A Conversation at the Edge of the Void – Lili Rees and Adam Ethan
Adam's steps stilled before he entered the gate.
There was something… a desire he did not yet understand.
He turned back to her again, to the woman who stood like a mirrored reflection of all his coming years.
He spoke quietly:
"Lili… did you choose to remain here?"
She looked at him in silence for several seconds.Then she smiled, but it was not a smile of happiness or regret.
"No one chose to remain in this world…We only think we chose, while circumstances, losses, and loneliness pushed us one step after another."
She walked forward slightly, touching the endless transparent wall with the tips of her fingers.
"I was fifteen when I first entered. I was running away from something… I no longer remember it clearly.But I wasn't a heroine, nor a leader. I was just a girl… afraid of being forgotten."
Adam remained silent.
"Here… it does not matter who you are, but what you can understand.The Transparent World does not deal with emotion, but with awareness.The more you understand… the more dangerous you become to yourself."
He stepped closer, looked at his reflection in the surrounding glass, and asked:
"Did you regret it?"
She looked at him quickly as if the question had wounded her. Then she returned to her calm tone:
"Anyone who feels no regret… has lost their soul entirely.Yes, I regretted.But not because I stayed… rather because I began to forget why I had entered."
Adam said:
"I don't even know why I entered."
Lili Rees smiled, this time sincerely:
"That's the best beginning.Because answers that come before their time… distort everything."
A light silence fell between them, but it was not the silence of emptiness—it was silence thick with meaning.
Then Adam asked her:
"You control the laws of nature here… how did you reach that?"
She looked at her hands, as though weighing something invisible:
"The laws here are not written in ink.They are written in sentiment, in fear, in wisdom, in madness sometimes.When you accept that you do not understand, the Transparent World begins to grant you a little… then a little more…Until you forget what reality is, and become a part of it."
Adam slowly nodded, like someone who understood something unspoken.
"And were you the only one who survived?"
She answered with a sad tone:
"No.But I am the only one who did not leave.The others disappeared… or changed… or… died in ways that cannot be described."
He said, looking at what lay beyond the gate:
"What awaits me… is it madness?"
"Sometimes."Then she added, even more softly:"And sometimes… it is a kind of maturity, after which the mind is never the same.But madness and maturity are very similar… except in their outcome."
Adam raised his eyebrows:
"And what is the outcome?"
She spoke in a hushed voice, as if afraid something might overhear her:
"The outcome… is whether you can still love… after you understand everything."
He bowed his head for a moment.
He felt he had no answer.
Then he lifted his eyes and said:
"I think I am ready… to lose everything."
Lili Rees smiled, and in a soft voice said:
"Then… go.The Transparent World will reveal to you things… your body will never forget, even after death."
And with these words…
Adam opened the gate.
And stepped into the void.
Before he raised his hand to touch the final gate, his inner voice was halted by a whisper.A quiet voice, but one that carried in its depth the echo of 157 years of staying here.
"Wait."
Adam turned slowly.He looked at Lili Rees, who was staring directly into his eyes.
It was not the ordinary look a guardian gave the passers.But a strange look… carrying something like a confession, or a distant memory.
She spoke in a low tone, barely audible:
"You know… throughout all these years, many passed here.Strong ones, geniuses, madmen…But you are the first… I felt a familiar spark toward."
He slowed his breath.He watched her face, and for the first time he noticed in her eyes a glimmer of sorrow she could not hide.
"A spark?"
She nodded slowly.
"Yes… a spark like a small crack in the wall of the mind.I hadn't felt it since I was your age.You… resemble me greatly."
He tilted his head slightly, in curious silence.
"How?"
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, recalling a distant memory:
"I was like you… crossing the gates searching for something whose name I did not know.I thought I wanted strength, wisdom, something to protect me from fear.But the truth…Was that I was only running from my fear of myself."
She opened her eyes again, staring into his with steadiness:
"The sparks you felt as you advanced…They weren't magical energy, but waves of fragility…The fragility of someone who, if given the choice between death and nothingness… would choose nothingness without hesitation."
Adam gasped inwardly.Nothing showed on his face, but his heart contracted in his chest.
As if she had read his entire equation… without him uttering it.
"That's why… I've come now to tell you something."
She stepped closer, until she was an arm's length away.
"If you enter this gate… you will indeed discover what lies beyond knowledge.You will gain answers… more than your mind can endure.And I… do not fear the truth for you as much as I fear you will lose the last thread binding you to your humanity."
The silence stretched between them, until he spoke softly, as though he had not spoken for years:
"And did you… lose your humanity?"
She sighed slowly.At that moment, she seemed older than all ages:
"Not entirely.But it transformed into something I no longer recognize…Something gray, with neither life… nor death."
She lowered her hands, as though emptied of words:
"You are complex… more than all who have passed here.If you glimpsed yourself from the outside… you might recoil.And I… was complex like you.And I paid the full price."
She raised her hand toward the gate.A faint, transparent aura surrounded it:
"I do not ask you to turn back.But… give yourself the chance to hate this choice, before you accept it."
