He kept walking until he no longer felt time.The place changed. The walls disappeared.It was as if he was floating in a tunnel of his own memories — but in an incomprehensible way.
Suddenly, light exploded around him, in the form of floating glass squares in the air.Each square displayed a scene from his life:
His mother smiling after his birth.
Neil laughing mockingly after defeating him.
Krista looking at him with fear and confusion.
The moment of Mary's death.
The shadow of the Masked Man.
It was like a visual trial, but he did not panic.On the contrary…
He said in a steady voice as he stared at the faces:"If you want to measure me… use something harsher. This no longer breaks me."
Here…A soft, deep voice emerged from the void:
"Number 17772458… has been found again."
Adam looked around.The floor began to crack…And a black door appeared at the end of the void.It opened slowly, and from it emerged a tall entity, draped in a pale gray cloak, without a face, without a name.
The entity said in a distorted, deep voice:
"Welcome to Phase Two… Adam Ethan.""Do you know what you are?"
Adam answered coldly:"No… but I want to know."
The entity:
"You are the chosen one who opened the gate for the 17,772,458th time.Not intentionally, but because you were… the closest to complete emptiness.The rule is simple… whoever approaches nothingness, becomes its mirror."
Adam raised an eyebrow, as if something inside him was beginning to understand slowly.He said:
"Is this a test? A parallel world? Or part of my mother's curse?"
The entity replied:
"All of this… and none of this."
"In the Transparent World, all external layers are erased.What remains is only: what makes your consciousness different from the dead?"
Adam was silent.Then he said:
"Now I understand why I came."
"Do you?" asked the entity.
"I am here… to determine if I am still human… or if I have become nothing but an angry thought that walks."
Silence.Then he smiled, that strange small smile that meant not joy, but realization.
"Test me as you will.But remember one thing…I am no longer looking for salvation."He looked straight into the entity's eyes, and continued:
"I just want to discover… how far I can go before I break."
In the depths of the Transparent World, there was no ground.No air.No walls to lean on.Everything was made of "what is barely seen"… layers of light and reflected light, subtle refractions, and hidden bends that toyed with perception.
Adam floated.
But even floating was unclear.Was he walking… falling… being carried? He did not know.
The void around him was not a void.It was a structure of overlapping transparency, a living fabric of formlessness, showing from every angle an image the mind could not grasp, an image of him.
An image… of him.His face, in every direction, in every motion, repeated.
Suddenly, the fabric thickened…And from it reflected a massive face, with his same features. But stretched, wider, deeper…Its eyes like the sea, endless, and its mouth half-closed, smiling as if it knew something he would never understand.
Adam froze.
He was not afraid, but… confused.
"Me?"
The echo of his voice did not return. The place swallowed it.
The massive entity came closer… though it did not take a step.Everything moved toward him without moving.
The voice did not come from the mouth, but from inside Adam's head:
"You are the first to look at me this way."
"I am the result of your transparent form.I am the image of what you have not yet understood about yourself."
Adam tried to catch his breath, but there was no air here.Existence itself here did not follow rules.
"What is this place? Where am I?"He did not say it asking for an answer, but as a question he feared would be answered.
The entity came closer, then its features broke into overlapping lines, like shattering glass, and Adam's face appeared again… but sad, angry, laughing, mocking, a child, an old man…All of them were him.And none of them were.
"You are now inside the Transparent World."
"This place has no phase. No goal. It does not contain you, it is made of you.""Transparency is not matter. It is a dimension…"
"A dimension that turns everything into a pure reflection. We stripped from you shadow, body, time, and names."
Adam muttered:
"I… don't understand."
The entity replied:
"And you never will. Because understanding itself… is a shadow of your old world."
"I am not a phase. Nor a trial.I am simply the face you confront when all meanings are taken away."
Adam looked at himself.Slowly, he began to see his body fade. Not melt… but turn into faint lines of transparent energy, dispersing in the air.
"All who entered here before you… lost their way."
"You… are number 17772458.""And the number does not matter. What matters is that you are here."
Adam asked, this time in a rigid tone:
"And what will happen to me?"
The entity responded without sound:
"That does not depend on me.It depends on what you will see when nothing remains to see but yourself."
And then…
Adam was dropped into another depth,inside an incomprehensible version of the Transparent World…But this time, he was completely alone — even his reflections had vanished.The new void was clearer…But it was not comforting.It was like a void not yet invented.No color, no shape, not even the illusion of movement.Adam was alone… not knowing if he was floating or falling into nothing.
