Theo stood frozen in his place, his breath caught in his chest. "The Silent Archive" was aptly named, but it was not an empty silence, but a heavy, full one. A silence with weight, as if composed of all the unspoken words, all the undiscovered knowledge, and all the stories that ended in ancient eons.
The towering bookshelves stretched upward into the darkness, disappearing into a ceiling the eye could not perceive, as if they were pillars bearing the burden of existence itself. Faint crystals of light floated in the air, emitting an ethereal glow that revealed fine dust dancing in their rays, each dust particle once a part of an ancient manuscript or a forgotten dream.
Theo felt his eyes wander across this endless expanse of knowledge. There was not so much fear as there was awe, a feeling of absolute smallness before this edifice that seemed older than time. The adrenaline left over from his confrontation with the deadly ray and his aunt's injury had faded, replaced by a cold sense of reality.
He was here, in the heart of a great mystery, before a being made of pure light, and he had been asked to prove his worth.
"Prove that you are worthy..." The words were not a sound, but an idea planted in the deepest point of his consciousness. A vibration that did not come from the outside, but emanated from within.
"And how... how am I to prove that?" Theo wondered in silence, but the thought was thunderous in his mind.
As if the entity had caught the echo of his thought, the light before him vibrated, and a voice gathered from everywhere and nowhere at once, a sound like the rustling of thousands of pages being turned at the same moment, to ask its first question, "How do you explain the future?"
Theo closed his eyes. This was not just an attempt to answer a philosophical question, but a personal journey through the wreckage of his life. The image of the dark cave floated in his mind, his own face, but older, harsher, his eyes holding an incomprehensible sadness and knowledge. He remembered his words with terrifying clarity, "You will face seven calamities... this is only the first." Then he saw his village burning, and heard the screams of people he had known all his life as they were devoured by monsters. He saw his master's corpse, and he saw his mother Elena's face in her final moments. All these images were pieces of the "future" that the other had foretold.
Then he thought of the near present, of his aunt Celia's gaze as she pressed on her severed hand, the cold determination in her eyes. Wasn't that also a direct result of a path that had led him here? Was the future just a series of painful traps?
He opened his eyes, a coldness settling in his gaze that a fourteen-year-old did not possess. "The future..." his voice began, sounding fragile and hoarse in this great silence. "The future is not a possibility or a chance. It is the scenario. It is the written script that determines every step, every word, and every breath. It is the path that has been paved with meticulous precision, not to lead us somewhere, but to ensure our arrival at a specific moment, a single, inescapable truth. The future is the mechanism that serves a greater purpose."
Silence reigned for a moment, during which Theo felt that the being of light was not just listening, but sifting through his soul, analyzing the sincerity and pain behind every letter. Then the voice returned, deeper this time, carrying the next question: "And how do you explain fate?"
Here, Theo felt a wave of anger and bitterness wash over him. Fate. What a despicable word. Was it his mother's fate to die in such a horrific way? Was it his master's fate to die? Was it his village's fate to become food for monsters? For him, fate was the ultimate injustice, the unbreakable shackle, the eternal jailer.
"Fate..." Theo said it, the word coming out of his mouth as if it were a curse. "Fate is that end which the future serves. It is the final point, the absolute truth, the judgment passed before we were born. Fate is the wound that will inevitably open, no matter how many bandages we put on to avoid it. You can run, you can hide, you can fight, you can scream, but fate is the abyss that awaits you at the end of every road. It is not just an event, but the very essence of the truth that our entire lives are designed to revolve around and confirm."
It was an answer full of despair, a bitter admission of defeat before a merciless cosmic force. He felt the light before him dim and glow in a strange pattern, as if it were breathing. Then came the final question, the question that seemed as if it would judge his entire understanding: "And which do you think is the more complex of the two?"
Theo took a deep breath, the cold air that smelled of old books filled his lungs, calming his anger and steadying his thoughts. "The future. Without a doubt, the future is the more complex."
"Explain your logic." The voice commanded, now seeming to carry a touch of curiosity.
"Because fate, despite its cruelty, is simple and direct. It is a single truth, fixed, pure in its purpose. Like a high mountain peak, you can see it from a distance, and you know it is your final destination. As for the future, it is the entire mountain. It is all the sharp rocks, the slippery slopes, the snow slides, and the phantom paths that lead nowhere. The future is the great deception. It weaves an infinite number of lies to convince us that we have a choice. It creates hope, love, friendship, fear, and hatred, all of which are tools to keep us walking on the drawn path while we think we are drawing our own. The complexity of the future lies in its mastery of deception, in its ability to make the prison look like freedom. Even when it shows you a glimpse of itself, that is part of the trick. Your foreknowledge does not give you the power to change it, but rather makes you an active participant in achieving fate, while you think you are resisting it. That is the true complexity... to be a tool while you believe you are the master."
