He didn't know how much time had passed when his eyes opened.
All he knew was that the void was gone.
The white light that had swallowed him faded, replaced by a weary gray glow—like the remnants of a day that never fully came.
He was lying on the ground, and the texture beneath his hand wasn't natural—soft as dust, yet faintly pulsing, almost alive.
As he raised his head, for the first time he felt the air around him breathing.
Not metaphorically—truly breathing.
Every breeze that brushed his skin carried warmth, as if the wind itself rose from something living beneath the soil.
He sat up, his head heavy, like a man waking from a short, incomplete death.
His eyes scanned the land.
The ground wasn't green, nor barren—it was gray, cracked, laced with faint black veins that glimmered weakly under the dust.
Far away stood the ruins of a village.
The shapes were familiar, yet wrong—streets bent in unnatural curves, windows slanted, as though the place had remembered itself incorrectly.
Everything felt familiar, and yet, not.
As if the world had been redrawn from the memory of something that had forgotten what it once was.
He rose slowly.
Each step echoed, like walking over the stomach of some colossal beast asleep beneath the earth.
When he crouched to touch the soil, warmth seeped into his palm—and deep below, he heard it: a faint thump.
A heartbeat.
He whispered, afraid even of his own voice:
> "The pulse… it's still here."
Then, from somewhere distant, the wind replied:
> "Not just the pulse… we are still here."
He froze.
There was no one in sight, yet the voices grew closer—rising from the cracks in the ground, from within the hollow houses.
Shapes began to emerge—humanoid, but not quite human.
Their shoulders slumped, their skin pale and gray, exhaling black smoke through mouths that had forgotten breath.
Their faces were blank, eyeless, and the shadows beneath them writhed like living extensions of their bodies.
One of them stepped forward, joints cracking with every movement.
Its voice was rough, yet steady:
> "You… are not one of us."
Nofan stepped back, but the earth behind him split open like a giant black maw, then sealed shut again.
There was nowhere to retreat.
He moved forward instead, eyes locked on their ever-shifting faces—one morphing into another, then into nothing at all, as if their very existence melted between forms.
> "What are you?"
He asked, his voice trembling despite its strength.
Another answered—a chorus of voices speaking as one, echoing from everywhere and nowhere:
> "We are those who tried to survive…
when there was nothing left worth surviving."
Then something taller stepped from among them.
Its body was veined with glowing black light, its face calm in a way that made calmness itself terrifying.
Its eyes carried a stillness that felt like death.
> "The Dark Source," it said, "did not merely curse the land. It devoured it."
> "Devoured it?" Nofan repeated.
> "Anyone who touched the black light was trapped between two states—neither alive, nor dead.
And you… you bear the same pulse."
Nofan looked at his hand.
Thin black lines stirred beneath his skin.
The air thickened.
The ground beneath him began to beat in rhythm with his heart.
> "I'm… the cause of this?"
> "You are the gate," the creature replied.
The voice came again—but this time, from behind him.
He turned sharply.
And saw it.
His shadow.
Standing at a distance—his form, his hair, his face… but his eyes shone with a dim, metallic gray.
The shadow stepped closer.
The earth rippled with each step, like the world itself breathing with him.
Its voice was calm, yet it cut through the silence like a blade through water:
> "You opened the door, Nofan…
and now the world reminds you of its price."
The wind turned violent.
The creatures began to retreat, dissolving back into the soil, their existence fading like smoke swallowed by the ground.
Above them, the sky tore in half—half ash, half dark light.
The pulse echoed everywhere, matching the rhythm within his chest.
Nofan screamed:
> "What do you want from me?!"
The shadow's reply came as a roar that wasn't quite sound, but memory:
> "To make you remember…
because your forgetting birthed this world."
The black veins erupted from the ground, twisting together like roots, reaching toward the heavens.
They formed a vast circle of darkness in the sky.
From within it, cold breath spilled forth—carrying echoes of distant weeping, and a scream he had never heard before… yet somehow knew it was his.
The earth trembled.
The world spun.
Nofan fell to his knees as black light bled from his eyes.
His voice came out weak, almost a prayer:
> "I… want to bring her back…"
The shadow replied:
> "Then reclaim your suffering first.
It is the only truth that never dies."
And suddenly, everything went still.
Light.
Sound.
Movement.
All gone.
Only one whisper remained, echoing through the hollow silence:
> "When the earth beats again, know that memory has awakened."
---
Everything vanished.
The black light scattered like luminous ash and dissolved into silence.
Nofan stayed kneeling, breath ragged, eyes half-open like one who had awakened from a nightmare that refused to end.
The pulse that once filled the earth had stilled—but inside him, it lingered, flowing like a warm current beneath his ribs.
He lifted his head slowly.
The sky no longer bled, yet it had not healed either.
Cracks of dim light still hung above—like the world itself hesitating to decide whether to collapse or to be reborn.
With a weary sigh, he murmured:
> "If this is the truth… so be it.
At least I'm no longer asleep."
When he tried to stand, the ground cracked beneath his feet—but held.
He looked at his hands; the black veins beneath his skin were fading, retreating inward.
He exhaled slowly, yet deep inside, something refused to rest.
A presence lingered.
The undeniable feeling of unseen eyes upon him.
He turned.
Across the gray fields, the mist moved—not by wind, but with intent.
Something inside it was breathing.
Then, without a sound, a figure emerged at the horizon.
Tall.
Silent.
Moving through the ash with deliberate steps, a spear of black metal in its hand—like a shard of the night itself.
Its face was hidden behind an engraved mask, and veins of dim light coiled across its body as if alive.
It stopped, a dozen meters away.
For a long moment, nothing moved.
Then, from beneath the mask, a distorted voice broke the silence—half human, half metallic echo:
> "At last…
the pulse has found its bearer."
The air froze.
The heartbeat within Nofan's chest pounded again, stronger than before—
As if answering.
The figure spoke again, its tone low, resonant:
> "You're late, heir of the Source."
It raised a hand.
Above them, the sky began to open—
like a giant eyelid remembering how to look.
The black light returned, spilling gently across the land.
And Nofan did not move.
For in that single moment—between fear and realization—
he understood that what had begun was greater than any dream, and far crueller than waking.
The world drew a long, shuddering breath once more.
And as the wind whispered through the stillness, it carried one final truth—
a phrase carved into the marrow of existence itself:
> "Shadows do not end… they simply learn how to remain."
---