He opened his eyes slowly.He did not know how much time had passed.But he saw a dark stone ceiling… and realized he was in a room.An old room, with silent walls.
He lifted his head.His body ached as if it had tested death a thousand times.He tried to sit up.It took time to regain the feeling in his hands and legs.
Then he looked around.
No one.
No sounds.
He saw no trace of the seventy people who had entered the transparent world…Neither those who were killed, nor those who survived.
Only him… in an empty room.
Strands of his black hair fell over his eyes as he breathed with difficulty.But he felt something different.
A feeling that was not like being lost, and not just like pain.
It was a feeling resembling… bitter awareness.
The awareness that he had changed forever.
He stretched out his hand to touch his chest.It was still there…The seed of spatial attraction.
He spoke in a hoarse voice, not knowing if he was addressing anyone, or himself:
"I'm still alive…"
He wasn't sure yet whether this was a blessing… or a curse.
But there was one thing he knew with certainty:This day… would be the beginning of something much greater than he had imagined.I have returned to the real world. That lady deceived me.Damn it.
In the long silence that followed the closing of the last gate, Lily Reese stood at the edge of the white space that no one had set foot in before Adam for decades.She stood there, in her dress that gleamed like a piece of transparent glass, her eyes gazing at the place where that strange boy had disappeared.
She placed her palm on her chest and let out a faint breath, as if a massive burden had been lifted off her.She spoke slowly, as if addressing existence itself:
"I did it… I transferred him to the real world."
Time passed before she gathered her thoughts.Her voice was quiet, but it carried layers of complex emotions… admiration… sorrow… endless curiosity:
"If I had left him here longer… he would have died. This transparent world is not just a passage to power, but a slow trap. A year and seven whole months he spent crossing the gates… all that time his body unaware that time here moves in a distorted way compared to the original world."
She raised her hand, watching lines of light and shadow gradually fade:
"You, Adam… if you had continued crossing the eleven gates… if you had delved deeper into the region of reflected dimensions… you would have faced the true creatures of this world. Not the small electromagnetic models you tested… but beings that are not bound by the laws of time, feeding on fragments of consciousness."
She sighed slowly, and a faint shadow of sorrow appeared on her face:
"I saw with my own eyes those who were trapped here forever. People who thought that going deeper meant more power… only to become nothing but wandering mental husks. Here… where no one dies completely and no one returns entirely."
She touched her cheek with cold fingers.As if she remembered something old… something resembling pain:
"I myself… was one of them."
Then the tension faded from her face, and a short smile leaned onto her lips, a smile not mocking but completely sincere:
"But you chose to retreat at the last moment. You chose to return… that is why I returned you almost intact. Your body is still small… you have not yet reached twelve years old… but your mind…"
She placed her hand on her chest again, muttering with something like astonishment:
"I saw it all. I saw… that labyrinth. That black forest we call the self. Everything in you is deformed and complicated… but in the midst of all that, you carry a seed of strange clarity… as if you know where you're heading, even if you don't know why."
She leaned her back against the wall of light and closed her eyes.When she opened them, they no longer carried pure seriousness, but something resembling nostalgia:
"I… do not respect anyone easily. In fact… I usually do not care about what others do. But you… impressed me."
She paused a moment, to make sure she was truly admitting what she felt:
"Not because you're strong. Not because you survived. But because… when you crossed the gates, you did not pretend to seek a pure goal… nor heroism… but you were honest in your confusion… in your hatred… in your loneliness."
Then she tilted her head slightly, and whispered:
"I hope you never forget that this ability I gave you—spatial attraction—is not a gift without a price. It is a part of this world… and it will keep demanding its price sooner or later."
She crossed her arms over her chest, and her memory ran through every moment of his crossing the gates one after another:The child who seemed older than his age…Who cried in silence, and laughed in silence, and did not try to escape his inner shadows.
"Adam… I just hope you will use this power to become what you choose… not what this void chooses for you."
In the end… she raised her hand to close the remnants of the glowing gate:
"Goodbye… perhaps we will meet if I too ever leave one day."
And thus silence prevailed in the heart of the transparent world…Where no one remained except Lily Reese…And where his name would remain engraved in memory as a number in history:
When he opened his eye slowly, he did not see the lights of the transparent world nor its white walls.He saw a cracked wooden ceiling, dust hanging in strands of light.He smelled an ancient scent… a mixture of dampness and old fabrics.He moved slowly, realizing his body was heavy… as if it had not moved in ages.
He sat slowly on the thin mattress, lowering his feet to the ground.There was no one in the room.He stretched his hand to his chest, as if to—
He remained sitting, watching his trembling shadow on the ground, before closing his eyes and whispering in a quiet voice that did not sound like his usual one:
"… Hallucinations say a year and seven months have passed."
His mind was like a vast library, its shelves filled with dozens of details he could barely comprehend:The laws… the gates… the formations… that strange feeling of being split into more than one version.All of it… all those hours he had spent between threshold and edge…
Something like resentment overcame him… a mixture of muffled annoyance and helpless rejection:
"All that time… of cold dissection… of peeling away from everything human…"
He clenched the edge of his blanket with his thin hand.For a moment he felt the urge to break something… or to scream…Then the feeling vanished.He returned to his quiet emptiness, to that cold acceptance that he no longer knew if it was strength or a curse.
