"Collapse Without Gravity"
The darkness in Nimora now resembled an endless, angry shadow. In this part of the world, light was no longer even a memory. Only the echo of distant screams and stabs of cold that attacked the skin like needles remained.
Adam stood in the middle of a deserted square. The ground beneath him was covered in black ash, and the sky above was cracked like shattered glass. In his right hand, the locket was now pulsing with a deep blue color, like a heart disconnected from time.
Laboubo's voice echoed in his ear, this time weaker than usual:
> "Adam... do not fear what you will see now... You have passed the point of no return."
A red light exploded from the fissures in the ground in front of him, and from it emerged a giant, headless creature, its body seemingly made of rotting flesh intertwined with copper wires. It began crawling toward him in an erratic manner, leaving behind a trail of blood and ash.
Adam did not move. His mind was in a state of internal conflict.
"Am I still me? Or has this locket reconfigured me?"
The creature approached him and raised its right arm, which resembled an axe made of interlocked bones. Just before it swung down, light burst from the locket, and a transparent, feminine-shaped figure suddenly appeared before Adam... It was Zera.
But she was not as he knew her. Her eyes glowed white, and her body shone as if made of liquid light.
> "Adam, step back! This is not the time for hesitation!" she cried, her voice tearing through the silence.
Adam nodded but muttered:
"I can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is a reflection of my memory..."
Zera reached her hand toward him, and suddenly, he found himself inside a vortex of wind and blood. They were spinning toward the creature's core as if forming a human spear.
As they pierced the creature's body, Adam felt an intense heat spreading through his skin, as if every nerve was burning. He saw strange memories from within it: faces of people he didn't know, children's screams, and the grandmother's gaze as she closed the stone door for the first time.
> "This creature... fed on human dreams and fears, using them as fuel for Nimora's storm," Zera said, trying to pull them out from within it.
Adam screamed:
"All of this started when my grandmother died... but was that the beginning? Or was it the end we mistook for the beginning?"
Then he felt the gravity around him collapse. There was no longer any direction. No up or down. Only pain, memories, and rupture.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself in a dark hall, at the center of which stood a giant mirror... but it did not reflect him.
Instead, it reflected another man.
He resembled Adam but was stronger, crueler, with only one eye and a tattoo on his chest shaped like the same eye on the locket.
The other smiled and said:
> "Hello, Adam. I am the version created from every moment of weakness in you. You created me without even knowing."
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### 🕯️ Motivational Quote at the End of the Part:
**"When you face your true mirror, do not look for the resemblance, but for the difference; for within it lies your destiny."**
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