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Deep in the Nimora forest, where trees do not grow but twist as if screaming in
pain, Adam walked steadily beside Zira. The shadows of the forest danced around
them as if conspiring against their silence, but at the heart of this stillness
was a soft... hidden tension.
He exchanged quick glances with her, yet he still felt something brewing behind
her eyes, something she had not yet said.
"Do you hear that?" whispered Zira, suddenly stopping and grabbing Adam's arm.
"What?" he asked warily.
She pointed downward. Nothing was visible, but with focus, he heard it... a
sound like glass slowly breaking... but it did not come from outside, it came
from within him.
"This is the door of the 'Glass Memory,'" said Zira as she bent beside a broken
tree, touching its roots that resembled a human hand. "Your grandmother once
passed through here before she hid this place from everyone."
Adam pressed the pendant on his neck, where "Labobo" had been sleeping inside
since the previous night after the specter battle. The little magical creature
was strangely losing its energy, as if something in this world was gradually
draining its life.
"Do you mean the next door is here?" Adam asked, his heart pounding, a mix of
curiosity and fear.
Zira did not answer but took a deep breath and said: "This is not a door like
any other, but a rift in time... If you enter it, you will not come out the
same. You will come out either stronger or broken forever."
Pause here
Would you enter if you were in his place? The door looks tempting, but it
whispers your secrets. It tells you what you never dared to think. What if it
revealed to you that everything... was a lie?
At the moment Adam touched the trunk of the tree hiding the door, he felt as if
his heart was being torn out. It was not a vision but a summoning. The door
opened like a third eye, and before them was a long corridor of broken glass,
each shard reflecting a scene from a different past.
The first shard showed his mother's face silently crying in the kitchen.
The second showed Adam as a small child watching the funeral of a woman he did
not know... but he felt broken.
The third... showed the grandmother, but she was screaming in a strange, inhuman
voice, holding a knife and shouting at a shadow-covered man.
"Stop!" Adam shouted. "These are not my memories!"
Zira approached him and said calmly: "They are the memories of the world you
inherit... Choose now, either continue the path or break like the glass before
you."
He hesitated. He remembered everything. Labobo who saved him. The first monster.
The pendant pulsing on his neck. The grandmother's notes, and the name "Nimora"
that was now etched into his skin.
Then he remembered something strange... a fleeting moment he saw before entering
the door, not a vision but a feeling... that he was not her grandson.
"Zira..." he murmured. "Do you know who I am? I mean... really?"
She looked at him long, then answered in a low voice as if confessing a sin:
"You are the one chosen by the world, not born by the grandmother."
Surprising?
You might have thought, like him, that blood defines bonds. But in Nimora, those
saved by souls become part of them.
Do you think he will continue the journey?
Or will he stop now that he has begun to fade from within?
Adam entered the glass path, with Zira behind him, but something strange began
to happen. With every step, shards of glass rose and surrounded him, as if
trying to create a new cage.
Then... a scream was heard.
It was not from Zira. Nor from him.
But from someone behind the glass.
A woman.
With long white hair.
She stared at him and cried... then screamed his name: "Adam! Don't let them
take you!"
"Who are you?!" he shouted, trying to approach.
But the glass suddenly shattered, and the door closed behind him.
An inner voice appeared, not Labobo's, nor Zira's, but a voice like the echo of
a man's laughter...
"Finally, you have returned, heir of the mixed blood."
Outside, Zira held a piece of broken glass. On its surface, she saw Adam
gradually transforming.
His skin changed. His eyes colored in two different hues.
And a strange tattoo appeared on his neck:
"Son of the Two Worlds."
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