Adam remained silent.She gazed at him deeply, as if speaking to herself a century and a half ago:
"It's okay… to think twice.It's okay… to retreat.It's okay… to be fragile."
Then she closed her eyes, and left him to decide.
And for a few seconds… Adam did not feel entirely alone.Lili Rees kept her eyes closed, awaiting his decision.She was certain her words, no matter how they touched his heart, would change nothing…But she had spoken what she felt, without expecting anything.
Then she heard footsteps.Steady, cold steps, without hesitation or tremor.
She opened her eyes, and saw him approaching the final gate.He raised his hand to touch its glowing frame, a pale gray aura surrounding him, like a misty veil belonging to no known spectrum.
"You have decided…"
She said it quietly, in a tone resembling sorrow.But Adam did not turn.
He kept his gaze on the unknown, then spoke in a low voice…A voice that teaches, not asks:
"You know… you were right about one thing.I am fragile.Fragile as much as I am harsh.That… is what brought me here."
She cast a silent look at his slight figure before the giant gate.That fragility he admitted… was not shame in his voice.
"But you thought… I was running from it.The truth… is that I love my darkness."
Here, he turned to her for the first time.His gaze carried no hatred, no anger… it was calm in a way she had never seen in any soul before.
"My darkness… is not a curse.It is what gave me balance.Had I not swallowed all these holes within me…I could never have surpassed the gates."
He stepped closer, and she felt—as the ruler of this place—that this boy was no lesser than her.
"I… am not grateful to the gates as much as I am grateful to you."
Her eyes widened slightly.As if the heart she had buried 157 years ago stirred for a moment.
"Because… your few words made me… balanced enough not to lose my mind.And maybe… not to lose my ability to choose the path."
His words were painfully sincere.He claimed no heroism, no hollow defiance.Just a rare confession, like a heavy gift.
She lowered her head slowly, for the first time since becoming guardian.
"No one… ever thanked me before."
He smiled faintly, a half-smile barely visible.
"That's a lesson… you won't forget."
And he walked steadily to cross the gate.
But before the light swallowed him, she suddenly raised her hand:
"Wait."
He stopped at the threshold.Her voice regained a mysterious authority:
"You… have affected me more than I expected.And for the first time in a century and a half… I see in someone what I wished I had been."
She raised her palm, and a shimmering thread of blue light emerged, seeming to bind her heart to his.
"I will grant you a gift… not usually given to any visitor."
A pure aura surrounded him, and time froze between them.
"A power… born of the laws of this Transparent World.The power of Spatial Attraction."
She stepped back, her voice lighter, more hidden:
"If you survive… this ability will follow you into your world.It will allow you to collapse the distance between two points within your perception…To render distance meaningless.To move your body or other things in an instant, as you will."
She raised her eyes to his directly, as though entrusting him:
"But Spatial Attraction is not just movement.It is also a weight.Each time you use it… you will pay with a part of yourself, something not easily reclaimed."
Then the light bent and absorbed into his chest, making him tremble once.But his face remained steady.
"Adam Ethan… I hope you emerge from here.Because… you are the only person whose fate I will continue to await."
At that moment, he thought her eyes carried an old tear that had never been shed.
He opened his palm… felt a vast, strange power settling into his awareness.Something without name, without color, without boundary.
"Thank you… Lili Rees."
And he walked through the final gate, disappearing into the heart of shadows.
Behind him, she remained standing… feeling something rising in her heart, resembling hope.
The Crossing Beyond Transparency
When Adam Ethan stepped out of the final gate, for a moment he felt his being disintegrating…As though he was emerging from a cosmic womb, as though his existence was reassembled atom by atom.
The ground was not solid when he landed.It was a strange mass of dense light and dancing shadows…And sounds that were not sounds, but dormant vibrations like a dream.
It took time before he realized he had regained consciousness.That his heart was beating again.That he… had come out alive.
But what kind of life?
He raised his hand… opened his palm slowly.Something gleamed beneath the skin.Something without name, without definite shape.
(Spatial Attraction…)
He did not need to test it immediately.He felt it deep in his soul, as if tattooed onto the fabric of his awareness.
Then he recalled Lili Rees' last words…(Each time you use it… you will pay with a part of yourself.)
He closed his eyes, taking a slow breath.In this luminous void, he felt a strange peace…A peace that was not calm, but total emptiness.Exactly like the emptiness in his chest the day his mother died…But now, emptiness was no longer his only enemy.Now it carried with it a new power… and a path he no longer misunderstood.
(This part is over… and what comes next will be no less complex.)
He took a step.Suddenly he felt the world withdraw around him.The fabric of light coiled around his body in long spirals, shrinking as if swallowing him.
Then he saw the shadow of a new massive gate…But it was not one of the Eleven Gates.Something else.A Passage of Return.
He heard no voice, saw no Lili, but in his ear he thought he heard the echo of her words:
"Remember… this power may save you… or kill you."
Then the passage burst open, and the light seized him.