Elie looked out the window. She was worried about Marc.
She'd been calling him all weekend, but he hadn't answered. No matter how hard his parents tried to tell themselves that he surely hadn't disappeared, their minds couldn't calm down.
Mary was pacing back and forth in the house, her arms crossed.
"I'm sure he's fine."
David seemed much calmer to her, but deep down, he, too, was worried.
"You say that, but you're stressing too."
"I know, I know."
Mary recalled the discussion she'd had with her son. Marc had made it clear to her—even if not directly—that he was having problems, but she never would have imagined it was serious enough for him to disappear for an entire weekend.
"I didn't think he had such serious problems."
At those words, David raised an eyebrow, clearly concerned.
"What do you mean such serious problems?"
"He spoke to me on Saturday morning to ask me what he should do when he encountered an insurmountable trial."
"That's not true."
"You think I should have locked him in his room ?"
"You're abusing."
His mother looked at Elie through her window. Mary looked out the window at the house ahead and saw Elie sitting there, gazing toward their home and occasionally toward the sky, waiting for the slightest sign of his return.
She seemed more panicked than she was.
"Elie stresses more than we do."
"Oh, you know nothing can kill that kid."
That's what they used to say all the time, but in this world, they knew full well that no one was immortal. Even though Marc was strong and a survivor, nothing could outrun death when it came.
Elie was sweating. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead. She knew nothing in this world could kill Marc, only it was only what was in this world. If Marc had been swept into the other world, he'd be nothing but a vulnerable man.
"Why are you stressing so much about this guy?"
Her mother had returned to her room.
To her, Marc's disappearance was good news. Deep down, she felt like dancing. But when she saw her daughter, she realized he was pretty important to her.
Elie wasn't even answering any of her questions.
"That guy was just a gangster, wasn't he? You should stop thinking about him..."
Sudennly, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Elie had turned around, glaring at her mother with the gaze of a beast ready to pounce on its prey. Her condition was unrecognizable. Her hair was uncombed and she had abominable dark circles.
However, with a voice full of sadness, she replied to her mother:
"Mom, don't talk about him like that. You don't know him."
Catherine didn't recognize her daughter.
"Sorry"
She left her daughter's room.
Elie looked out the window again. Night was beginning to fall, the sky was starry and the moon was in the foreground. Elie didn't know what to do. For her, Marc was everything. He was her last hope in a world that was going to the dogs without understanding why.
Her vision of a world in ruins, devastated by destruction, had shown her Marc. He was reaching out to her amidst the ruined buildings. He said...
"Elie, don't worry, I won't let you die."
**
Marc slowly opened his eyes.
This was the second time he'd fainted on leaving one of these strange rooms. The library was already a sustained phycological experience for him.
As he lay on the floor, he had no idea where he'd landed again.
"Where am I this time?"
The answer didn't come directly to him. He didn't want to get up, but he had no choice.
He had to get out of here.
He got up to see where he was. As it happened, he wasn't really in a room. The place was just a huge, swirling staircase seemed to stretch endlessly from bottom to top.
"This can't be true."
Marc quickly realized he had no choice but to take the stairs. So he started climbing them.
"Down is often for hell."
But strangely, a faint light illuminated the endless cage. This faint glimmer of hope came from above, where the top of the stairs might be.
So Marc walked...
And walked...
And walked...
With each step, he lost a little more of the will to go on. Then came the moment when he passed the hundred-step mark,
two hundred steps,
a thousand steps...
"Where am I going?"
No sweat on his brow, just infinitely turning steps. The sound of his footsteps echoed in the tower. Nothing seemed more horrifying to see him walking endlessly.
"Why am I going out there?"
Two thousand paces.
"Why am I here?"
Three thousand steps.
"Why do I have to do this?"
Five thousand steps.
"I just wanted to..."
Seven thousand steps.
"I just wanted to..."
Ten thousand steps.
"I wanted ..."
From that point on, Marc's pace increased to one step per minute. He was so out of it that his vision started to play tricks on him.
When he put his foot on the next step, a memory flashed through his mind.