While his mind searched for a thread of logic,a thin line of light appeared before him.So thin… like a crack in existence itself.
And as it appeared, another voice came:
"Transparency here… is not matter nor energy… It is the original composition.If you thought perception would protect you… it was the first to abandon you."
Adam did not respond.No point.He watched the crack in the void expand slowly, opening what looked like a gate.
And behind it… there was nothing.But a glimpse.A fleeting glimpse of an image like him… but with a pale face, empty eyes, and a body tied with transparent threads pulsing like veins.
The image approached until it touched the edges of the gate.And he saw it clearly.
It was "him."But… not him.It was a "version" twisted from everything he tried to hide.
"Do you know me?"
The sound did not come from the mouth, but slid directly into the center of his consciousness.
Adam whispered:
"…A version of me?"
The pale image nodded its head, then extended a hand toward him:
"I am what you left behind when you decided not to care about anything.I am what remained of you when you tore away fear, sorrow, and joy… and only the shell was left."
Adam extended his hand lightly… and felt no weight.
"If I have no emotions… what did I keep?"
The voice replied without hesitation:
"You kept emptiness… and denial."
"I am denial itself."
The gate widened further, as if to swallow them both.
"You are here… to face me."
Adam asked slowly:
"…And why?"
"Because this Transparent World is not a testing ground.""It is… a true reflection.Here, you cannot hide."
"All who came before you… ran away.""All of them… disappeared."
The gate swallowed half his body.
"Will you disappear as well? Or will you accept to see me… that I am you?"
The void melted around him.Everything became quieter than silence itself.
And at that moment, there was nothing but Adam… and his empty image, hanging by transparent threads… and a calm awareness almost like surrender.
Well…Here was Adam, engulfed by the widening crack until it covered his head completely.
The void vanished.No more white dimension, or transparent shadows, or any trace of the previous space.In its place was something like a vast fabric of luminous threads.Those threads stretched in every direction… endless, moving slowly as if breathing.
In the middle of this fabric stood the body resembling Adam.The version with the expressionless face.And as he looked at it, he felt something strange…The sense that he was inside it at the same time he was staring at it.
"Finally… you crossed the threshold."
The sound was no longer even a sound.It was more like a thought shaped in a way only consciousness could understand.
"What is this place…?"
Adam did not move his lips.He simply found the question leaving his awareness.
"It is the heart of the Transparent World… the Matrix of Denial.Here, everyone who was called to cross has been suspended forever between their true image and their fabricated one."
Adam tried to turn around.But he realized turning was impossible.Here, you do not move… you only shift perspective.And no matter how he shifted it, he saw the same threads… the same expanse… the same stagnant version.
The version began to move.One slow step.Then it raised its hand.
"You are the 17,772,458th person to pass through here."
His mind repeated the number many times.Seventeen million… seven hundred seventy-two thousand… four hundred fifty-eight.He felt no meaning in the number, except that it was longer than history should allow.
"And what happened to all of them…?"
The version did not smile, but its eyes flickered with pale light:
"They dissolved."
Silence.Then the thought-wave echoed like an ancient resonance:
"They dissolved into the threads… when they could not accept who they were."
Adam saw his limbs disappearing gradually…First his fingers…Then his forearms…They did not vanish as if torn away, but dissolved and flowed into the air, merging with the surrounding threads.
He felt something like dizziness.But it was not nausea…It was the dizziness of becoming an incomplete thought.
"Here… you cannot resist in the old way."
"Here… either you see yourself fully… or you become part of the fabric."
Adam remained silent.He did not scream.He did not flinch.Even as he saw his hands dissolved up to the elbows.
He realized something.That fear had lost its use here.
"And if I accept myself…?"
"Then… you will not survive."
"…But you will leave into a world where you have nothing left to lose."
The version advanced further, until the distance between their faces disappeared.Their eyes were a hair's breadth apart.And in that gaze, he saw everything he had buried:Childish hatred…Quiet anger…Disgust at the world…Regret he never admitted…Everything.
"Now… the decision."
"Do you dissolve?"
"Or do you accept all of this… and leave?"
His inner voice was no longer even a whisper.It became a soft feeling, closer to a confession:
(…I am not one thing.)
(…And I no longer want to be nothing.)
Here the threads stopped.The version stopped.Even the dizziness broke.
And he saw one color for the first time.Red…Strong…Beating…
Like the core of a heart, peeking from a depth no one had invented.