As the last word finished slipping from Theo's tongue, the transformation happened. It was not gradual, but violent and dramatic. The bright light that formed the entity began to collapse inward, as if a black hole had been born in its center. Theo heard a sound, not like the rustling of pages, but like the sound of glass cracking under immense pressure. The light contracted upon itself, wrinkled, and lost its dazzling brilliance to leave behind a dull gray color, like a dying sun. The rays contorted and bled their light, forming from them worn-out rags, wrinkled skin, and slender limbs.
The shape finally settled, and there stood before Theo a blind old man, leaning on a black wooden staff that seemed to have absorbed all the light around it. His eyes were empty sockets, two voids of absolute darkness in his wrinkled face. But despite his blindness, Theo felt that he was being examined, read, and weighed in a way he had never experienced before.
The old man opened his mouth, and the voice that now came out was real, physical, carrying the roughness of eons and the echo of a terrifying wisdom.
"Excellent... but what a deficient and limited understanding."
The words froze Theo in his place. Deficient? He had poured his entire soul into those answers.
The old man took a step forward, the sound of his staff striking the silent floor had the impact of thunder. "You see it from the perspective of a prisoner describing his cell. Your analysis is correct from your point of view, but your cell is not the entire universe."
"You speak of the future as a writer and fate as a destination. Childish metaphors." The old man said in a tone that carried no contempt, but merely a statement of objective fact, which made it all the more insulting. "The truth is greater and more terrifying."
"Imagine fate as an absolute river, with no beginning or end visible to you. A river that flows through all dimensions and times. You are not a person standing on its bank trying to understand it. You are not even a swimmer trying to resist its current. You, boy, are merely a pebble thrown into this river."
The blood in Theo's veins turned to ice. A pebble.
"When you see the 'future'," the old man continued, raising his empty hand and pointing to his dark eyes, "you do not see the true flow of the river. How can a pebble at the bottom of the river see the ocean to which the river is headed? Impossible. Think about it deeply: how can a great entity like the future, an entity that encompasses everything, not record in its folds a simple event like 'someone seeing a part of it'? That assumption is the height of arrogance."
"What you see is not the future. It is just a small tributary, a stream that the great river creates especially for you. It is a custom reality, a temporal bubble designed to contain the act of your seeing, your resistance, and your reaction. This stream makes you feel like you are fighting the waves, that you might be able to swim against the current and reach a different shore. But all of this is an illusion. You are not fighting anything. You are just following a pre-dug side path, a path that will inevitably return to merge with the main course of the river, after you have performed your role exactly as you were destined to. Your resistance is part of the current. Your despair is part of the current. Your foreknowledge is the most effective tool the river uses to guide you precisely to your rightful place."
The words fell on Theo like a mountain of ice, crushing every bit of hope or will within him. His understanding of reality had been completely shattered. He was not just a prisoner, but a prisoner happy in his illusion, given a fake escape map just to make sure he would fall into the right trap at the right time. All his suffering, all his pain, was not a tragedy, but just a precise mechanism in a giant cosmic clock.
"So..." Theo muttered in a broken voice, barely audible. "What... what is the truth then? If all this is just an illusion designed for me... then what is real?"
The blind old man looked in his direction, and it seemed as if the two voids of darkness in his face had widened to swallow the entire universe. He did not answer the question, but uttered a single sentence. A simple sentence, but it was heavier than all the books in this archive. A vague, obscure sentence that made no sense to Theo at that moment, but it was the absolute truth that would haunt him for the rest of his miserable life.
"You were always the shadow... not of a voice, but of an echo, in a dream that was never fully heard"
Silence.
Theo did not understand. A dream? A voice? A shadow? Was this all just another riddle? Was he being mocked?
Before Theo could think further, the old man raised his empty hand again and pointed to a distant shelf in the infinite darkness. From among the millions of identical volumes, a single book trembled. It slid out of its place quietly, and flew through the vast air in complete silence, like a paper ghost, before settling gently between Theo's trembling hands.
The feel of its black leather cover was cold and strange. There was no title, only the same intricate engravings he had seen on the door, the engravings that were etched into his memory from the walls of his cave.
Theo felt betrayed, utterly desperate. He had come in search of answers, of power, of a way to survive. Instead, he had been stripped of everything, even the illusion of his will. He was left with a sentence he couldn't decipher, a book whose title he couldn't read, and in his heart a void wider and darker than the Silent Archive itself. He realized in that moment, that he was unimaginably alone. Not just in this place, but in all of existence. Just a shadow in someone else's dream.