He saw himself again, when he was younger, standing next to his father on a soccer pitch. That day, Marc was on the bench. He had totally missed his match. The coach had forced him to sit down.
"You don't have to worry. Games like that happen."
He watched the others play. His gaze wasn't envious or grumpy, it was sad. Sad that he didn't measure up.
"I know."
Suddenly, his team scored a goal. They all celebrated as if he'd just won the World Cup. But Marc didn't move from the bench. Tears welled up in his eyes.
Then his father looked at him with a gaze full of compassion.
"The best thing you can do is turn that sadness into work so you never have to play that kind of game again."
"But you said it happens a lot."
"That's what's exceptional. The man isn't perfect. But his strength comes from his convictions. If you turn that sadness into work, you'll only get stronger every time you lose. In the end, you'll never make that kind of mistake again."
Marc looked at his father, his eyes filled with tears.
"But never forget to always pick yourself up. Otherwise this sadness will kill you."
Marc saw the stairs in front of him again. His left foot rested on a top step. During that entire little flashback, he had taken only three steps.
"Come on."
He kept going. On and on. No longer counting the number of steps.
Sometimes he would run and then catch his breath. He had decided to turn his sadness into work.
He'd decided to move forward...
4 million 602 thousand 037.
That was the number of steps Marc had climbed.
Like a living dead man, those steps were no longer driven by his consciousness but by the endless repetition of the same action, over and over. He hadn't stopped swinging his whirling swords, gradually setting aside all hope. Despite his newfound physical abilities, Marc had never undertaken such a task—one that demanded his very soul.
He felt as though he had poured his entire existence into those stairs. He had no idea how many steps he had climbed. Nor did he have the slightest clue why he had climbed them. Or why the steps were there at all.
Marc could no longer remember anything—to the point that he barely remembered who he was.
He was a ghost who had reached the summit...
What remained of the young man who wanted to change things...
What remained of the man who carried the heaviest burden in history...
But when he saw what was at the top, it all came back to him little by little.
It was such a captivating sight that it would surely take several generations to forget it.
Before him lay a sea of clouds so dazzling that he could not utter a single word. Some of the clouds glowed with a golden hue thanks to the sun on the horizon, while others seemed to be made of fine, transparent crystals,constantly shifting their rounded shapes and transforming them into what they might have looked like as solid, polygonal forms.
The sky itself was unusual, for instead of seeing ground like earth below, there seemed to be a reflection taking shape there. The reflection of the sky itself appeared to rest on a mirror made of water, giving the impression that the sea of clouds was, in fact, simply a sea where a boat might have appeared, coming straight from the sun.
Marc was speechless. Although he couldn't remember his journey, it had been well worth it.
A gentle warm breeze accompanied the spectacle, causing his clothes to flutter. The breeze was so pleasant that he suddenly felt the urge to close his eyes and fall asleep right there, on the water, letting himself be carried away by the sea of clouds, which had no current.
And when he did, letting himself be overcome by fatigue, blocking his own view of the landscape with a faint smile on his lips, a sudden thought crossed his mind.
Nothing about that moment could take that feeling away from him… nothing that might follow would ever take it away…
…that strange sense of déjà vu.
Marc closed his eyes again, but this time of his own accord and only for a short while. And when he opened them, a woman was standing nearby.
A woman stood not far away, with her back to him, her feet resting on the water, creating a faint ripple as if she weren't even there. Her presence was like that of a ghost, and her white dress, which looked worn, didn't help.
Marc couldn't make out any details about the person in front of him. He managed to make out her beautiful white hair tied up in a magnificent bun, whose silvery color seemed to fade from a distance.
But aside from her dress and her hair, it was impossible for him to even see her face.
She turned towards him, and in a voice so soft that it unsettled him, she said to him,
"You are here, Slave of fate."
Suddenly, everything disappeared. In the blink of an eye, there was nothing left of the landscape, nor of the woman, nor of any trace of the other world.
Marc saw the ceiling of the library again. The real library. The one from his world. The one in which he'd sought answers and received only more questions.