw nothing out of the ordinary, a feeling that something was changing, or even about to happen, enveloped him.
Suddenly, a soft murmur, barely audible, floated among the nearby stalls, as if someone were speaking too softly to be heard, yet somehow managing to cut through the noise. Aiden couldn't make out the words, but the sensation remained.
"What will become of this place?" whispered a robed man to his companion a few meters away. The question didn't seem directed at anyone in particular, and the companion didn't respond, only nodded slowly.
Aiden stopped for a moment, a soft sigh escaping his lips as he rubbed the back of his neck, as if trying to shake off an annoying sensation. The knife on his wrist seemed to tense slightly, and with an unconscious movement, Aiden looked at it for a second. The blade gleamed in the daylight, but in a strange way, as if something were looking at it instead of him. The feeling of unease grew.
He kept walking, but the air seemed thicker. Each step was heavier, each sound more distant. The people around him seemed to move at a different speed, almost as if they were synchronized in a time that wasn't his.
And then, without warning, the market's bustle began to fade little by little, replaced by an unsettling silence. Aiden felt a shiver run down his spine, and the knife seemed heavier in his hand.
The figures around him began to elongate and twist, their faces turning into grotesque masks. The children's laughter warped into distant echoes, and the merchants' voices became incomprehensible murmurs.
Aiden stopped in the middle of the empty street, his breath catching as a crooked smile formed on his face.
"Well, knife… it seems we've crossed another door."
The knife gleamed faintly under the grayish light, and Aiden moved forward, stepping into a world where the rules of reality no longer applied.