But amidst it all… amidst that heavy exhaustion… he felt something else.Something like a thin thread of gratitude.Despite all his hatred for that place, and for those worlds that revealed his fragility, he did not ignore the truth:If not for Lily Reese's intervention… he would not have returned.
He moved his head slightly as if to dismiss that admission.But the words came out despite himself, slowly and in a low voice:
"I hate you… and I owe you my life."
He smiled an empty smile, then passed his hand over his eyes that felt a strange sting.He said to himself with quiet bitterness:
"If she knew… maybe she would laugh at me."
He sighed deeply.Then he stood up on his feet, testing his balance that was still slightly unsteady.He felt that something inside him had changed fundamentally.His sense of time.His sense of self.Even the abilities he had gained… coiled around his heart like a soft serpent.
He lifted his eyes to the small window in the room, where a faint sun shone on his face, and whispered:
"Spatial attraction… and a memory that will never heal."
There was in his voice bitterness… and something resembling respect.
Then he took his first step… returning to the world he had left behind what seemed like an entire lifetime ago.
Adam was walking slowly toward the door, when he heard the sound of light footsteps in the dark earthen corridor.He stopped.He did not turn.A low male voice came from behind him, its tone devoid of hesitation:
"Adam Ethan."
He did not answer.He remained standing, staring at the wooden wall as if nothing mattered.The man continued in a flat tone, as if reading from a memorized text:
"The sorting process is over. Your endurance there in that space… was almost unprecedented. You are the sixteenth person we sent who came out alive."
Adam closed his eyes slowly.He felt no pride nor surprise.The phrase "the sixteenth person" passed like a metallic sound in his head… stirring nothing.He opened his eyes, whispering as if talking to himself:
"And the rest…?"
The man breathed a little, then said:
"They died. Of the ninety who remained… they ended in the stages of the gates. Only fifteen before you came out of this world, all of them became… something else."
This time, Adam turned slowly.He looked directly into the man's eyes.There was in his gaze no defiance, nor respect.Only calm curiosity:
"And this means… the next stage has begun?"
The man nodded.He did not seem affected by Adam's coldness:
"Yes. Prepare yourself. The next stage will begin once the rest of the survivors from other worlds are transferred. You are the last to come out."
Adam slowly raised his hand, touching the side of his neck where he still felt the trace of Lily Reese's cold touch.He did not know whether what he felt was resentment, gratitude, or nothing at all.
The man gave him a long quick look, then said:
"No one here will understand what you went through. And don't expect them to. Be ready… because the final stage is unlike any trial before."
He was silent a moment.Then he turned to leave.
Adam remained standing, watching his shadow stretch across the ground.In his chest, a fleeting thought:
(The final stage…? Perhaps here… my story truly begins.)
The man stopped at the threshold before leaving completely.He turned his head slightly toward Adam, and this time his voice sounded less cold, carrying a trace of cautious concern:
"Before you move… there is something you need to know."
Adam lifted his gaze, staring at his face without blinking.
"The next stage… is not for everyone. Only the sixteen who survived the transparent world will face it. Each one of you came out from a different level… but the result is the same: you are the only ones capable of continuing."
He paused a moment, as if testing his reaction. Adam neither moved nor answered.
"The director of this contest… is not an ordinary human. It is said he possesses a technique capable of folding the distance between worlds. A technique that transfers anyone from one dimension to another, and by which special gates are opened… that is why he was able to transfer all of us through the transparent gates."
Adam's eyelid twitched, but it was not shock… only silent contemplation.
The man sighed as if he hated the details he was explaining:
"Your world… and other worlds you will learn about later… all will converge in this stage. The details will reach you when we arrive. Do not think that what you have seen so far is the peak of strangeness."
He stepped forward, raising his hand as a final sign:
"Prepare mentally. We are leaving this place within an hour. The final stage… is not just a trial, it is something entirely different."
Then he left, leaving behind the echo of his footsteps in the stone corridor.
Adam remained standing, staring into the deep shadows, thinking for a moment:
(World transfer…? Sixteen survivors… and a technique never recorded in any book I've read. This might finally… be something worth my attention.)
Adam did not move from his place after the man left.He stayed for a few minutes, staring at the gray stone ceiling, as if waiting for it to drop him an answer to everything that had happened.
Then he slowly raised his hand, looked at his long thin fingers, and remembered the moment he entered the first gate… how he thought then that what he was doing was just a meaningless game to escape from everything.He himself was no longer sure if what he was living was a test, or destiny, or a mistake in his life's path.
A short cold smile passed over his face, carrying neither joy nor mockery.
(The final stage… world-transfer technique… four months passed inside as if they were nothing… no matter. As long as it is approaching its end.)
He turned his head slowly, his eyes catching on the doors of rooms he had never entered.He wondered briefly about the others who died there.About Lily Reese, to whom he said he would never forget her hand that pulled him out… and whether he felt gratitude or contempt for surviving.
He did not know.And did not want to know.
He opened his palm slowly, watched a faint tremor in his skin, then closed it.That was the only tremor left to confirm that he was still alive.
He turned slowly toward the corridor, then took his first step to leave:
(Sixteen survivors… and I am number sixteen… the last to come out. I will not allow myself to be the last in the rest.)
He set off slowly, his steps heavy but steady.He carried no luggage with him.What remained with him was not something to be carried in hand… but inside.
In his chest was a nameless feeling.A strange mixture of faint determination and calm curiosity… something resembling the desire for an ending.