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There was no light in this place, but something else...
An inverted light. As if the night itself had undergone a reversed breath and
expelled shadows not of this world.
Adam stood there, at a point between reality and unreality, staring at what
remained of the grandmother's secret passage after it was swept by a whirlwind
of blue dust. That storm made no sound, but it ate away the clay walls as if
taking revenge on memory.
"Labobo!" he shouted, clutching the glowing pendant bracelet in his hand.
The small creature appeared from the air, as if a plot waiting only to be
summoned.
He spoke in a low tone:
"Adam... you have now entered the boundaries of true regret."
Adam stared at the creature, then at the torn scene around him.
"What does this mean?"
"You have opened the third door, Adam. And now... you will not leave as you
entered."
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One day before
Adam had read the second note left by his grandmother, hidden inside the wooden
ritual book covered with the skin of an unknown creature. The page that opened
before him was written in golden ink, with only one sentence:
> "When you see the blue light, do not touch it, but pass beyond it, and be
> ready to abandon every answer you thought was true."
He closed the book cautiously, as if between its covers lay a sleeping beast he
did not want to awaken.
"This is impossible," he muttered, "My mother knew nothing about this... Was my
grandmother trapped between two worlds all these years?"
But the question that kept echoing in his mind was not that.
It was: Was my grandmother really my grandmother?
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Return to the heart of Nimora
Adam moved through the twisted forest that had no trees, only stone pillars
growing from the ground as if watching. The atmosphere was still, no wind, no
heat, only silence... and silence here had a sound.
With every step, the ground emitted a faint moan.
Labobo floated beside him and said:
"Everything here tests you... not because you are an enemy, but because you are
a stranger."
"Wasn't grandmother a stranger?"
"She was. But she became one of them after she bled here the first time."
Adam stopped suddenly.
"She bled? What do you mean?"
Labobo looked at him, then pointed to a spot in the sky where a black moon
pulsed slowly like a sick heart.
"When you accept this world, it imprints you with its mark. Grandmother bled
from memory. And you now, if you stay longer, you will start bleeding from the
question."
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The Storm Monster
In the middle of the forest, the ground began to shake.
The sound came first... a sound that could not be translated into words. Like
the cry of forgotten gods.
The monster appeared.
A body made of swirling clouds around a red beating heart in the center. It had
a faceless face, just extended cavities as if carrying all the winds of the
earth inside it.
Labobo said:
"This is the Storm Monster. It is the one who unleashed the disaster that killed
your grandmother the last time she entered."
"It killed her? But she came back!"
"Yes... but she came back half human."
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The Battle
Adam took out the first spell from the heart of the pendant.
"In the name of the imprisoned light, open, O power of resolve."
His hands glowed with a silvery blue color, and lines began to appear on his
skin. Circles. Symbols. A language he did not know but understood internally.
The monster roared, the air trembled, and rocks fell from the sky like rain.
Adam ran with a lightness he had never learned before, as if gravity had
betrayed him in his favor.
He fired a burst of light at the monster, hitting one of its swirls.
Labobo shouted: "Aim for the heart! Everything else will return!"
But he could not.
As he approached, he began to see... images. Scenes. Memories he had not lived.
A woman wearing a red dress sitting by a river singing a familiar voice.
A small child crying in her arms.
And a mysterious figure standing behind her... bearing his own face.
"Who is this?" Adam shouted, frozen.
"This is the heart of regret!" Labobo shouted, "Do not resist the image, surpass
it!"
Adam gathered all his strength and released the light inside the image, which
shattered like glass.
The monster trembled, then exploded into swirls of ink and clouds, leaving the
ground trembling.
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Frightening Discovery
Among the debris, Adam found something buried.
An old, real photograph.
In it, his grandmother, and a woman who looked exactly like her... but she was
holding an infant.
And the infant was not him.
"Who is this child?"
Labobo answered in a low voice:
"Sometimes, stories are not as you think... Maybe your grandmother was hiding
not only the secrets of the world, but also your identity."
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Return Home
Adam returned to reality through the forest gate after taking with him something
of the "inverted light".
Everything seemed different.
The old house had changed.
The mirrors no longer reflected his image completely.
He sat near his grandmother's abandoned bed and opened her last note, where he
found a single phrase written this time in red ink:
> "When memory breathed... I was no longer me."
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Labobo's last words in this part
He said while sitting on an air cushion:
"Adam... you have not started the story yet, you have been living on its
margins. Only now... will the true tale begin."
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Motivational quote at the end of the part
> "When you walk a path you do not understand, remember that knowledge does not
> grow in safe ground, but on the edge of fear."