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Chapter 7 - Cold Heart - Part VII: The Voice That Broke the Illusion

After some time…

A voice.

Faint.

Almost forgotten.

Soft as a whisper,

but deep as a bell.

It echoed into my soul—

a soul I had long abandoned.

I didn't know where I was.

I didn't know who I was with.

All I knew—

was that a voice was calling out to me.

I tried to resist.

I reminded myself:

I have no one.

I deserve no one.

But the voice—

it didn't stop.

It kept calling,

as if it remembered me

even when I had forgotten myself.

And slowly—

my will broke.

The walls I built

crumbled

like dust in wind.

I opened my eyes.

There she was.

Her.

Again.

A moment so surreal

I thought I was still dreaming.

Still floating in that warm lie

my heart had made up to comfort me.

How could this be real?

How could someone like me

wake up to something like this?

A stranger—

who saw the monster in my soul

and chose not to run.

I asked her:

"Why?"

Why did you bring me here?

Why didn't you leave me where I belonged?

Why… do you care so much

for someone like me?

She smiled and tilted her head.

"Hmm… is it bad that I helped?"

"Hmm… I didn't think someone could survive in that place."

"The days here are hot. The nights… winter cold."

She gave me a soft chuckle.

"Hmm… actually…

are you some kind of cuckoo?"

"You were mumbling weird things in your sleep.

Blabbering about light…

and darkness…

and fate…"

She looked at me curiously.

"Hmm… isn't it always day?"

"Only when it rains does it get dark or during nighs"

"But even then…

we have the moon and stars, silly."

Then she looked at me, more seriously.

"Are you dumb?"

"Do you know where your family is?"

"I'll take you to them."

Her words…

hit me like a knife to the chest.

I froze.

I knelt to the ground

as if my legs could no longer carry

the weight of my thoughts.

Was I mad?

Had I created all of it—

the curse,

the blood,

the sorrow,

the endless darkness?

Was it… a dream?

Was I just paranoid?

A frightened boy

who mistook his fears for fate?

Had I accepted a punishment

for a crime I never committed?

Had I become the puppet

of a lie that I… imagined?

Her world was not like mine.

Her sky held stars,

not shadows.

Her night was filled with the moon's glow,

not the suffocating black

that I called home.

Why?

Why did the world look different through her eyes?

Why was she free,

while I was drowning?

What if…

What if the world had never been dark?

What if…

I had painted it that way?

What if I was the darkness?

Her words…

shattered me.

I began to tremble.

Thoughts spiraled.

Memories blurred.

I could no longer tell

which moments were real

and which were reflections of my own despair.

I questioned.

I pleaded.

I begged—

"Who am I?"

"What is real?"

"Was my fate ever even mine?"

And I kept questioning.

And kept spiraling.

But the answers…

never came.

 

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