THE CODEX
EPISODE 15 — The Memory of Silences
> Over there, Benjamin, unaware of what was happening on the other side of the world, nevertheless felt, deep in his mind, a resonance. As if their destinies, linked by the Codex, were constantly intertwining, for better or for worse.
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Léandre slowly opened his eyes. The immaculate white of the room seemed to swallow the light, stifling all his breath. Each beat of his heart resonated like a dull drum, heavy with future threats. He tried to move, but his body was weak, as if frozen in time.
The Codex of Ath-Emen-Raël lay before him, perched on a stone pedestal floating in this abyss of silence. Its cover had changed: the ancient, blackened title seemed to vibrate with a dark, archaic energy.
The invisible wind, laden with forgotten whispers, made Léandre shiver.
He felt an unbearable weight in his chest, a deep fracture between who he was and what he had become.
He tried to stand, but his limbs refused to obey.
Then the room transformed.
The walls began to ooze black ink, letters stretched, danced, and faded in an ancestral language.
In the center, the Codex opened. Pages unfolded, endless, revealing a story both intimate and cosmic.
Léandre gazed deeply into the moving words.
Memories assailed him: a bloody river, ashes in the wind, voices of vanished children.
Then, suddenly, a face.
A face he thought forgotten.
His own reflection, but shattered, shattered into a thousand fragments, projected onto the moving walls.
A voice was heard, soft, close, but heavy with an invisible threat.
"You cannot run away, Leander. This Codex is your flesh and your soul. It created you, and it claims you."
An inky silhouette materialized at his side. An indistinct form, both human and formless, an echo of all his fears and doubts.
Leander clenched his fists.
"I am not a prisoner."
The silhouette smiled, a cold grin.
"Then write."
The pages of the Codex began to turn, faster, faster and faster, carrying Leander into a dizzying spiral.
He relived fragments of lives: a child alone in an orphanage, a soldier abandoned on a battlefield, a poet trapped in his own words.
All these existences, linked by an invisible thread.
He understood that the Codex didn't just write his life: it wrote all his lives.
He was a mosaic of souls, trapped in an infinite narrative.
"And if I refuse to write?" Leander murmured, his voice trembling.
The inky figure moved closer.
"Then you will disappear. Like a word erased. An eternal silence."
The ground beneath him cracked.
But deep within him, a fragile light was born. A spark of will, refusing to yield to the darkness.
Leander gathered his strength.
"Then I will choose my words."
He took a deep breath.
Then, with new determination, he placed his hand on the Codex.
The pages lit up with a golden glow.
And the silent wind sang, for the first time, a hymn to freedom.